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Centaur Pinball Playfield Swap Process Part 2

Cary Hardy·video·18m 23s·analyzed·Jan 3, 2019
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.016

TL;DR

Centaur playfield swap Part 2: drilling, component reinstall, and collaborative restoration techniques.

Summary

Cary Hardy documents the second part of a Centaur pinball playfield swap project, focusing on removing side wood beams (secured with unexpectedly large staples), marking the GI line path, drilling precise holes for mechanisms using calipers and comparison to the original playfield, polishing rollover switches, and reinstalling components. The video emphasizes meticulous attention to detail, the importance of having a master playfield for reference, and the value of collaborative work to avoid errors on expensive restoration projects.

Key Claims

  • Centaur original playfield used 2-inch staples (approximately 10 per side) instead of wood screws to secure side beams

    high confidence · Direct observation during disassembly; contrasted with Black Knight which had no issues removing wood panels

  • Dirt and grime on playfields can serve as a guide for reinstalling mechanisms because debris prevents tools from fitting under posts

    medium confidence · Speaker's recommendation based on observation; stated as practical advice rather than tested principle

  • CPR playfield dimples are 'mere suggestions' and should not be trusted entirely; using calipers against original playfield for precise measurements is more reliable

    high confidence · Direct comparison work shown in video; speaker explicitly states CPR dimples should not be used as sole guide

  • Rollover switch installation requires precision drilling with minimal error margin to prevent rubbing or catching on wood

    high confidence · Direct observation of installation challenges; stated as technical requirement

  • Playfield swap work requires 6-7 hours of labor for the drilling and reinstallation phase (9 AM to ~5 PM)

    high confidence · Direct time estimate from video; approximate timing acknowledged

Notable Quotes

  • “Bravo. bow. So we ended up having to use a little bit of a staple pry bar to pry the wood beam off and then eventually hammer the staples back through the other side to get them out of the playfield.”

    Cary Hardy@ 2:56 — Humorous frustration with Bally's manufacturing choice; illustrates unexpected challenge in playfield restoration

  • “this is also something I don't recommend you do if you're doing a playfield swap, because if you remove everything off of your playfield, including all the dirt and grime on the upper playfield especially, this will actually be a guide whenever you're reinstalling all the mechanisms on your playfield”

    Cary Hardy@ 3:52 — Counterintuitive restoration advice; dust/grime provides mechanical guidance for reassembly

  • “I would not use those as like your guide and trust in those entirely like I said they're mere suggestions”

    Cary Hardy@ 5:38 — Critical assessment of CPR playfield dimple accuracy; emphasizes need for comparison to original

  • “There's not much room for error when it comes to these rollover switches. They have to be in a particular spot in order for you to rollover them without causing any conflict of rubbing against the wood and catching on anything else.”

    Cary Hardy@ 9:58 — Technical precision requirement for playfield component installation

  • “I highly recommend that you have somebody else assisting you in this because a lot of the times when you're doing things like this you're going to get tunnel vision and you're not going to see or notice certain things”

    Cary Hardy@ 15:19 — Best practice recommendation for collaborative restoration work; emphasizes value of second set of eyes

Entities

Cary HardypersonJasonpersonCentaurgameBlack KnightgameCPRcompanyMercocompanyBallycompany

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Jason's playfield restoration approach emphasizes meticulous measurement, component polishing, and collaborative verification to ensure accuracy on expensive restoration work

    high · Detailed documentation of caliper use, rollover switch polishing with rouge, and requirement for two-person verification during reassembly

  • ?

    product_concern: Bally's use of 10 two-inch staples per side to secure playfield side beams instead of wood screws indicates questionable manufacturing decisions that complicate modern restoration

    high · Direct observation: 'evidently in manufacturing they decided to use these like two inch staples and then put like ten of them down the damn side instead of just using three or four wood screws'

  • ?

    technology_signal: CPR playfield reproduction includes pre-drilled dimples as guides, but restorers should use calipers and comparison to original playfield for precision rather than relying on dimple suggestions

    high · Direct technical work shown: 'when you get your CPR or Merco whatever play field that you purchase the chances are there's going to be little dimples throughout the back of the play field to give you more of a suggestion... I would not use those as like your guide and trust in those entirely'

