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Star Wars Pinball Overhaul: Episode 2

Cary Hardy·video·17m 42s·analyzed·May 20, 2023
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.016

TL;DR

Star Wars Pinball restoration: PinSound install, flipper rebuild, playfield cleaning, full LED conversion, parts replacement.

Summary

Cary Hardy documents Episode 2 of his Star Wars Pinball restoration project, focusing on speaker upgrades with PinSound installation, flipper solenoid replacement, comprehensive playfield cleaning, LED conversion throughout the machine, and rubber/target replacement. The restoration involves budget constraints for the arcade hosting the machine, requiring prioritization of functional improvements over cosmetic perfection.

Key Claims

  • Star Wars Pinball had loose metal posts on the playfield (approximately 85% were loose) that required retightening during restoration

    high confidence · Cary Hardy directly observed and retightened posts during playfield teardown; stated 85% were loose

  • The plunger on this Star Wars machine was shooting weakly due to missing hardware in the lockdown receiver panel area

    high confidence · Cary Hardy identified missing hardware and corroded components causing inconsistent plunger performance

  • PinSound board kits do not include risers/standoffs, requiring custom fabrication for proper installation

    high confidence · Cary Hardy had to custom-craft standoffs from leftover star posts because none were included with the PinSound kit

  • Marco-brand replacement Death Star toy for Star Wars Pinball comes undrilled and unpainted, requiring modification to fit

    high confidence · Cary Hardy received the part and confirmed Marco website lists it as 'unpainted undrilled requires modification'; had to drill hole himself

  • The flipper solenoid sleeves on this Star Wars machine had swollen, preventing proper removal during rebuild

    high confidence · Cary Hardy inspected solenoid and determined both needed replacement due to swelling and deterioration

Notable Quotes

  • “there's no risers that come with this kit or anything like that so I had to make my own and I crafted them by using leftover star posts”

    Cary Hardy@ 0:31 — Reveals PinSound kit incompleteness and DIY problem-solving approach

  • “no wonder my plunger looked like it needed some viagra or something it was just kind of like just barely shooting out”

    Cary Hardy@ 3:22 — Humorous but illustrates serious plunger performance issue diagnosis

  • “this is unpainted undrilled requires modification in order to fit on machine so that means I'm gonna have to drill the hole on this thing”

    Cary Hardy@ 16:15 — Confirms Marco replacement parts require additional work beyond installation

  • “we are on a budget so if he wants this thing to look pretty in the future then so be it then I can put some effort into that but I'm gonna pass for right now”

    Cary Hardy@ 16:38 — Demonstrates budget constraints influencing restoration priorities for arcade operator

  • “I'd say about 85 percent of these metal posts all around this play field were just loose like over time or whatever”

    Cary Hardy@ 4:40 — Quantifies extent of playfield maintenance issues typical of Data East machines

Entities

Cary HardypersonStar Wars PinballgamePinSoundproductMarcocompanyTitan PinballcompanyData Eastcompany

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Active restoration community providing detailed documentation of arcade maintenance procedures; YouTube content serving educational role for technicians

    medium · Cary references previous restoration videos and methodologies; documents teardown and reassembly for educational purposes

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Marco-brand replacement Death Star toy ships undrilled and unpainted, requiring additional fabrication work beyond standard installation

    high · Cary received part, confirmed Marco website listing as 'unpainted undrilled requires modification,' had to drill hole himself

  • ?

    product_strategy: Full LED conversion of Star Wars Pinball playfield and backbox to replace traditional incandescent bulbs

    high · Cary installed LED flashers throughout top and underside; noted significant brightness improvement after conversion

  • ?

    product_concern: Data East Star Wars Pinball exhibits typical wear pattern: approximately 85% of playfield posts were loose, plunger mechanism compromised by missing hardware

    high · Cary identified and documented loose posts during restoration; attributed weak plunger to missing lockdown receiver panel hardware

  • ?

    technology_signal: PinSound aftermarket audio upgrade installation on Data East machine; broader trend of modding classic pinball with modern audio systems

    high · Cary installing PinSound board and upgrading speakers/subwoofer on Star Wars Pinball as standard restoration practice

