These were Rob's tips (reproduced with permission):

1. Take your time and keep your pen strokes even.
2. Always have your sharpie pointing downwards (for best ink flow).
   
3. If you do not like the way a color looks or if you make a small error, keep wet q-tips close by to remove the ink before it dries.
4. Use a ruler for long straight lines.

In addition, I found that:

1. Clean the entire area with alcohol first (test in a hidden area first).  This will ensure the brightest colors.
2. Use a fresh set of pens and with chisel tips if available.  This allows wide strokes to reduce the streaking.
   
3. Use a ruler that can be flipped over such that the edge that touches the Sharpie does not touch the cabinet.  This leaves no marks when you lift the ruler, and prevents the ink from wicking under the ruler.
4. When you look closely, you will see streaks.  This streaking is less with lighter colors.  Minimize their appearance by stopping a stroke only at the edge, and then making one pass along the edge.
5. Put down the lightest color first.  This is because if you overlap, the pen will pick up the older color, and could contaminate the pen.  This has less of an impact if you use the lightest color first.
6. Alcohol will completely remove Sharpie ink, even when dry.  So if you do not like the result, it can be washed off in the future.
   

I removed the coin door (put it inside the cab, and did not demate the connector) and the lock down bar.  The legs were not removed.  In the original artwork, the orange has a gradient, but I found that impossible to reproduce with pens.  I used the following colors: Yellow, Orange, Black, Red, and Light Blue.  All were available in chisel tip except the yellow.  Judging by the flow of ink, I do not think I used up much of any of the pens.

The cab of the machine was ok, but the head was also faded.  I decided to repaint that also, but realized that Indy's face represented a special challenge.  It would not look good to have his face color be solid.  To give him a three dimensional look, I needed to figure out how to apply a gradient. 

I used "Burgundy" for the leather whip, jacket and the hat.  This gave the leather a rich red color.  If you look closely, you may see a white highlight along the top edge of the whip.  I traced this edge with the marker with its felt tip in the "up" position.  This put down a slightly lighter layer next to the white.  I then finished the rest with the tip down, making it darker.  This gave the whip a round look.  You can see a little of that in the bottom right corner of the picture below.  I did the same to create contrast and highlights in Indy's hat.  It turned out quite nice actually.

I then used a "Marigold" (yellow-brown) Sharpie for Indy's face.  Regarding the gradient, my work with Photoshop gave me an idea: I could use a cotton swab with alcohol to wipe the color off in a gradual fashion.  My notes regarding this tricky process:

1. Color the area with the marker  It is not important in this case to put down an even coat.
   
2. Take a cotton swab, and apply a SMALL amount of alcohol to it. 
   
3. Start dabbing in the areas that need to be light.  Due to the alcohol, the swab will absorb a lot of ink.  The light areas should be the nose, cheek area, and the open chest area.  If you use too much alcohol on the swab, it may ooze out and run down the cab, or leave a big white spot.
   
4. Work outwards in circular motions to the darker area.  As the swab gets more saturated, it will pickup less ink.  Keep the area under Indy's brim and under the jacket as dark as possible.  If needed, add ink by using the Sharpie.
5. In small areas, use a Q-tip, but preload it with ink, or it will draw a lot off the cabinet.  Note the highlights on Indy's ears below.
   
6. If you don't like the way it looks, alcohol will completely clean the ink off, allowing you another try.  Once it is all clean, go back to #1 above.
7. As the swab is drying, and just a little moist, wipe the entire area again (with the ink laden swab) to smooth out any dab marks.
   

Lastly, I finished the sunburst in the background with the Yellow and Orange Sharpie.  Once again, use a ruler to get the lines straight.

The drive shaft of the motor is slightly narrower than the inner diameter of the gear.  Others have used spacers such as double sided tape to fill the gap, but I decided to use a thin wire instead.  The wire is 30 AWG wire-wrap wire that has the insulation stripped.  It is just thick enough to slide on and off with force, but does not allow the gear to slip.  After bolting the motor onto the gearbox assembly, I had to swap the wires as the output shaft ran backwards.  After the swap, it worked perfectly.



Adding the "Lost Plastic"
The prototype series of the IJ machine have a plastic along the back wall to decorate the very rear of the playfield.  This plastic was omitted from the production run of the machines.  Owners that wish to decorate their machines will often add it back in by purchasing a reproduction.  One example was offered on sale on ebay for $50 (+$20 shipping) in January 2006.  This was a bit too steep for me, so I decided to look into making my own.

The scan is available in large format on ballsofsteel.net.  It is separated in two halves, the right and left.  I downloaded the images and with some measurements of the mounting holes for the rope bridge figured that its resolution is about 390 dots per inch.  I took the files to the local "Staples", and had the scans printed on a color laser printer using high quality glossy photo paper.  The cost was $7.60, much more reasonable than the reproduction.  The result looked extremely nice and were very good color matches to the playfield.  If the person at the print desk does not know how to accomodate a specific dpi setting, ask them to print the artwork so that each half is 12 inches wide.

A standard LED produces a very focused beam. Since I wanted to be able to mount the LED on the rope bridge ramp, I needed a very diffuse pattern.  I accomplished this by modifying the lenses of the LEDs.  As shown above, I first filed the round dome of the LED flat, and then drilled a dimple into it with a very large drill bit.  The concave lens resulted in a wide diffuse pattern.

