On to the next project! Here are my previous ones if you weren't following them before:

Bally Black Jack (1978)
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/my-first-restoration-1977-bally-black-jack-ss

Bally Eight Ball Deluxe (1984)
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/hardtop-install-and-restoration-for-eight-ball-deluxe

Bally Mata Hari (1978)
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/hardtop-install-for-ss-mata-hari

I picked up a project Meteor this week for a reasonable price. It has good bones, but she needs some help. First the good news:

- After cleaning off some corroded headers and reseating the connectors, it actually powers up and starts a game!
- Fixed some switch issues on a couple of drop target banks, and it was flipping games within about an hour of unloading the game from the truck.
- Except for some missing wood in the rear of the backbox, and a crack in the lower rear of the cabinet, the cabinet is pretty solid.
- Ironically, the paint looks pretty good save for some planking here and there, but I'll wind up re-painting it anyway after doing the aforementioned wood repairs.
- All 5 displays are strong and bright.
- No hacks on the MPU, SDB, Sound, or Lamp boards. But I'll be bullet-proofing all of them with new caps, headers, etc.
- Coin door and frame look really good - no dents, scratches, or anything
- All coils fire well.
- The spinner is like butter.
- Legs and levelers are in pretty nice shape
- Nothing is rusted!

Now the bad news...
- Dirty, dirty, dirty. Total tear down, mech disassembly and refurbishment, etc. is the first order of business
- The backglass is totally trashed, too much paint missing to be salvagable. CPR repro purchase on the horizon.
- Going to need to repin every connector and fix some hacked wiring on the rectifier board. Tried to place my order to Great Plains Electronics today but the web site is temporarily closed for new orders.
- Rectifier board looks pretty bad - may replace with something modern.
- Lots of lights out, Control and GI. Could be connectors, bulbs, sockets, transistors on the lamp board, etc. Probably a combination of all of that.
- Every insert is cupped, some badly
- Some paint touch-ups on the playfield, but nothing hideous looking and no bare wood showing. The touch up areas are rough, tho, and affect ball travel. This, combined with the cupped inserts, is going to put me in the market for a CPR playfield at some point down the road. I reached out and heard from CPR today - while I know their current production of Meteor is backordered, he said they WILL be doing another run (but couldn't say exactly when). And the new run will have the score values by the METEOR drop target assembly fixed, the ones that were missing from the first run. In the meantime, I will probably put on a playfield protector to level out the inserts and smooth out the rough paint touch-ups, and play the machine until CPR is back in production with it.
- Lower flipper bats are Data East (huh?) and upper is Bally. All three bind up a little so flipper rebuilds (and new bats) are mandatory.
- Drop Targets have a mix of tombstone and chicklets and a mix of Bally and Stern. No matter....I was going to replace them all with new anyway. Will need to address the assemblies after cleaning up and rebuilding as several targets don't stay up after being reset.
- While the coin door skin is nice, there are no mechs or even brackets to hold the mechs (no chutes either!) so I'll have to do a little searching for missing parts. A previous owner rigged up a credit switch (at least it was done without drilling anything into the door).
- While the plastics look good artwork-wise (and no cracks), they're wavy as hell. Will try flattening them out in the over first, but I will likely be getting a CPR plastic set as well.
- No coin door or backbox locks, which is fine, but the backbox appears to be missing the assembly that locks in the backglass. I'll be searching for that, too.

Time to start tearing down and making a shopping list!

IMG_9970 (resized).JPG

IMG_9971 (resized).JPG

IMG_9972 (resized).JPG

IMG_9973 (resized).JPG

IMG_9974 (resized).JPG

IMG_9975 (resized).JPG

IMG_9979 (resized).JPG

IMG_9916 (resized).JPG

IMG_9917 (resized).JPG

IMG_9918 (resized).JPG

IMG_9919 (resized).JPG

IMG_9920 (resized).JPG

IMG_9922 (resized).JPG

IMG_9940 (resized).JPG

And we're off and running. Starting the playfield tear down tonight and will focus on that for the next several weeks. I'll worry about the cabinet after some playfield progress (and budget monitoring).