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.053

0:00
all right so I'm upgrading the speakers because we're gonna be putting pin sound in this machine it's going from that to this now you're like okay cool you know pile good brand you know it looks pretty cool right but the downside about buying things online is that you don't quite see that it is sticking out so basically there's no risers that come with this kit or anything like that so I had to make my own and I crafted them by using leftover star posts so that way they would work so I mean it's pretty easy process I mean I was there's a lot of things you could use to do the exact thing that I just did but I was like I gotta work and I'll show you how I did it it. I brushed off the grinder again just like I did the mullet's connectors. then I'm going to put it into a vice and use my drill to recreate the hole because since we just melted the plastic then it's not exactly going to work very well so put in the vice to hold it steady and we now have a nice standoff there we go all right so we've got the new speakers installed back here with the pin sound board it's currently going through all the sound files figure while it's doing that let's upgrade the subwoofer shall we okay i've now gone through the game played it plenty of times left it on played it some more just to make sure nothing changed after it's been on for a long time and I had this weird issue that the culprit was this little bad boy right here was grounded to the ground so we had a little bit of short but this was so corroded that it wasn't very consistent and usually you'll have trough or out hole issues because when they're lowering the plate field down a lot of the times people kind of do it prematurely and they'll slam it into the lockdown receiver panel right here which bends these and causes all kinds of trouble so and this is probably why this is broken as well stuff like that so that's obviously going to get replaced because i don't like that and uh this is missing hardware is all loosey-goosey as well i'm like oh my god no wonder my plunger looked like it needed some viagra or something it was just kind of like just barely shooting out but we're going to start disassembling this thing i'm not going to show you a lot of the teardown footage guys unless i stumble across something that's interesting and then i feel like you need to see but uh i've done teardowns plenty of times i have a video going over how i go about doing it and that's not going to be different from how i'm doing this one right here just so happens to be another data east game at that too so nothing much different here so let's start tearing this bad boy apart All right we are ready to begin the cleaning process I have got everything stripped off the plate feel that I need stripped off at this time We getting all new targets So those are on the way We going to be getting new skirts pop bumper bodies and tops for these pop bumpers as well as new yokes fiber and metal to replace those because they usually cracked and broken so I got new ones on the way because I just preparing for it I gonna be going with uh you know what I gonna hold off on telling you what I'm going with right there I think that'll be kind of cool to see but it may look horrible I don't know we'll find out but um I went through and re-tightened all these posts I'd say about 85 percent of these metal posts all around this play field were just loose like over time or whatever. I don't know, but they're all back to being retightened and everything. I was going to get and polish each one of these like I usually do on my restorations, but one that's really time-consuming,
5:00
and this arcade does have a budget, so I have to keep that in mind. And with this game, there's rubbers that cover this entire body and everything, so it's not going to be really noticeable anyways if I didn't get that small of details on that kind of thing. I'm not too worried about it. We've got new plastics because these were broken and
5:22
Yeah, all LEDs have been ordered I mean everything's on order now so while it's waiting to come in now I'm gonna be going through this and getting this looking all nice and a lot better than what it looks right now
5:34
So mainly kind of curious to see how well this comes out because that's definitely very obviously dirty but we're getting all new stuff right here, so I'm not too worried about getting that cleaned up and yeah I think we're ready to begin I may end up having to once I get the top side all cleaned off then I'll start working on the bottom side on certain things to remove I'm gonna be removing the why can I not think of this the subway yeah the subway system to see you there's any kind of built up a dirt in there get that all cleaned up but uh all right let's get this cleaned up I wanted to record this the first wipe we're gonna do a little bit of naphtha right there and real time just see how clean this stuff becomes just by using naphtha and wiping if we're gonna see a big hole noticeable difference or not it's not gonna be drastic on naphtholone oh man this is some built-up stuff man may have to bust out the magic eraser this is on mylar too I want to say whoo all right this is gonna be some elbow grease but I mean yeah granted it's looking better as As you can see, it's just that it's going to require elbow grease, but it is coming off.
7:13
Yep, busting out the magic eraser, but I'm going over lightly first just to get all the big debris up. and once all the big and heavy debris is all lifted off the playfield then i'll start working on uh getting you know the grit and the abrasive stuff out here we go all right round one is complete i mean this is just kind of going over the playfield once over not scrubbing too hard or anything i mean it's already looking a lot better by getting a lot of the heavy duty stuff that was up there on top oh i still got to get in these corners over here my bad but go through all this so i get this corner in that corner out there and then we can start on round two i'm going to be going straight for the magic eraser on this guys i've come across some stuff that is a pretty stubborn but it's gradually looking better now on my typical restorations I'll be removing everything including all of these guide rails and polishing them on the wheel but if I'm not gonna be doing that because of time versus you know money and everything then I'm gonna be using this this is what I'm using or blue magic is another one but you can see the difference between if I get my camera there between right there where looks all nice and clean versus right there you can see that basically a good old wax and scrub and wax off makes a big difference. I've already got this back one right here
