Repainting the playfield of a 1977 Gottlieb Cleopatra Pinball Machine

ladies and gentlemen this is Joe's classic video games back with another cool arcade game pinball machine repair video for you this evening now this is a Gottlieb Cleopatra that we're working on we've got some things were working through on it but one of the main problems that we have is that the playfield is worn all to hell so they have played and played and played this one with no wax on it and it has caused many problems so one of the problems is some of the plastics are broke we were able to order new plastics the drop targets are broke we were able to order new drop targets but it also has where all over the play field like there's a bad spot there bad spot there that's from where that these kick-out holes are just kicking the ball out to it it has just we're up here at the top where the paint's missing and it has where on this part in the middle here and even where down here so the things pretty beat but we love a challenge so we thought hey we'll buy it anyway it was very inexpensive right so we're gonna try to fix this up and make it a little more presentable so I figured I'd shoot a little video of us working on the play field this is what we're starting with so the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to tear down the play field and then we're going to clean it and then we're going to try to repaint some of that and then we're going to wax it and then we're going to rebuild everything with Melanie rubbers and new light bulbs and all that and we'll see what the difference is so this is our starting shot here this is kind of what we began with as you can see there is we're all over the place but while it looks like an elephant right now everybody knows the way you eat an elephant is one bite at a time so really if you look at this play field there's only about four colors on this play field so if if you match the white which is kind of like a cream color if you match the white and then repaint all the parts that are that have wear on it that are white and then you match the yellow and repair repaint all the parts that have wear that are yellow and then match the red and repaint all the parts that have red and Matt how's it going man and then match the burgundy and then put the the the black lines back in everything I look cool so we'll start tearing it down I won't film a little video whatever we get some of that done okay so this is what we are left with after we removed everything we haven't cleaned anything yet we just took everything off the top of the playfield within reason we didn't take everything off but we took all the plastics off all the posts off or the plastic posts at least the lane guides at the top etc etc so this is what we ended up with this is untouched a couple of the light bulbs aren't working and stuff you know this is just how we found it a guy had this in his game room which was just like a Shack behind his house for a long time and eventually it stopped working as God lives our ought to do if they haven't been serviced and we we bought it from them and now whenever you're doing this side reason for film let's just show people that they can do this to their own games that they get won that it can be done now this depends on how far you want to take it like for instance if you wanted to take it that far you could take everything off the clay field you can take all the posts off you can even take all the wiring off the back and get it down to just bare wood and then you could do things like you could level all the inserts to get them perfect and you could do things like replace all of the pop bumper bodies which will probably do at least the skirts because they're eight up a little bit you could do things like replacing your pulling all of the metal work off and running it through a tumbler to make it look nice but on something like this you know we're doing this and then we're going to sell it so we have to turn a profit so we can't we can't put a ton of time into it this is already more time that we really should be putting into it but with all that kind of crazy heavy wear it's probably not going to sell you know so we have to do a little bit of work to it to make it at least presentable so that's what we're gonna do we're going to make it presentable it's not going to look brand new or anything like that but if you're doing your own machine and you're willing to invest more time in it because it's usually time that you're investing it's not really money none of this is real expensive to do it just takes forever you have to do it right and we don't really have the skill to make it look brand new anyway but we can certainly make it look a lot better so this is what we're looking at with all of the stuff off of it and with it all the filth still on it so what we're going to do now is we're going to take some degreaser like 409 a lot of people will tell you not to do that because you're getting the wood wet which can make it swell as long as you don't soak it and let it sit there for a long time usually we don't see where there's a problem but we're just gonna take like a cleaner like a like a degreaser actually and clean everything down quickly you know we're we're not going to this where it's sitting in water or anything but we're going to quickly clean everything down to get all of the the major dirt off and then we're going to take a magic eraser and some rubbing alcohol and go around and get all the paint now those magic erasers are basically sandpaper so if you're