Complete BALLY FUTURE SPA - Available

[new forest pinball]

Hi all,
Here we have a classic Bally future spa number 5722. The history of this machine is a bit scanty. It started its life in the Netherlands.
We acquired it from @Matt Vince (London Pinball). Who got it from a backstreet London car garage. He maybe able to shed a bit more light on how it got there?.......
One of my favourite widebody Bally’s. I know it’s not everyone’s favourite. But I prefer it to Paragon. (That comment is designed to provoke an emotional response!?). I also really enjoy embryon. Not many future spas in good condition as the backglass, Playfield and plastics have never been reproduced. Although there is now a hardtop available. So what do we plan on doing? Also any ideas to pimp this game would be welcomed.
Now since we cannot comment on for sale threads currently, shop logs are the new trolling ground surely. Feel free to comment.
THE PLAN.
Repair backglass. Refurbish/repaint cabinet and backbox in hot pink and purple. Convert to seven digit scoring. LED’s. Coloured rubbers. New flippers and mechs. New drop targets(custom, not Harlem ones.) new spinners. New pops, including caps. New apron decals. New glass. Stainless steel mirror polished, inc. door. If the playfield does not touch up and clean well we will install a hardtop.
New legs.
THE GOOD.
Not a lot. But the plastics appear complete. And the playfield has potential!!....
I will go into the bad each time I refurbish a part of it.
WHAT HAVE WE DONE SO FAR.......
removed the siderails for polishing, and the coin door. More on that later. I have discovered a new tool for removing siderail spiral nails that is fabulous combined with the usual “wide scraper technique “. Here is a picture of it next to the legend.(me ole scraper).


Here are a few pictures of the machine. I will post some of the backglass next. As that is what we are refurbing currently. It is peeling and flaking, plus has a lot of old sellotape on the back of it. (I will explain the reason why a lot of future spa backglass’s have tape on the back later). Hope this finds you all well? And potentially puts you all in a better mood than recent posts have indicated. (Let the reader use discernment). Keef.

 

[Gary Flower]

Was going to be Logan's Run

 

[AlanJ]

Explain more about the side rail nail remover tool, pls? i have 4 games to restencil, but don’t want to ruin a load more side rails. find them the worst bit of the cab strip!

 

[roadshow16]

But I prefer it to Paragon. (That comment is designed to provoke an emotional response!?

 

[TonySchwager]

Explain more about the side rail nail remover tool, pls? i have 4 games to restencil, but don’t want to ruin a load more side rails. find them the worst bit of the cab strip!

I got an old pair of these and ground the face down to square them off a bit at the front, lets you get under the fixing a bit easier and followed Keith's instructions with the scraper. Worked pretty well. Saw the grinding tip somewhere so just passing on someone else's tip.

 

[DRD]

Different artists for backbox and playfield

Jumpers for goalposts

 

[new forest pinball]

Been a while since I have looked at this beauty let alone done any work. With the prospect of warmer weather next week,
And the excitement of a flight 2000 and seawitch rebuilds, this spring at new forest pinball is going to be awesome!
The challenge will be not to start all three, get in a right pickle and not finish any of them!......
Today we started to strip the cabinet. Whatever was spilt on this , (I am thinking some form of underseal or brake fluid).
Has actually rotted holes in the lockdown bar! (Boo hoo! As these are pretty much impossible to find). Going to polish it and see how good it gets. The coin door has been removed and the framework. So going to start with this and see if it’s been damaged like the lock down bar.
I will let the results speak for themselves in this instance.......
BEFORE.



AFTER.



Really pleased about this. The harness cable for the door is out for a clean and the rear plate for the door is in primer ready to be resprayed metallic bright silver.

HERES THE BACK PLATE READY FOR PAINT.



Time to order the paints for the cabinet and backbox refurb....see you all soon.

 

[ronsplooter]

Awesome work on that coin door Keith

 

[AlanJ]

Keith - how do you get such a good finish on the speckled chrome around the coin slots? Please?

 

[Gary Flower]

Nice work on the door.

 

[DRD]

Wonderful job keef.

 

[new forest pinball]

Keith - how do you get such a good finish on the speckled chrome around the coin slots? Please?

So before we get onto how well the lockdown bar came up. (See first post for a picture of it before hand). Let’s answer @AlanJ Alans question about the coin drop casting.
Well it’s really not that exciting but it is effective so here goes.
1). Soak the casting in a combination of washing up liquid and boiled water.
2). Leave for approximately 15-20 minutes. (This softens the dirt buildup).
3). Remove and allow to drip dry. (Best still wet but not soaked).
4). With a nail brush and oven cleaner give it a though scrubbing.
5). Then repeat step four with a kitchen scourge until you achieve your desired results.
6). Dry/buff with a clean cloth.
(F.Y.I. the above coin drop casting in this log was additionally soaked over night in EVAPO-RUST.).
Here’s what we use. Being a cheap skate the oven cleaner is from Poundland. Lol.


Anyway back to business. As I initially feared the lockdown bar is badly damaged. Parts of the metal work eaten away.
A bit disappointed if I’m honest. Anyone got a classic Bally ss widebody lockdown bar we would be very interested!
Here’s how it turned out....... Backglass refurb coming next..........