IMG_9997.JPG

IMG_9988.JPG

IMG_9989.JPG

IMG_9990.JPG

IMG_9991.JPG

IMG_9992.JPG

Most of the topside torn down tonight. Pops, flippers, slings, drop targets, and other mechs come out tomorrow. Elbow grease cleaning starts this weekend.

A03 (resized).jpg

A04 (resized).jpg

Oh, man - 11 pages of restoration goodness. Added to my favorites and will be reviewing!!

Major news on the playfield front! Lo and behold, a local pinsider reached out to me about his unused CPR Gold edition after seeing my post in the "What machine did you bring home today" thread. We struck up a deal, and 3 hours later I had the playfield back at my house!

This is one of CPR's earlier Meteor runs missing the scores below the METEOR drop target bank, but I couldn't pass this deal. Looks like I will need to research how to do waterslides (never done that before) and figure out how to match the fonts. Not to mention deciding if it's one long waterslide with all 6 scores aligned vs. 6 individual waterslides that could introduce more opportunities for alignment errors. Then I have to find a local guy who will re-clear the playfield....I'm not going to mess with that toxic stuff.

Anyone reading this that has done the waterslide "fix" to this early CPR Meteors? I'd love to hear your process.

b01 (resized).jpg

New Parts Day! First batch of goodies from Marco's, The Pinball Wizard, and Action Pinball arrived today. Dead Bumper bodies are hard to find, but Pinball Wizard had some. A little disappointed that they're more off-white than white (and won't match the new white pop bumper body) but beggars can't be choosers. Rather use these than the originals - each of those has a couple cracks.

New Parts 01 (resized).jpg

Kind of at a standstill now - not going to do anything with the CPR playfield until I have the DT score waterslides in place and cleared. Thanks to @coyote, I should have those by mid-week. I would start tumbling some of the playfield metal bits, but I'm out of media (20lb bag of crushed walnut will be here mid-week as well).

So I thought I'd start tearing down the cabinet - took the head off and found some structural issues with the inside left corner of the neck. A real wood craftsman with skills likely would just make a new neck or replace the troubled piece, but not me! My skills (and tools) stop at sanding, wood epoxy, bondo, and rattle can painting. So I filled in the separated pieces of ply with wood glue and clamped it down. The excess glue will come off when I sand in prep for painting later on.

Neck Repair 00 (resized).jpg

Neck Repair 01 (resized).jpg

Nothing too exciting yet this week - just getting started with organization and a plan of attack. Bagging and Tagging hardware and assemblies as they're coming off the old playfield.

z06 (resized).jpg

Lining up bits for the ultrasonic cleaner. Tumbler media should be here tomorrow and I can start that procession line.

z09 (resized).jpg

z10 (resized).jpg

My ultimate goal is to go with Reese Rails (like I did on my Mata Hari last month...wow, those are nice) but Taylor is taking the summer off, I think, as he's not answering PM's and his thread has gone quiet. But in the meantime, I want to put rails on the CPR playfield because it's going to be spending a lot of time in the rotisserie and I don't want it to start bowing as the heavier assemblies start to go back in after cleaning and refurbishment.

So...I'll play it for now as if I'm going to re-use these old, abused 42 year old rails. Cheap wood wrapped in a black plastic coating that is peeling off with age. I went ahead and stripped them all with a sander....plastic coating came off easily enough. There's still some gluey type residue left over from the black plastic coating, so tomorrow I'll treat it with Goo Gone to clean the rest of it up. Then it's primer, a couple coats of black, and 3 or 4 coats of rattle can clear.

Hopefully, by the time the CPR playfield is going back into a finished cabinet (November?), I'll have some new Reese Rails to put on as a finishing touch.

z08 (resized).jpg

z11 (resized).jpg

Also, thinking about putting a coat or two of polyurethane or rattle can clear on the backside of the untreated CPR playfield (stuffing the insert holes beforehand of course). While everything going back on will be cleaned, including the wire harness, can't help but think months or years down the road that that coating will make it easier to clean off the black dirt and dust that inevitably comes from the coils.

