Getting dirty with Arena!

I am pretty sure this game has never been fully cleaned before.  Some of the rubbers were replaced at some point (including that tragic rubber that melted and coated the playfield with it's debris!) but some of the harder to reach rubbers are seemingly originals.


I took off the Pit playfield and worked on that separately.  Underneath...

dirty.

dirty dirty.  And that rubber on the right is obviously 28 years old.

cleaned!

I am not a game restorer.  I lack the space to even start collecting art supplies for paint matching, let alone sealing a playfield and all of that.  I clean to my best ability, but one of my goals is to preserve and diminish future damage.
I use plastic sheets to cover the high-impact areas and parts where there is flaking.  You can see by the green insert I have plastic down on that area to preserve it.   On the right, you can see the cut plastic  sheet with the film still on, laid down for sizing.

I am not fixing the paint job, but I do want to preserve it for the chance someday someone will swoop in on this machine and do that restoration, and it will be perfectly operational, and not in any worse shape than when it passed through my basement.  In fact, if I get the game playing super well, it might even serve to inspire someone taking that extra time in the future.

It's hard to see the plastic covering on the left, but that's kind of the point.

I forgot to take a Before picture of underneath the apron, but trust me it was gunky, and cleaned up nicely.

clean!

I have managed to trace down a NOS ramp, but I still wanted to clean that area since the intense dirty and debris there easily spreads to the rest of the game.
So with ramp on order, I will do what I can while with the old ramp.

dirty.

clean!

As you can see I have been working hard to get rid of those tiny white dots, the remnants of the disintegrated rubber that had fused to the playfield all over.


And here's a sneak peak of the playfield as it stands!  

I have put a few LEDs in the GI, in the LOK + Pit inserts, and for 3 of the hard-to-see main area inserts.  (blue spinner light, green pit light, and the center CYS CYS orange light)
New ramp is coming from Winnipeg.  A decal for it will be coming from Pinball Resource.
When it is time to say goodbye to this game I am going to do another thorough playfield clean.