1978 Bally Mata Hari SS

The time vested in a hardtop installation pales in comparison to a full playfield swap. With prep work included (and some small delays for weather), the hardtop installation took less than a week. Most playfield swaps take me a couple of months or so of evenings and weekends.

The cabinet did take several weeks, but I’m pleased with how it turned out. The Marigold Yellow from Rustoleum is a pretty good match for the OEM yellow. Since I was restoring the apron as well, I took the opportunity to replace the stock pea soup green color with the same Marigold Yellow to match the cabinet base color. The backbox also got fresh new grounding shields that I cut out of a roll of roof flashing from Home Depot.

The backglass was horrible, flaking beyond repair. I replaced it with a CPR (and replaced the faded and cracked plastics with a CPR set).

Most of the displays were shot - missing segments on some, two were dead altogether. I fixed three of the displays but rather than buy old replacements for the remaining two, I decided to try using LED displays which run on 5v and eliminate the need for the high voltage circuitry making the pin a little less dangerous to work on (you can actually remove the HV fuse).