not if you're not familiar with these you can buy these at the grocery store they're called magic erasers and it's a type of foam and they're very it's a real small foam so basically whenever you have dirt like this it's down in the cracks and the paint is why that dirts there so this magic eraser can get inside the cracks of the paint you can't do it drive it so if you put like rubbing alcohol on it and go at it it will clean the dirt out of the cracks on the paint and let make it look really nice so once you get it really clean if you put a really nice thick wax on it it'll it'll protect it so we're gonna use a magic eraser but like I said it's it's basically really fine sandpaper so if you go at this thing and keep going and keep going it'll take the paint right off so you have to be careful but we're going to use the magic eraser to clean it all up and then after we clean it all up we'll film another little piece here and show you what we're left with after cleaning it won't be perfect but it'll look a hell of a lot better than this I'll be back in a second all right folks we cleaned it up this is just the initial cleaning and the we ran over it with the Magic Eraser this stuff like this where the wood is just bare wood we're not going to attempt to paint that or anything but we are gonna clearcoat over it so hopefully it'll make it blend in a little bit but we got a bunch of the wear off of it but it left you know it's pretty rough around those inserts some of the inserts are even crooked like that one and this one so we got to move those we'll probably put a little dab of superglue one on the onnum in place and then these rollovers up at the top where these cymbals are are all kind of rough so next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna start mixing colors so I don't know what you want to do first but I'll come back whenever we start mixing the paint okay so we mixed up some red and so basically the way we do it is we get do we get different colors these little acrylic paints we've got a whole bunch of different reds and so we got one that was pretty close but it was a little too dark so if you put white in red if you mix white into it you just get like a pink so what we do is we mix a little orange into it which makes it a little lighter and changes the red so it was a little too dark so we changed it to a little bit lighter and just mixed it up in the cap and touched it up now at a distance it looks pretty good if you get real close you can see it's not a perfect match like you see right here where we painted back in some of the red you can see that it's not perfect but it looks a lot better and of course all we did was paint where the red was missing so like we still have to go back and do the yellow let through the white we have to do this burgundy purplish color and then we have to do the black lines until we get the black lines on it you won't really even see it they won't even look all that great the black lines they'll really bring it back together so I think next we're gonna do the Burgundy thing so where we put red we put a little here we painted his shoulder back in we painted his shoulder back in we did a bunch of red on the trim there were some areas up here that major parts of we're gone painted some of that back in did some over there painted this little arrow there back on touched up some in here touched up some in here touched up a couple of these little things painted this back paying some back in here so basically you just need to break it down and do it piece by piece it's like a coloring book basically now like I said before this thing ain't gonna be perfect I mean people that are good at this they hate this kind of stuff but really we're starting with something that's so worn and beat-up that anything like this will make it look a little better as long as you get the color close so we're gonna keep working on it I'm gonna do this kind of burgundy purple next and try to get a good color batch on it and then touch-up all that stuff of course the most important part will be right here where it says bonus value so I gotta get that looking pretty good and then it's also some of the parts around the the the worn inserts in the playfield there so that will be our next one and I'll come back whenever we've got that okay so we have painted in a lot of the burgundy now we had Razzleberry that was pretty close and then we added a little bit of a Lazare crimson to darken it up just a little bit and it got pretty good it's not perfect I'll show you a spot here where it's obvious you can see the colors just slightly different so maybe if you added a little purple violet whatever they call that it would make it a little closer but it's close enough right painted in around the bonus value part and remember we need to we still need to put all the black lines around I got to look a lot better we're painted in some of these winged Egyptian things here on the side and we painted the the guy's necklace back on touched up a little bit of it up there at the top like I said it's not gonna be perfect but it's gonna be a heck of a lot better than it is we still need to clean up a lot of it too but it's where yeah we've gotta clean up some stuff and I just noticed too you may have noticed earlier there's actually a green as well all of that's not yellow some of that's green so the back kind of a back color is green this is green it's like a lime and then you have a yellow here next to it but there's just a very little bit of the green that's worn actually just little