The other half of the barn find to biglouieuk's William's Hurricane was this Bally Heavy Metal Meltdown. I got a heads up on these two pins from a workmate who came in one Monday and showed me a photo he'd taken in his father-in-law's barn and said "you're into these sorts of things aren't you?". Quick version of the history is the guy ran music events and used them in green rooms and back stage for artists as well as part of some events... eventually they were in a games room in his house and finally moved to the barn where they've been the last several years.
Fast forward 7 months and skip lockdown and we finally went to pick up the pins, one at a time, on Saturday. I'd read up a bit on the 6803 machines and had also been told it'd be a miracle if it booted up so I wasn't expecting much to start with but I love cleaning stuff up so knew I had some fun ahead
When we pulled up I was alarmed to see the HMM turned on given the damp conditions. We got that turned off as quickly as was polite although it was heartening to see it would fire up in some capacity.
The HMM was filthy and rusty but did have the keys so I could remove the topper (although it involved plunging my hand into a dark, cobweb filled hole!), fold the head down, and get it loaded up easy enough.
I'll just add some pics here and not go into too much detail...
In the garage and drying out with some bits off for cleaning.
The apron cleaned up nicely although it's clearly been shattered into several pieces by what I can only assume is the glass being smashed at some point.
A lot of the playfield is covered in mylar and wax and grime... cleans up ok though.
Went around removing plastics bit by bit and giving an initial clean... you actually couldn't really see through the bits that were meant to be transparent!
Clean...ish.
The non-Mylar'd paintwork is mostly ok but this bit in particular is actually flaking away :-/
My main wish here is to secure this in some way to prevent further flaking and then decide on an approach to touching up and further protecting. Really keen for advice on what I can use to carefully paint over what is there to just stabilise the paintwork?
The Mylar that's all over most of the playfield... am I best to just leave that in place? it cleaned off fine but does give a slightly dull look to the artwork.
Anyway, lots to do on it but I'll post separately as I tackle the various issues.
Fast forward 7 months and skip lockdown and we finally went to pick up the pins, one at a time, on Saturday. I'd read up a bit on the 6803 machines and had also been told it'd be a miracle if it booted up so I wasn't expecting much to start with but I love cleaning stuff up so knew I had some fun ahead
When we pulled up I was alarmed to see the HMM turned on given the damp conditions. We got that turned off as quickly as was polite although it was heartening to see it would fire up in some capacity.
The HMM was filthy and rusty but did have the keys so I could remove the topper (although it involved plunging my hand into a dark, cobweb filled hole!), fold the head down, and get it loaded up easy enough.
I'll just add some pics here and not go into too much detail...
In the garage and drying out with some bits off for cleaning.
The apron cleaned up nicely although it's clearly been shattered into several pieces by what I can only assume is the glass being smashed at some point.
A lot of the playfield is covered in mylar and wax and grime... cleans up ok though.
Went around removing plastics bit by bit and giving an initial clean... you actually couldn't really see through the bits that were meant to be transparent!
Clean...ish.
The non-Mylar'd paintwork is mostly ok but this bit in particular is actually flaking away :-/
My main wish here is to secure this in some way to prevent further flaking and then decide on an approach to touching up and further protecting. Really keen for advice on what I can use to carefully paint over what is there to just stabilise the paintwork?
The Mylar that's all over most of the playfield... am I best to just leave that in place? it cleaned off fine but does give a slightly dull look to the artwork.
Anyway, lots to do on it but I'll post separately as I tackle the various issues.
