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Restoring a Terminator 2


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One of my recent 'restorations' was a Williams Terminator 2 machine. Specifically, it was a sample machine that came in from Germany in a container.

 

The machine was absolutely filthy - I think someone had smoked a carton or three of Cigarettes around the machine daily.

 

It was a unique restoration for me in one aspect, it was to be a 'low budget', functional restoration for several reasons.

 

The reasons basically involved the fact that the machine had been played to death and spare parts were not so readily available - the playfield was different from production and had no diamondplate, the backbox was different than the production backbox, and the lower cabinet artwork was slightly different.

 

The game had missing and damaged or broken parts. Metal brackets were welded or glued together; the skull was glued in place, the PCBs hacked, and some parts were missing.

 

Some photographs of the game:

 

Game as received from Kirk Weaver

 

400 photos of the game in restoration

 

I don't have the 'final' pictures online yet as I needed a few little parts to finish the restoration yet - but it's real close to being completely done.

 

Just a couple of my favorite photos from the restoration

 

Playfield underside after stripping playfield

 

http://gallery.myhomegameroom.com/albums/t2_sample_misc/112_G.sized.jpg

 

Playfield underside after nicotine removal

 

http://gallery.myhomegameroom.com/albums/t2_sample_misc/114_G.sized.jpg

 

And finally, a short list of differences you'd find on a sample or prototype T2 versus a regular production model:

 

Copyright info on cab - does not exist on production game

Head color - production game is black background, early games are blue

Lamp boards - red instead of green

Drop target drop solenoid and bracketry - proto and sample games had the solenoid that allows the CPU to drop the target added after the game was designed. Wiring was hacked into the game, and the bracketry was hand made

Gun cover - no decals on sample games

Right ramp has no protectors on sample games

Metal piece over 5 white targets is flat, no bend in it to add support

Wireform ramps had some slight modifications - some hand bends on earlier ramps

No lower GI circuit in backbox insert - holes are routed differently and the string is completely missing.

No skull protector - had to find one from a parted game

Lockdown reciever had no insulation on handle, which could easily short out to coin door lamps and take out a GI string fuse

Prop rod had no insulation on handle

No drop target decal installed

Different insert artwork

Different playfield colors

yellow start button instead of white (white unique to T2, Hurricane)

Speaker grilles are W logo instead of red

Autolaunch solenoid cover painted flat black instead of gloss

Gun handle had a different plating on it

No backboard decal

Hand welded trigger in shooter handle

Slightly different plastics around skull (maybe)

No artwork on right ramp

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One of my recent 'restorations' was a Williams Terminator 2 machine. Specifically, it was a sample machine that came in from Germany in a container.

 

The machine was absolutely filthy - I think someone had smoked a carton or three of Cigarettes around the machine daily.

 

It was a unique restoration for me in one aspect, it was to be a 'low budget', functional restoration for several reasons.

 

The reasons basically involved the fact that the machine had been played to death and spare parts were not so readily available - the playfield was different from production and had no diamondplate, the backbox was different than the production backbox, and the lower cabinet artwork was slightly different.

 

The game had missing and damaged or broken parts. Metal brackets were welded or glued together; the skull was glued in place, the PCBs hacked, and some parts were missing.

 

Some photographs of the game:

 

Game as received from Kirk Weaver

 

400 photos of the game in restoration

 

I don't have the 'final' pictures online yet as I needed a few little parts to finish the restoration yet - but it's real close to being completely done.

 

Just a couple of my favorite photos from the restoration

 

Playfield underside after stripping playfield

 

http://gallery.myhomegameroom.com/albums/t2_sample_misc/112_G.sized.jpg

 

Playfield underside after nicotine removal

 

http://gallery.myhomegameroom.com/albums/t2_sample_misc/114_G.sized.jpg

 

And finally, a short list of differences you'd find on a sample or prototype T2 versus a regular production model:

 

Copyright info on cab - does not exist on production game

Head color - production game is black background, early games are blue

Lamp boards - red instead of green

Drop target drop solenoid and bracketry - proto and sample games had the solenoid that allows the CPU to drop the target added after the game was designed. Wiring was hacked into the game, and the bracketry was hand made

Gun cover - no decals on sample games

Right ramp has no protectors on sample games

Metal piece over 5 white targets is flat, no bend in it to add support

Wireform ramps had some slight modifications - some hand bends on earlier ramps

No lower GI circuit in backbox insert - holes are routed differently and the string is completely missing.