tiny spots here and there that are worn so I need to do that I need to do yellow I need to do white yeah well it's not white it's like an off-white and I need to do black which will be the most important part so that's where we are so far you can see the center of the playfield is starting to come back a little bit before we do all of our black lines we'll make sure to glue down the inserts that are acting up a little bit and we're trying to get this thing presentable so next up I believe I will do the yellow there's a lot of yellow that needs to be done so that'll be a good one to do next so I'll mix that up and we'll see what we get so we put in the yellow it's not perfect it's yellow it was very hard to match yellow is hard to match and Red's hard to match we got decent on the red but the yellow is a little off but I went ahead and did the yellow everywhere now I still need to do the green and then after I did some of the black lines back in I noticed a couple spots that I forgot to put yellow but whatever all right so we did the a lot of the yellow was these speaks as it's Fink's or speaks the Sphinx these Fink's sphinxes as sinks I here in the middle with the arrows and so uh to be honest I touched up a lot of the yellow and it looked like crap right so what I did was I went ahead and put in the black lines and stuff so that it would look a little better and I think it did look turned out a lot better so if you look back at the beginning of the video we had a lot of where around every one of these inserts and so a lot of this has been a lot of the yellows been replaced and then I thinked back in the black and that was kind of the worst part of the playfield genome so I think it looks a lot better we've still got some issues down here like like see that's the yellow that I matched and this is how it's supposed to be so it's it's a little iffy folks it's not perfect and then the worst part it's good God Almighty I gotta do something about it look at this so this was heavily worn there was like a big spot missing so you can see that the yellow is not a good match really but it was about as good as I could get I mixed and mixed and mixed and mixed and that was about as good as it got so I think once I put the lettering back on and then get a nice big dark circle around here it'll kind of dilute it where it looks a little different or that's what I'm hoping at least and I haven't inked the black back one these guys but I got rid of both of the the big wear spots that were there on their shoulders so the yellow did pretty good there there wasn't really all that much at the top that was yellow now there's some green up there I have to do but that green is gonna be easier it's not as miss not as bad as yellow it's just tough to get different colors of yellow that are nice and vibrant and then the other thing that happens is the the play fields not brand new I mean it's freaking 40 what 41 years old do I have that right I think it's a it's like 40 years old and so it's worn so all of the yellow is not really yellow anymore it's like yellow with dirt that you can't get out you know it's just faded and worn yellow so as soon as you paint something with brand new paint right next to it you see kind of the difference you know so I think it came out decent it's not perfect but it's decent so what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna do the green and I'm gonna do the white and then I'm gonna keep it inking in the black like we did around these inserts and we drew some of the wings on the the Sphinx I chose not those are the Sphinx doesn't have wings does it it's a lion so what are the ones with the wings maybe they are too I don't know so we're gonna do the green we got to do the white and then I'll say green but it's like a lime green we got to do the white and then we got to ink in a lot more than black everywhere and then we'll probably be done but I'll keep filming little pieces as we go through it I think that's actually pretty presentable the middle there but we'll then we'll do a little more work come back so we matched up some green didn't get it perfect matched up some of the white didn't get it perfect but it's decent and we inked everything so we we got it at least presentable the hardest part was this kind of scarab thing here because it was a lot of it was gone and then we clear-coated it too now whenever we clear coat things this is not a high-end restoration so we don't take everything off and go shoot it with automotive clear or anything like that we literally have clear coat in a can and we spray it on the playfield so that's all we did to protect the paint so you can see where we've inked a lot of stuff just over here came out decent if you look you can see the white around the black lines a little bit where it's been touched up usually on things like this you know this is like I said it's not a high-end restoration but once you get all of the accoutrements and stuff back on it you don't notice all of the little stuff as much the worst part is this yellow right here that just did not come out good at all but one of the problems that you got is that we talked about it earlier this stuff's all faded so it's not really the original color anymore and so it's hard to match faded paint and it's faded to the point where the green and the yellow are just barely different so that's green but that's yellow that's green but that's yellow underneath some of the posts you can see the green a little more green down here on the bottom you can see it pretty decent so you