1979 Williams Flash SS

Everything was completely disassembled and either cleaned thoroughly or replaced with new parts. Small metal pieces got cleaned and polished in tumblers as well as with a bench buffer wheel. Larger metal pieces were cleaned and polished by hand. The wire harness was first soaked and wiped down with Crazy Clean fluid and then went thru a rinse cycle in the dishwasher.

One of the nastiest phases of the cleanup was salvaging the severely nicotine-stained grounding shields in the backbox. Normally I’d replace this with roof flashing material from Home Depot cut down to size, but that’s a huge pain. In this case, Flash’s shields were in good shape structurally but were just plain nasty with the yellow stains (and they smelled, too). Fortunately, Crazy Clean actually made them look very passable and they no longer stank, so I re-used them.

The cabinet needed extensive repairs. I went with bondo to basically re-build the bottom rear edge of the lower cab and it turned out great. Good old fashioned Titebond III wood glue and clamps took care of repairing the neck, and I replaced the rotting supporting wood on the lower cab underside to make the floor perfectly stable and strong.

For the backbox rear wall, I actually sub-contracted that one out to a cabinet maker as the required skills and tools were beyond me. For $100, the cabinet guy surgically removed the water-damaged and bloated MDF panel and replaced it with 3/4” plywood for a brand new rear wall. Came out great.

Some more bondo repairs here and there for corners and gouges on the cabinet, and the paint was chemically removed with acetone. This is a much safer method vs. sanding off 1970’s paint which could contain lead resulting in lead particle dust flying around on landing everywhere.

Restoring the coin door was fairly uneventful, just a lot of tumbler and bench buffer work. I found some repro labels online which gives the door a nice clean, OEM look. While I used a Classic Arcades decal to restore the apron, the “kit” did not include the shooter gauge decal so I wound up making my own by scanning the original, cleaning it up, and printing it out on high quality adhesive decal paper.