No skull protector - had to find one from a parted game

Lockdown reciever had no insulation on handle, which could easily short out to coin door lamps and take out a GI string fuse

Prop rod had no insulation on handle

No drop target decal installed

Different insert artwork

Different playfield colors

yellow start button instead of white (white unique to T2, Hurricane)

Speaker grilles are W logo instead of red

Autolaunch solenoid cover painted flat black instead of gloss

Gun handle had a different plating on it

No backboard decal

Hand welded trigger in shooter handle

Slightly different plastics around skull (maybe)

No artwork on right ramp

 

looks great John, did you sand it or use a chemical to clean it?

 

PS do you have a non currupt version of the game rom for a 25th aniver star trek

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looks great John, did you sand it or use a chemical to clean it?

 

PS do you have a non currupt version of the game rom for a 25th aniver star trek

 

80 grit followed by 120 grit gave the best results.

 

Some folks say the Crazy Clean foaming cleaner sold by pinrestore.com does a good job on getting dirt out of the woodgrain. I have not tried this yet, but I do have a junk Indy 500 sample playfield here (flasher locked on and melted an insert) that I could try it on. I'm quite fond of the crazy clean, nothing else I've used will attack the nicotine on pins and just 'melt' it off, yet it doesn't attack your skin. Just not real excited about spraying liquid on the backside of a playfield when a dry method works.

 

I will e-mail you the binary I have for ST 25th, CPU 2.01. I've used it and it's worked fine for me.

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wow some great work in that one. what is 'dawn' - the stuff that the coils were soaked in (some sort of solvent?)

 

Beat me to it Stu...

 

I just looked at all 400 pictures and it is an amazing job you have done there John.

 

Question time;

 

There's a lot of soaking going on... What do you use (as Stu asked) ? I'm interested in the soaking done to the bent contacts.

 

What did you use to clean the boards ?

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wow some great work in that one. what is 'dawn' - the stuff that the coils were soaked in (some sort of solvent?)

 

Dawn is my girlfriend and it's her task to clean my pin parts :)

 

OK, not really, but it sounded good for a moment.

 

Dawn is a brand of dish soap in the US. It's famous for its commercials where they show cooking pans etc soaking in Dawn and it drives the grease away. It has some other rumored uses, including mechanics saying you can soak tools in it to remove grease from them and prevent rust. It's also useful if a car drips oil in your driveway, you can soak the oil up, then pour dawn on your driveway and scrub, comes nice and clean like new. And it won't harm the environment as it is fully biodegradable.

 

It's made and distributed in the US by Proctor and Gamble. There are numerous varieties they make, the only one I've used that is safe is the original variety, which is blue. Some of the varieties have bleach and other more harsh cleansers in them, which would remove the ink.

 

The particular brand to use was actually provided to me by another collector. Some cleaners will remove the ink from the coil wrappers, the dawn does not.

 

I mix it up pretty warm, and let the coils soak for 2-3 days, then clean them with a stiff bristled brush. Any of the flux near the solder tabs that won't come off can be removed with acetone - just try to keep it off the wrapper.

 

After they soak, I rinse under warm to hot water, then blow them out with the air compressor. Sometimes the labels come off, they can be reglued using rubber cement, then I wrap a couple rubber bands around them to hold the wrapper around the coil while the rubber cement dries.

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Beat me to it Stu...

 

I just looked at all 400 pictures and it is an amazing job you have done there John.

 

Question time;

 

There's a lot of soaking going on... What do you use (as Stu asked) ? I'm interested in the soaking done to the bent contacts.

 

What did you use to clean the boards ?

 

The contacts didn't come out real well honestly. I would call that soaking a failure. A colleague suggested I try vinegar. It did remove a lot of the tarnish, but not all.

 

I think in the future, I'll use the technique I'm using on the current project. I desoldered the pop bumper switches on my BSD and took them apart, straightened each blade, cleaned each blade with metal polish, then reassembled the switch stack. It's good to do them one at a time in case you forget which blade goes where, which insulator goes where etc. The main reason for even considering rebuilding the stacks is the pop bumper switches being sold by most US parts houses were made by Suzo and are not really like original.

 

PCBs were cleaned with another household cleanser called Scrubbing Bubbles. It's made by SC Johnson, don't know if it's available everywhere or not. Basically, it's soap in a spray can that bubbles and foams and the stuff just starts to run off the boards.

 

Coat the PCBs with scrubbing bubbles and let it work on them for 2-3 minutes, then take a paintbrush and work around everything and rinse. Really nasty stuff may take 2 applications. Once it is done cleaning, rinse well with hot water, then take some 91% or better rubbing alcohol and give the PCB a good rinse. Then, blow out with compressed air until dry, and I put the boards on the hood of my truck in the sun to let the sun dry them a little more.