can see just how similar to those colors are just hard to match that kind of stuff so basically two yellows is the Greens pretty much yellow two yellows in a red that we had to try to match which just wasn't what an awesome some of the white we didn't paint back in if it was under the light shields like this we left that alone you can see the top up there we basically repainted the top of each ox in bilac is that how you say it of each symbol and then you get a weird thing going on with the white - like this you can see how under the post it's one color and then with the parts that were exposed over different colors so whenever you're trying to match it it's just each uh working with working with old stuff here folks but we think it came out pretty decent that's pretty presentable right it's not perfect looks pretty good there'll be lane guides up there and plastics and everything which you'll see here in a second and then of course the top arch will be back on it so this is kind of where we are this is how our middle part ended up not bad alright again it's not perfect but it's presentable I think a lot of people that are not collectors they're just like what I mean I want to play a pretty cool game would be happy to have this in their in their game room so what I'm going to do next is so we put the clear coat on it and what I'm going to do next is we'll let that dry overnight and then we're going to wax it and then we'll start putting the posts and the new rubbers and new bulbs and all that stuff back on it start putting the plastics back on it and it'll look a lot better so that's where we're at right now we'll we'll come back whenever we get the wax going we are trudging along so we got it all waxed up and we started putting back some of the plastics and things some of the rubber rings and you can see that really always kind of starts bringing it together we're waiting on some plastics that are broke and of course we don't have the all of the electronics running yet where we have all the lights up yet but actually on these system ones they don't have an attract mode anyway so you don't see that but we got to work on the pop bumper still we're waiting on some parts for the rollovers up there at the top as you can see once you start putting this stuff back it's starting to look a little better and so once we get our last few plastics on and get the pop bumpers right it'll look a heck of a lot better so um I think it's coming together nicely that's the good thing about we still of course have to put the drop targets in that's the good thing about if you if you have a touch up area that's not perfect once you put all the other stuff that you're not really looking like you're not really looking there on the play field you're looking at the drop targets so it kind of makes stuff blend in a little bit so we're about halfway through we'll put some more stuff on it and come back alright folks so we put everything back together and it came out pretty nice not bad we cleaned up the apron a little bit it had some old stickers and things on it and on these system ones the games actually up and playing right now but on these system ones there's no attract mode so the only way you can even tell that the game is running is on the back the displays will change to the high score and the high score to date high game to date both will come one and that's about it now on the newer I want brand new boards but if we would have had to replace the main board they have a little attract mode where it shows the lights and stuff but on most system one games there's nothing like that so as you can see once you get all the stuff one it looks a little better now that Center plastic we got new or replacement edge plastics that Center when we couldn't find so we kind of rigged ours up well it looks pretty decent but it's not perfect so we're gonna keep an eye out for one of those they make an actual new set of these but we didn't realize that until we had already purchased the used side pieces so we could have that middle piece for $75 I don't think I can do that but as you can see it all came together pretty good I think the top up there looks decent but if you know that it's been repainted you can obviously tell it's been repainted but considering what we started with I think it came out pretty well so I hope you enjoyed the video we're gonna do another video showing how we repaired the actual boards inside of the game and then we're gonna do another video of course playing the game so make sure to stay tuned for those we've always got other games we're working on too we're working on some here right next to it right now see up you have to figure that one out later so we've always got new videos if you like this video give us a thumbs up below tell us what you think of my paint-by-numbers scheme here tell me if you think it helped it or hurt it make sure you leave your comment and if you've got any of your own that you've touched up let us see we like seeing that stuff well mainly on my older stuff I know when there's some really high-end guys that do a really much infinitely better job than we do on some of the real expensive games but I like seeing people save up these save some of these older ones that are you know rag doubt that most people have given up on so if you've got a project like that you're working on make sure to comment below give us a thumbs up that really helps us because it shows other people our videos and make sure and subscribe to us if you haven't already and we'll see you on the next video