|
|
| Williams "Black Knight" pinball restoration. | |
| CPR Playfield Swap | |
| Originally,
the plans I had were to restore the original playfield. However,
as I got more into the hobby my desires changed. So I took the
opportunity while it was still around, and I picked up one of the CPR
reproduction playfields. I even opted to spring the extra money
for one of their "Silver Knight" versions, with the silver metallic ink
used for the upper playfield knight. |
|
| For this build, I chronicled the in-progress stuff on my Blog page. Here are the links to the blog itself that I had done. Unfortunately, I lost the photos I took of the topside teardown and re-assembly. If I find them, I'll make sure to get them posted up as well, but the underside wiring was the most difficult and involved area of it. |
Planning Stage Arrival Lower playfield GI Side rails Lower Teardown Lower Wiring Upper Wiring |
| The Finished Result |
|
| This is the culmination of a
lot of work, a lot of planning, and a touch more money than I had
originally planned to put into this machine. I just ended up
enjoying Black Knight a lot more than I expected, and I expected a lot
out of it.So here's the brand new CPR playfield, fully installed, for you to enjoy. |
 |
 |
Here's the lower playfield, near the right side ramps. There are a lot of minor details that went into this swap, for a variety of reasons. Here you can see a couple of the changes I made if you look closely. One is that I replaced all the little rubber and nylon post caps with stainless steel acorn nuts. I felt they looked a lot nicer than white plastic. They don't stand out as much, and also match very well with the prominant stainless ramps and inlane guides. Another big change that I like, but I know many others may not, is that I replaced all the mini ring posts with sleeve style posts. I used color matched Cliffy sleeves on these. The main reason I went with these is the number of airballs I was seeing with the ring posts. I like the way these play much better, though I also liked the look of the ring posts too. |
| Here's another low angle shot
of the lower playfield I have to say that I really like the
quality of the drop target stickers I got from Curly at Little Shop of Games. Nicely printed on quality material You can see the great color of the playfield here too. I have to say I am totally satisfied with the CPR quality on this playfield. |
 |
 |
Here's the upper
playfield, and you can really see the shine of the clearcoat in
this photo. Some people say that games of this era don't look
right with high gloss clearcoats, but Black Knight looks
fantastic. The metallic silver of the Knight is kinda visible here, but is seriously difficult to photograph. What you can see is the very dark blue of the inserts. Usually on the original playfields these are faded to the point of being a dingy yellow. Another of those "minor tweaks" is the pop bumper. Not only did I make up a new one, as shown elsewhere on this website, but I also use all new topside parts. The skirt is normally white, but I went with black instead to match the playfield artwork. From a players-eye view, you don't see the white underside at all. |
| Here's an area that ended up
being a lot of work. Originally, there would have been a wide gap
in that bare wood rail on the side. When I made the new white oak
side rails, I wanted to make sure to eliminate that gap and have a
solid piece of wood. I also harrassed the bejeezus out of CPR about that little plastic piece on the end of the wood, until they agreed to include it into their latest run of the Black Knight plastics re-run. I bought this piece separately, as I kept the rest of my original plastics for now. Dealing with the rivetted posts and brackets is just something i didn't want to deal with. Will I ever put on a new plastic set? Maybe, but not any time soon. You can also see the Cliffy protector on the multiball trough, I went with a full set of protectors on this swap. This is, in fact, the very first set that Cliffy made for Black Knight. My machine ended up being the test mule, and my old playfield is the one on his website photos. |
 |
 |
Here you can see the shooter
lane, and the white oak siderails that I used throughout the
swap. And again, a cliffy protector. This one is his
generic shooter lane piece, trimmed in the back to fit the lane. |