9:02
all the way on this side. So that looks pretty shiny as well as the shooter lane right here and I'm just still working my way around but that's to show you a little bit before and after what I haven't gotten done yet. This is after obviously and this is what I'm about to start scrubbing on. all right so we've got all the rails nice and shiny and everything from what version we did but I've got to pull these and get these all scrubbed and cleaned up because this is gonna mess up the ball over time so these right here have got to come out this one might clean up but this one's pretty rugged. I don't like that, so I wanted to pull those out and get them all cleaned up. I'll try polishing them up as they stand, but that's definitely something I'm looking at and don't like the way it looks.
10:05
So I'm going over the play field one last couple of times to make sure we can get it as clean as we possibly can before we go about getting any kind of wax or anything like that on here. This was after going through, and with the magic eraser, and there might be some remnants of the metal polish and stuff like that on here. So I went through the entire plate filled with that, and then this is after that one more time with the naphtha again. Still a little bit of dirt that may be hazing across the pop bumper skirts that are still dirty, but I'm replacing those, so I'm not worried about it. So overall, I'd say this plate filled is pretty darn clean, especially in comparison to what it looked like before. So we'll just kind of do a over the play field scan right here. You can see on the Star Wars portions the discoloring between where there's mylar and where there's not. So it's not dirt right there. It's just showing you where the mylar is at and showing you the differences on the red.
11:18
But we've got color across this play field now. And looking a hell of a lot better than it did. So now I'm gonna start looking at the underside and looking at the subway system, seeing how we look on that.
11:37
I have removed the subway region. So this is the before on what this looks like. like and I'm gonna get after it with the some polish and stuff like that and see if we can make it look a little better less likely to pick up dirt and drag it across the playfield here we go all right it ain't no thing that you would probably want to eat off of but I'd say it looks a lot better than what it did whenever I first brought it out and if anything else it's definitely not gonna to make the play field dirty and scratch up the balls all right let's reinstall it and of course one of the biggest and most important things when it comes to doing your pinball machine correctly is doing a flipper rebuild this is swollen although it owns out correctly it's got to be somewhat swollen and i don't like where it's going because i can't even get the sleeve out anymore. It slides okay but I don't like that I can't remove that sleeve. So we're going to be replacing actually both of these solenoids with new sleeves and getting everything all cleaned up and should look a lot better afterwards. I mean even the rubber stops right here.
13:05
This is old and busted. Remember this is going to be the new one going in. Both of them are pretty bad Just gotta get them all wired up Yeah that much better All nice and shiny and cleaned up It's gonna be doing great. I have received the order from Titan Pinball. We are about to start making this thing look a lot better. I've already got new drop targets because I had some here already but we got a bunch more stuff coming from Marco but I'm gonna start installing the new rubbers and flasher bulbs throughout this machine making it look better here we go alright so what I've got done so far is LED flashers on the playfield what I've done here is got got red behind these targets on the side so every time you hit that it's gonna give a nice little red effect and then um you got red underneath the death star so every time you hit this that should flash right up underneath that but back here and over here we have your traditional cool whites and then i've got cool whites all throughout up here when it comes to flashers and leds looking better already all right we've got the top side all cool white leds i'm not putting any leds in my pop bumpers yet because those are going to need a full rebuild so i'm not going to worry about putting those in but yeah now it's time to start working on the underside Okay, we have now got top side and underside fully LED throughout. So this game definitely looks a lot brighter. Everything's nice and shiny. Back box and all that. All right, I guess we'll start getting the rubbers on here. All right, we've got all blue rubbers throughout and now I'm in the process of reassembling the play field. still have parts coming from marco but i can work around those because the the new targets those were all from underneath anyway so i'm not too worried about building above them i should be able to get the pop bumpers without having to worry about other stuff around it right here so i'm going to build up i mean as far as i know that i can without interrupting or getting in the way of anything i'm going to be replacing so it's just a matter of going through each one of my ziplock bags, taking each piece out, cleaning it, and then reassembling it back on the playfield, guys. It's rinse and repeat, you know, about a hundred times, and we should be good. So evidently, the replacement Death Star doesn't have a hole drilled in it that needs to go on top of this bad baby, so I'm going to have to drill it myself. There's like nothing at the top. It looks like that piece comes off but it also looks like it doesn't come off according to the Marco website this is unpainted undrilled requires modification in order to fit on machine so that means I'm gonna have to drill the hole on this thing okay that's fine and as far as like doing any kind of painting with this I mean I could but it's gonna be time and work intensive and we are on a budget so if he wants this thing to look pretty in the future then so be it then I can put some effort into that but I'm gonna pass for right now we're gonna drill this hole and put it on the damn machine yeah there's just a quick little pan over on the current progress what Star Wars looks like right now I mean these upper lights on here have not been plugged in from down below I'm just getting the top side all put together, but rubbers and LEDs are all in place. Working on reassembly.
17:38
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