Six LEDs were mounted on a 3/4" wide strip of perf board.  This is the same width as the rope bridge ramp's metal side.  They were soldered pair-wise "back-to-back" (anode to cathode) so that I could run off the GI circuit (which is AC power).  Then the three pairs are soldered in parallel to minimize the number of wires to the circuit board to two.  In a separate experiment, I tried putting two LEDs in series, but the resulting current was too low to produce the full optical power.  I wired the lamps to the GI bulb at the "INDY" dividers in series with a 22 Ohm resistor.  This resulted in a total current of 67mA, which is a little over 11mA per LED (recall that each LED is on only one half of the time).  This curent level leaves some room for me to brighten the lights even more in the future.

Before installation, I insulated the metal of the rope bridge ramp with some clear tape, and then attached the mini-board onto the ramp's side with double sided sticky tape.  The plastic of the rope bridge hides the circuit board and LEDs from view.  The thin white wire that leads to the circuit board is passed through a hole in the back panel.  During an initial test, I concluded that the white LED's light was too white and blue.  I then applied a thin layer of watered-down yellow acrylic paint to take the edge of the blue color.  It resulted in a good match with the rest of the playfield.  Although using yellow LEDs is an option, I think that it would be too yellow, and I could not find yellow LEDs with the same output power as white ones.

I noticed that the various pictures of the Lost Plastics light kits on the web do not show the final result with the machine's top glass in place.  The reflection from the DMD is bright enough to hide the Lost Plastic, and its lighting needs to be strong enough to counteract that.

After some further thought, I decided to use a bolt to fasten the gate down.  I made a new gate with some aluminum flashing (white), by cutting it out of a larger sheet with my tin snips.  To dress up the plain white aluminum, I printed a target decal and glued it onto the gate.

From inspection, I could tell that the original color of the ramps were brass.  This struck me as a bit odd as I felt that the silver color of stainless matched the other ramps better.  Nevertheless, I purchased a brass home electroplating kit from www.caswellplating.com.  After carefully reading the instructions, I buffed the ramps clean with 1000 grit sandpaper to bring them to a silver shine, and proceeded to electroplate them.  However, my results were poor.  I was not able to put down a thick layer of brass.  I could tell some brass was being put down, but it was faint; even after many attempts.  After consultation with the company, it turns out that to plate brass onto stainless, I would first need to plate with a "Stainless Steel Activator".  Afterwards, I could plate with brass.  The fact that this was not mentioned in the instructions is somewhat puzzling to me.

After considering it, I decided to leave the ramps the unfinished bright silver color.  I can always plate them at a later date, but I like the fact that I can bring them back to a shine by buffing them, and that this way they match the color of the other metal ramps.

Sept 2008 update: Wade Lanham informs me that the ramps are not stainless, but chromed mild steel.

Spinning prop mod
Many IJ owners install a mod that spins the propeller on the bi-plane.  A kit is available for a reasonable $30, but I decided to build my own.


Once the motor and biplane were assembled together, I proceeded to install the assembly into the machine's playfield.  Although it fit, I could tell clearances were small due to the large size of the propeller.  To improve reliability, I decided to trim 1/4" of each of the prop's blades.  I also used this opportunity to paint the tips bright yellow, and added black bolt accents to the base of each prop blade.

The motor of the biplane was wired in series with a 10 Ohm 1/2 Watt resistor to the left ramp entrance arrow.  This causes it to spin occasionally during attract mode, and often during game play.


Ball trough mod
A common problem with this machine are the two opto-electronic circuit boards on the ball trough.  These are mounted solidly on a platform that also contains a strong solenoid.  The vibration and shock from this solenoid causes the opto circuits to wear out faster than expected.  A common mod is to shock mount the boards by using grommets.  The grommets were part number 731K-ND from Digikey.


I enlarged the hole with a 1/4" drill bit (no traces are nearby).  However, the grommets were a bit big, and I had some effort pushing them into the hole.  After they were mounted (two), I located the board into the ball trough and found out that the extra thickness of the grommets caused the board to touch the metal of the trough on the outer edge of the playfield (rightmost in the picture below).  With my circuit board nibbler and a file, I cut the circuit board back.  Fortunately, the board is of simple double sided construction, and there are no traces in the overlapping area.


Jackpot plastic protector
This plastic, being in the center of the playfield, gets a lot of ball strikes, and is frequently broken.  I purchased a new one from Marcos for $16.  When I received it, I was disapointed to see that its color was not the bright orange of the existing part, but looked brown.  Seeing the color mismatch, I decided to make my own repro and return the plastic.  I called Marcos, and the conversation with Lisa went something like this:

• Me: I would like to return this plastic because the color does not match the original.
  
• Lisa: Did you check the color under the protective plastic?
• Me: Uhh, what protective plastic?
• Lisa: Hang on, I will pull one of these parts, and check about the plastic. (after a pause).  Yes, the color is bright orange underneath.
• Me: Thank you.  I did not realize there was a protective plastic.

Sure enough, when I checked, there was a light blue protective plastic over the item!  The color underneath was the bright orange from the original (see below).  Boy, did I feel sheepish.

Target repair
After about a month of play, one of the plastic drop target tabs snapped.  These get a lot of abuse, and can still be purchased.  However, I decided to attempt a repair while I was waiting for the new ones to arrive.