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.055

0:00
You wanna see the most beautiful thing I've ever filmed? There's one of those days where it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air.
0:34
You can almost hear it, right? Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world. I feel like I can't take it. Sweet nectar of the gods i may enjoy energy drinks a little too much welcome back everyone i know it's been a couple of weeks since i put out a video but it has been the holidays and weather and life has always been and will always be in the way. But I still have more content on the way. I have even purchased more EL wire in multiple colors that I will be doing a video on to see how things look in certain machines, including a discussion about this inverter that I will be using to accomplish that goal inside the machines. I have not tested this to see if this even functions and works the way I want it to, so that will be part of the video as well. Not this video, but another video. So I hope everyone had a happy holiday during your Christmas and New Year's time. Now it's time to get back to work. And speaking of back to work, let's get right back to the centaur playfield swap. So where we left off last time is that the front and the back was completely cleared of any type of machinery or whatever. It's all naked. We now have a naked playfield. And now we will be removing the side wood beams that are on the playfield. Now this was an interesting task because we had just done the black knight and that one and we had no issues removing the wood panels. But now we discovered that evidently in manufacturing they decided to use these like two inch staples and then put like ten of them down the damn side instead of just using three or four wood screws to keep the damn beam in place. Bravo. bow. So we ended up having to use a little bit of a staple pry bar to pry the wood beam off and then eventually hammer the staples back through the other side to get them out of the playfield.
3:11
Down the road Jason will be making new wood beams for this machine anyways so we could have just ripped them off but he wanted to possibly save them if he could but now so that makes Black Knight and his centaur machines that he's just basically built all new wood beams and side rails jason's now just giving the old playfield a quick little wipe down just to give you a better idea of what this playfield you know looks like that it's not covered in dust and dirt and grime now He didn't do a scrubbing on it, and in a way, I'm glad that he didn't, because this is also something I don't recommend you do if you're doing a playfield swap, because if you remove everything off of your playfield, including all the dirt and grime on the upper playfield especially, this will actually be a guide whenever you're reinstalling all the mechanisms on your playfield, because dirt and grime can't seem to get underneath your posts and little stuff like that, So that might give you a better idea of where certain things go It's not like a requirement that you cannot clean your playfield after you remove everything off of it But as you can might even be able to see a little bit on there We still have areas where you could see where the posts were at because the paint is fresh and hasn been exposed to the elements So now on the back of the playfield you can see where I have outlined where the general illumination or GI line ran throughout the back of the playfield. This is something that I also recommend I mentioned in the previous video that you do so that way you know where the GI line is supposed to go on your new playfield and where it ends. Now we didn't mark where staples were at but that's not necessary you can put staples anywhere you want to you don't even have to do as many staples as bally decided to do on this one here's some footage of jason going between the master play field that's what we're calling the old one the one that we basically just got finished tripping down the master play field and the new play field so when you get your CPR or Merco whatever play field that you purchase the chances are there's going to be little dimples throughout the back of the play field to give you more of a suggestion on where holes need to be but I would not use those as like your guide and trust in those entirely like I said they're mere suggestions now if you don't have a master to work with then that's what you're going to have to deal is just going by what the menu what cpr recommends where the dimples are at whereas instead jason's able to go back and forth between the master play field and the cpr and using his calipers as you can see right now to even get the precise distance of where these holes need to be drilled now these holes that he's drilling are for anything that gets drilled into the back of the play field That includes all your mechs, all your GI, not your GI lines, but all your controlled lamps. Anything that gets drilled into the back of the playfield, guys, this is what he's doing. He's going back and forth. Look at him.
6:34
Now, obviously, the drill bit, I may get a better, closer shot here in the near future. You can see that he's going to have it tapered off to where he can't drill too deep into the wood. So that way there's no worrisome about him accidentally, you know, sneezing or drilling through the plate field, which I'm pretty sure he would have cried.
7:07
This is a very long process, guys. This is where you need to take your time and just do it right. Now here's a sped up time lapse of him continuing this job. And this took him at least two hours, I want to say. Maybe, maybe less. That's why I wish once again there was a clock on the wall so I could deter how long this actually took him to do. Now something I guess I didn't get footage of is whenever he installed the metal screw holders for all the posts that go all the way through the playfield. You can see that on the new one he's already got them in place. Those holes are drilled completely through and were actually in the correct place from CPR. So that's one good thing is that those holes are already there so you shouldn't have to be concerned about that.
8:04
But again, time lapse, this just gives you an idea of how much time and effort was put into this, making sure it's done correctly.
8:17
By drilling these holes pre-made, and this just makes the job down the road easier, so you're not having to, you know, do this as you go. You could, but with these holes already drilled like this, then it just makes things easier to install whenever we're mounting everything to the plate field.
8:57