 

I remove any socketed chips, ROMS, ASIC chip, etc before cleaning the boards. This allows me to get everything clean and dry under the socketed chips. Any water retained anywhere could lead to corrosion. PCBs are cleaned in some factories and rework shops in dishwashers after they are repaired.

 

Please note, I make no guarantees that the techniques I use won't damage anything. It's just how I've done it for awhile here.

 

One of the keys to any restoration, which I've been refining for awhile, is the order in which things are cleaned. If done right, you can start and work to finish and never have to wait on anything to dry.

 

One of the first steps is cleaning wiring harnesses, PCBs and coils. I want to make absolutely certain these are dry when I get ready to use/install them. I always leave any of these items in the sun after cleaning them and drying with an air compressor to give them adequate time to dry. That means I sometimes have to wait a few days for rain to pass.

 

It's also important as I try to work in stages.

 

Stage 1, for example, would be to get the game working 100% - fix any dead switches or bulbs, repair burnt connectors, replace bridge rectifiers if needed, etc.

 

With project games, if you fix as you go, you won't know whether something was always broken, if you wired something wrong, etc if you don't have it working before tearing it down.

 

Stage 2 is the teardown.

 

Stage 3 is the cleaning of everything

 

Stage 4 is the reassembly

 

Really, it's a little more detailed than that, and I refine a little with each restoration.

 

And there are quite a few guys in the US who make my work look rather amateurish, I like to let them set the bar and figure they get better with every game, just like everyone else, and maybe eventually I'll get closer to their level.

 

The difference as I see it between their jobs and mine, though, is that I try to *restore* more than *replace*. Then again, they are hired guns that others hire to do their restoration work in some cases, and maybe it's cheaper to replace a $5 switch than it is to spend half an hour on it.

 

T2 needed a lot of parts replaced that were just too far gone. The main ramp didn't have the protectors on the entrances like production games, so it took a lot of impacts and the side walls were completely gone and the floor was cracked half way across. Few of the standup targets were original. The H/K ship was missing and the skull was taped and glued together.

 

One of the things that led up to the massive wear on the playfield were the hand made ball guides. Lots of the welds where the brackets attached to the guides were rough and had raised spots that were abrasive from being welded too hot. I smoothed them the best I could, but they could easily nick the ball and a nicked ball leads to bad playfield wear!

 

The targets, ramp, ship and skull were nearly $300 USD alone. Then the DMD was dead ($120 USD). Suddenly, my $800 T2 project became the same price as a decent T2 sells for! And I am forgetting parts I put into the game, like new legs, levelers, bolts and leg bolt plates. I'm glad I'm not in this for the money, as I would be losing it pretty badly!

 

The game only needed 2 plastics, one sling and the sign over one ramp was broken and partially missing. I had the very sling I needed as my last T2 had the other side broken and I changed the pair. A friend had junked a T2 recently and he provided the translite and the ramp sign for nothing as I've done the same for him in the past. Other broken brackets, hardware, posts etc came from other games I'd parted in the past.

 

The cabinet speaker came from a Demo Man I parted years ago, and the 2 speakers in the panel came from an F-14 Tomcat I parted and an IJ I am upgrading the speakers in.

 

I also refinished the original coin door as it was original. A lot of the guys restoring games over here put a new coin door on everything. I don't feel like spending $100 to do that. I don't mind a 3 slot door or a 1 slot door if that's what came on the game originally - I just want it *clean*. The coin door, much like the lockdown area, is one of the filthiest areas of a game and it's one of the areas you touch the most. I used a few parts off an old dented door on a junk pile here to repair the existing door, and sprayed a fresh coat of paint from a cheap can of spraypaint.

 

So, while I tried to make this a low budget restore, it didn't exactly work out exactly as planned. But, it was a fun way to spend 3 months of spare time!

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  • 1 year later...

So, while I tried to make this a low budget restore, it didn't exactly work out exactly as planned. But, it was a fun way to spend 3 months of spare time!

 

I am about to embark on a similar restore/cleanup (my first, so I'm scared) of a T2 machine which is in considerably better condition than yours was, but still needs a lot of work. I has a feeling I'm going to end up like you, spending way more than I intended and most likely over-capitalising on the thing but isn't that part of the whole hobby?

 

Your pictures and account of your process will come in very handy so thanks for taking the time do put them up here.

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