 

[new forest pinball]

Very busy over the last couple of weeks. All my personal projects have been neglected.had a few hours yesterday of nice weather, so took advantage and did a bit of spraying and prepping.
The colours chosen for our future spa are as original, which was hot pink, dark purple and white. So the apron, (note. This was a dark burgundy red originally but really didn’t contrast well with the cabinet/ Playfield colours.) transformer guard, and the shooter lane guide were done first. Pretty pleased with the end results. But worthy of note as regards the classic arcades apron decals set. It was dreadful. Completely the wrong size, oversized on the height, and undersized for the apron card cut outs.
So we had to trim all the edges, which was a right palaver and total waste of time. But got there in the end. And with pinball rescue no longer trading, (mind you they stopped doing Bally/Williams decals years ago due to “you know who” that actually never bother doing any classic Bally apron decals anymore). The only option available for a future spa decal is classic arcades...... Anyway here is a pic of before and after.......
BEFORE....


AFTER......

 

[stevebm1]

you are not the first person I have heard say that classic arcades stuff is out of line and does not fit properly

 

[new forest pinball]

Stripped at the spa?! Some things are best kept to yourself! Lol.
Anyway time to strip the playfield on this beautiful beastie.depending on how it cleans up, will decide if we keep it original or use a hardtop overlay. We would prefer to keep the original playfield, on initial inspection it looks pretty good. Main concerns are:
1) lower right pop bumper Mylar lifted and creased.
2) very heavy ball swirling.

Here is the playfield populated.......


Here it is pretty much stripped ready for cleaning.........



Siderails off for a respraying. They are in pretty good condition so no need to make some new ones, unlike flight2000 which definitely needs new rails......they will be sprayed hot pink of course.

 

[DRD]

The world, well UK world, was a better place back then

 

[new forest pinball]

Given the playfield a good clean. Used foam cleaner, t-cut and ceramic spray. Ball swirls are to deep for completely removing. IPA did a fairly good job of removing them. I am not going to take it further as will probably result in removing artwork and it needs a fair bit of touching in as it is.
Anyway it’s coming up good enough to keep original. After a few more ceramic/ extra gloss protection should look ok.
Needed to mix up a few paints as there are a lot of unusual bright colours on this Playfield. The orange was a particularly tricky one to match.....


Here is the playfield after a good clean up. Some artwork has been corrected here, that’s work in progress currently, then we will clear coat the touching up with some lacquer.

 

[HomerRamone]

What's ceramic spray ? (And IPA for that matter)
Im going to do my Cosmic Gunfight at some point soon (if I can just stop playing it )

 

[BigIan]

IPA

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hexeal-LITRE-Isopropyl-Alcohol-Isopropanol/dp/B082XQ4W4R/ref=sr_1_7?dchild=1&keywords=Isopropyl+Alcohol&qid=1621615990&sr=8-7

 

[stevebm1]

What's ceramic spray ? (And IPA for that matter)
Im going to do my Cosmic Gunfight at some point soon (if I can just stop playing it )

just don't use Indian Pale Ale by mistake

 

[HomerRamone]

Ooohhh.. Alcohol. I have that..
Still curious about the ceramic spray

 

[Dex-Jay]

I do love a good restoration thread with before and after pics! It does feel rewarding comparing pictures!

Good work chap!

 

[AlanJ]

ceramic is a protector?

 

[GezTheHealer]

I thought that coin door was scrap but you made it look like new! Looking pretty

 

[new forest pinball]

What's ceramic spray ? (And IPA for that matter)
Im going to do my Cosmic Gunfight at some point soon (if I can just stop playing it )

ceramic is a protector?

Currently using slippery dicks, (titter..). as pictured here. Autoglym is good to. At the stage mentioned above I was purely testing the waters, to see how effective/ what effect it would have on the playfields appearance. We will use it to finish and protect as Alan says once we have applied a final wax polish. Just gives an old Playfield a bit of extra protection after the flippers have been rebuilt and the ball is flying around at top power as the designer intended. Here is what I mean....(they also do a great insanity wax to at a very sensible price compared to certain other guitar wax’s!)

 

[stevebm1]

slippery dicks

 

[new forest pinball]

Making steady progress on this currently. Been working on the underplayfield. So many broken/rusty lamp holders on this done about 25 already.......


Here’s a row of replaced ones underplayfield.



This Playfield has a few dark areas so my intentions are to add extra G.I. underplayfield to illuminate the futurity target and the centre “spa” target. We will use transparent targets probably one red and one blue, time will tell....
Here’s a shot of one of the additional g.i. lamps......



Serviced the drop target bank today with new custom targets. (The ones used in future spa are the same as Harlem Globetrotters so my brain gets confused so fitted a set of alternatives. Pleased with how they look. Here they are....



Been trying to make a decision on the lane guides. Between classic white, solid red or transparent red. Here’s the choice in situation.....
What do you guys think...... (if anyone is bothered enough to comment?....)



My personal favourite is transparent red, been testing the g.i. circuits so here they are illuminated. Next job is to clean all the switches and experiment with the pop bumper parts...... so much choice....

 

[AlanJ]

transparent red

 

[ronsplooter]

Solid red for me

 

[Chris P]

My vote is transparent red