Now here he is going through the rollover switches and getting those nice and polished up. You can see this is before what they look like Pretty you know pretty bad looking rough You know a lot of people don spend the time and effort on this type of detail but he is and i think if you doing this then you should too so this is what it looks like afterwards we put a little bit of rouge on this polishing wheel and it takes care of everything gets off that crap and gets a nice sheen to it and here we are now installing those rollover switches which i think in the entire game there's maybe seven so he has all those polished up and now he's going over to make sure that they line up correctly and even still guys he had to drill holes to get these to work correctly at least if we were to put them essentially what he went by just going back and forth like he has then they wouldn't have been precise. There's not much room for error when it comes to these rollover switches. They have to be in a particular spot in order for you to rollover them without causing any conflict of rubbing against the wood and catching on anything else. So now it's time for us to get this puppy back together. We lift up the cardboard, put it on top of the plate field, and slowly but start working our way down pulling the cardboard out and mounting everything to the plate you're going to see throughout this time-lapse footage us pulling out our cell phones and checking to make sure that things are going where they're supposed to go because even then when you've got all this the chances are you're not going to remember every little detail because this is actually you know a week apart these days that we were working on this were either days and sometimes even a week apart.
10:56
So to be able to remember exactly where things went is a little bit difficult. So you can see us looking at our phone to confirm where things were supposed to go.
11:21
I think a lot of the issue that we had when we were mounting everything at the playfield was making sure that the difference between the upper portion and the lower portion were not getting in the way of anything else. So anything that just kind of screwed in and that's where it went, we had no issues with, but it's whenever something reacted with what was above the playfield, so all your drop targets, all your rollover switches, stuff like that that went all the way through to the other side and had to make sure everything was parallel with each other in the way it was supposed to be. That was probably the most tricky part in this process.
12:21
Thank you. A lot of the time during this point, I was essentially getting things in place to confirm that that's where certain things went and said, drill or screw. Basically, I was essentially the co-pilot and he was the person responsible for drilling into the wood. It was a very rare occasion that myself would be causing, I don't want to say damage, but essentially putting anything permanent on this playfield. I left up to him since this was his playfield. The last thing I wanted to do was to drill a hole where it didn't need to be or screw something up because this is something that, you know, one, it's not cheap.
13:39
And two if you make a big mistake then it just kind of nullifies the whole reason why you doing this So I would rather him make the mistake and me just be like man that sucks than me make the mistake and just have to deal with that, ugh, man, I screwed up his play field.
14:02
So we're about the halfway point now when it comes to getting this puppy back together again, and we're just kind of moseying along. and we're really not coming up with any major conflicts. I mean, we're coming up with some areas where we're like, man, this is a tight fit, or this is going to be possibly an issue when it comes to what it looks like above the play field and making little, small, minor adjustments here and there, making sure things are all loosey-goosey and working appropriately. That is kind of the tricky part on this. but once you get past the mechs that are essentially down now the rest of the playfield a lot of the stuff is just like you know bulbs there's really not many other mechanics on that lower 25 percent of the playfield cardboard is now completely removed so now it's all a matter of just getting things lined up and then bolting this sucker down you can do this by yourself guys i'm not saying you can't but i highly recommend that you have somebody else assisting you in this because a lot of the times when you're doing things like this you're going to get tunnel vision and you're not going to see or notice certain things so having multiple sets of eyes on what this project is involving in is going to increase your chances of not screwing anything up there are many times where he was about to do something and i'm like hold up wait what about this and he was like oh you're right and that happens quite often throughout the whole process on both ends of the spectrum it's at this time that both of our backs are done we are ready to call it a day after working on this thing essentially all day i want to say around this time of the day it's already about five o'clock in the afternoon and we usually start about nine o'clock so we've been at this for about six or seven hours not sure what beer i'm on at this time but i'm probably feeling okay and there it is all it is now is tweaking certain little things to make sure that they in the appropriate spot but as far as everything being mounted and us being able to put it on the rotisserie to continue work can be done we will continue this process on the next video part three of this centaur playfield swap where we get it back on the playfield rotisserie and we start assembling the upper side of the playfield putting on the posts and making sure everything is the way it's supposed to be and i promise you that there are plenty of things that we had to deal with during that time. That's going to wrap up this video everyone. Thanks for watching till the end. If you liked what you saw, please hit that thumbs up button. It really helps out the channel. Also, leave me a comment down there letting me know how things are doing on this channel. I'm always looking for feedback. Comments or criticism are honestly welcome. I want to improve, so if there's anything that I should do or the things that you wish I would do, please let me know down below. And if you haven't already, don't be afraid to hit that subscribe button down there. just so that way you can be notified of whenever I upload new content for your viewing pleasure. Until next time, guys.
17:58
Until next time, guys. Peace out.