1980 Stern Flight 2000 Pinball Machine - Here is a First! "I Give Up!"

 I was contacted by someone in Oklahoma stating they had a Flight 2000 at a great price. I was in. Rough backglass? No problem. Rough playfield? No problem. Been in storage? No problem. Hasn't worked in awhile? No problem. I haven't found a machine I couldn't resurrect yet. I guess I still haven't. This machine could have become a working unit, but there is a point at which the money you put into a machine to get it working is well above what you would pay for a working unit and much more than you could ever get in return for the machine. Now if it is your Holy Grail machine, fine. Invest away. Otherwise there comes a point you need to say, "Enough is enough."

Here are the pictures I was sent by the seller. I didn't see anything that was too concerning for me. What do you see?

 Here there is tape holding the paint on the backglass. Could be a problem.

 All of the dispays are there. How bad could they be?

 Cabinet looks okay.

 Here is the good. Original bumper caps and assemblies.

 Paint is not completely worn here. I wonder why he cut out the bottom left of that plastic?

 Inside is a bit dirty, but not a rat's nest. Drop target units are there.

 Do you notice a fabricated part here? I didn't. Would have been fine if they were well made.

 OH! what is that. someone threw up green on the playfield. Oh well. I can fix that.

 All the parts seem to be there....but look closely. Do you see it? I didn't either.

 Here is the battery acid damage. Doesn't look too extensive, does it?

 All of the boards are there. That is a nice start.

 All the boards look original.

 Here are my pics of the playfield when it arrived.

 Here is a broken plastic. Turns out, quite a few were broken. New set....$150+

 What is that? Is that rust? A plunger that is rusted? Weird. I guess that white scale on the other metal parts will clean off.

 The beehive plunger housing is pretty dirty.

 After a lot of scrubbing. The beehive is a bit cleaner. New beehive ($35)

The lock down bar receiver cleaned up well.

 That is one big lock you have there.....

 I think this will clean up.

 Another rusted plunger. This time on the flippers.....Wait......

 All of the plungers are rusty?

 Okay....I guess I'll get to work. Almost every Classic Stern and Bally machine needs a new rectifier board. This one was no exception. ($50+)

 Speaker is dead, so I'll need to replace that. ($25-50)

 Here is one I had lying around.

 The coin door is a mess. Going to need to get rewired.

 Pretty dirty....Here is the area under the transformer.

 These cabinet flipper switches are worn down so far, there are no nubbies left ($20)

 They cleaned up okay. I purchased a tumbler and some rust cutting media. ($65)

 Try to clean up the board and replace some components affected by acid damage - Corrosion kit - $30....When that doesn't work....new board ($200)

 These assemblies are in pretty rough shape. Here is the Apollo assembly.

 And after a full disassembly and cleaning.

 This large drop target unit had a molex connector allowing it to be removed from the playfield to work on it. Genius.

 Time to take it apart.....

 Then clean it and put it back together. The drop targets don't have the numbers on them....ugh. ($10)

 This three bank doesn't come out of the machine...fine. I'll clean it attached.

 I reinstall all of the cleaned up parts....(all of the sockets are still rusty and cruddy, but lets get it up and working first.

 Flipper rebuild....($50)

 Ugh....none of the displays are working. All of them show signs of previous work. Time for replacements. $175

 Glass is barely salvageable. It would be okay for a bit until I could afford a new one. ($300)

 Remember this board....Can't get a steady 5v even after rebuilding that section. (rebuild kit - $20, New board $150)

 Remember this board. This is the speech board. Guess what...no speech. ($65)

 So, with needing to buy and new MPU, speech board, Solenoid Driver board, and already replacing the rectifier board and the displays....This game is costing way to much. Sorry. Time to jump ship. Anyone want to pay me a ton of money for a machine that still needs a ton of work and parts to be playable? Neither did anyone else. Soooooooo......

 The cabinet is the first go to. A guy I know likes to make them into Virtual Pins.

 Next, time to strip the playfield. We'll sell whatever we can and store what we can't for other projects.

I told my son we were going to part out the machine. I came home to this. These are bags filled with different color wires. He had snipped off all of the wires, color coded them and packed them away. Good thing too. I needed it for my next project....Coming soon.