Well I dove into this thing head first last night! I got most of the topside parts stripped off and have most of the metal pieces in the tumbler right now. Probably going to put some more time in this weekend and start the topside assembly on the new playfield. Here are my teardown pics so far in case any of you guys want to follow my progress:
http://s241.photobucket.com/albums/ff75/appetite4pinball/Flash%20Gordon%20Playfield%20Swap/

Here are also pics of the new CPR playfield. -I also have new pf plastics, drops, etc. to install:
http://s241.photobucket.com/albums/ff75/appetite4pinball/Flash%20Gordon%20Playfield/

This is my first PF swap and definitely the most difficult project I've taken on. I'm really not looking forward to doing the underside of the playfield at all.-especially stapling and soldering on all of the wire sockets and braid wire!

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I managed to make some more progress on my swap this afternoon. During the week I tumbled the metal parts and painted the playfield rails black. Today I installed the rails as well as connected the two playfields together.-It was a bit nerve racking drilling holes in a brand new playfield as many of the holes were not marked. I also spent at least an hour getting the clear out of the rollover switches.-What a PITA!-Does anyone know of an efficient way to do that. I also managed to move over and clean a few of the assemblies. Overall I'm happy with the progress made today, but I've hardly scratched the surface of how much work there is to do!

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With playfield rails installed.

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Yeah, hardly anything is pre-drilled. Most things are marked with a faint dot where you are supposed to drill, but not everything is. Also, not all of the dots are 100% accurate. I'm just taking my time to make sure I don't mess anything up!

I'm still waiting on some parts to get here and I also need to place an order with Pinball Resource because I decided to replace all of the light sockets because most of them are corroded and many of them are flaky as is. -I also need pop bumper nails.Once I get the sockets I can start stapling on the ground wire and start soldering away!

I attached a pic of the underside to show the little bit of progress that was made.

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Largemann,
If you pre-ordered the playfield, CPR was supposed to contact you by email before March 25th. I would send them an email to see if they still have any left? Maybe the email got caught in your spam filter? Good luck, I hope you're able to get one!

Mike

Thanks guys! I spent this morning and early afternoon disassembling and cleaning all the mech's with Bleche White and a toothbrush. I installed the new drop targets and installed most of the mechs on the underside of the the new playfield. I'm going to wait on installing the 3 large drop target mechs til the end because I figured they would likely get in the way when I solder in the lights and switches.

I'm likely done working on this for at least a few days as I wait to acquire parts. I'm quite pleased with my progress over the weekend!

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I don't have an official log for the hours, but I've probably put about 15 hrs. into it so far over the past week. I'd anticipate that it will probably take me 40-50 hours to complete it but that's a total guess. I just hope everything works when I get it back in the cabinet!

Thanks Paul! Custom coil wraps would look nice, and I may indeed look into using them.

Jim, I've been following your work for a while and you really do incredible work! I'm impressed with your setup as well as how quickly you can do a swap. This is my first swap and I appreciate your input. I haven't screwed down the 3 big drop assemblies for the reason you mentioned, and the other assemblies are not screwed down tight so I suppose I can take them off if they get in the way.

I do have a couple questions though from when you did the Centaur. First off, Did you prep the bulb sockets by sanding the tabs or applying some type of flux before soldering the braid on? I just want to make sure the solder sticks well to the new lamp sockets that I ordered.

Also, what did you use to clean out the star rollovers? I used a scalpel to clean out the extra clear but they still seem a bit "tight" in comparison to the originals. I'm just worried that they'll get stuck during gameplay and I'm actually going to order some extra star rollovers and may re-do them. Thanks!

-Mike

Thanks Jim,
I made the mistake of snapping in the star inserts too soon after only doing a minimal amount of picking and scraping with the scalpel/dental pick. I'm just going to cut them (i don't want to risk breaking the insert) out and install new, but make sure that I do a better job of getting all the clear out this time around. Yeah, CPR definitely needs to do a better job at fixing this issue or at least ship you a bunch of the star inserts so that you have some extras to work with. I mean these things shouldn't cost more than a dime a piece to produce.

Mike

I've had a busy week and haven't been able to work on the swap much until today. I'm still waiting on my lamp sockets to arrive so I figured I would start putting on the metal ball guide rails, ramps, and playfield posts. I polished/regrained all the metal parts earlier this week and had the plastic posts soaking in detergent all week. I used a brad tipped drill bit to pre-drill many of the holes on the top-side of the playfield to make it easier to screw the posts in.

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Close up pics

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Thanks guys! I'm definitely going to have to have all of the Madison crew over to play it once it's complete.

On another note, I just purchased a Centaur CPR playfield from a nice gentleman over on RGP so it looks like I'll have a 2nd pf swap to keep me busy once this one's done -I may end up waiting until Winter for that one though.

I ended up taking a vacation day today and spent the majority of the day working on the swap. I installed the other two pop bumpers, the spinners which I painted and applied decals to and I got the majority of my new lamp sockets installed on the underside as well as most of the ground braid soldered on.

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More pics

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Thanks guys. Craig, i have a little 3 gallon air compressor and just used a cheap $15 air stapler that I bought from Menards along with 1/4" staples. It works really well. The only difficulty is sometimes getting the stapler into tight areas on the playfield. Mine doesn't have the long nose on it like the one on the pinrestore.com website but for the money I can't complain.

Today I worked on getting the harness moved from the old playfield onto the new one. I labeled most everything and used a pencil on the new playfield to write notes on what goes where such as wire colors, etc. The harness held it's shape pretty good for the move and I managed to get everything lined up and in the correct spots. Soldering everything back in and cleaning switches and screwing things down is tedious work but I managed to get about 1/3rd of the way through it. This is definitely the part of the swap that I'm having the least amount of fun with, but hopefully I'll be able to complete all the soldering by next weekend.

I also vacuumed out the cabinet of my game and did some cleaning/touchup on the cabinet throughout the week. I still have more to do and also have a new coin door skin to install but I should have the cabinet nearly ready to go (sans the new legs). I also have a handful of miscellaneous parts that I need to order and I may end up rebuilding my flippers with the older Bally style (non-linear) flipper mechs. I'm hoping to complete the project within the next couple weeks because i'm getting really anxious to play it!

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more pics

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I got the bare wire (braid) from pinrestore.com
http://pinrestore.com/Supplies.html

I ordered 30 ft. but it probably took less than 20 for the job.

I think you may be right Hilton It's tough to find enough time to complete such a tedious job! I suppose if you want some practice soldering you could come help me out

Thanks for the offer Hilton! I may take you up on that. I enjoy the work as well, but extra help is always appreciated. If you're free on Sunday maybe we could work on it for a few hours and then play some pinball? Just let me know.