Thoughts on that? Overkill or "do it while the playfield is totally bare of parts"?

Holy crap....my new tumbler (18lbs of media) came today and totally dwarfs my other two (5lbs media each)! Going to be able to fit in bigger pieces that I previously had to hand polish and do larger load sizes as well. That means I can work thru my tumble queue faster. Woohoo!

IMG_0115 (resized).JPG

Ya, I'm going to go ahead and put a few coats of rattle can clear on the back tonight. Prep work....stuffing the insert holes with toilet paper. Easy pull-out with needle nose pliers after spraying so they don't get stuck in there as it dries.

IMG_0114 (resized).JPG

Well my teenage son and his friends took over my basement rec room and workshop this afternoon for a gaming party so I decided to use the couple of free hours I had today tearing down the cabinet in the garage. Happy to see no bad damage after removing everything.....came apart really easily, even the rails.

Y06 (resized).jpg

Y05 (resized).jpg

Y02 (resized).jpg

Y04 (resized).jpg

Y03 (resized).jpg

Cabinet parts sorted....will bag later and queue up for cleaning, tumbling, and polishing. Refurbs and "upgrades" in the future for the tilt board, transformer board and rectifier, and speaker.

Y01 (resized).jpg

What a difference a couple of days in the tumbler can make. Most of these bits came out looking almost like new, but I may touch up some areas of the ball trough HW with the buffing wheel even tho it'll never be seen under the apron.

Apron HW (resized).jpg

Ball Trough HW (resized).jpg

Gate HW (resized).jpg

Guides and Rail Guard (resized).jpg

Walnut with a couple of ounces of Flitz metal polish added. After a day and half, most of the pieces looked great but a few were still a little dull, so I put them in one of the other tumblers with corn cob media and a bit of Flitz for the next 24hrs.

FWIW, my RR Mata Hari rails were predrilled as well, and all but one lined up fine. Fortunately I checked for alignment before hand and did exactly what you thought of...filled in the holes on that last rail and put the pilot holes in myself.

....and the wire harness is off. A couple of hours a night for a few nights....tedious as all get out, but it's done.

IMG_0240 (resized).JPG

This thing is grimy as hell. I probably washed my hands 20 to 25 times during the harness labeling and removal (mainly to to keep my phone clean taking pictures).

I cut the lamp wires and left their nubs in the old playfield for build reference since I'll be putting in all new lamp sockets and the PCB set with the twist-in 555's. This backed up with tons of pictures from all angles.

Each set of wires was toe-tagged for reference in case the harness doesn't "return to form" when put on the new playfield. Toe-tags were wrapped with scotch tape to prevent smearing when the harness is washed (I tested that a few times to make sure that would work). Switch stacks are zip-tied together and screws removed.

Next step...harness goes thru the dishwasher tonight.

IMG_0242 (resized).JPG

IMG_0243 (resized).JPG

My first wiring mystery with this Meteor. So before teardown, everything was working 100% with the exception of several lights out on the backbox. After removing the METEOR drop target bank, I found these two wires stuffed under that assembly and not connected to anything. I haven't looked at the playfield schematic yet, but I'm also not sure I can trust the wire colors as I've found a few examples already of "mods" using different color wire.

Anyone have any ideas? Since I doubt this has anything to do with the backbox, I think my game plan is to tag these wires as "NCF" (no connection found) and after reassembly if I have wonkiness in that area of the playfield I can start troubleshooting there.
IMG_0229a (resized).jpg

Mystery Wire Issue #2: This pair of Purple w/ Yellow wires was folded and tucked back into the harness under a zip tie and intentionally not used. This is near the molex connector for the METEOR drop target bank. I haven't looked at the playfield schematic yet and like above, I think my game plan is to tag these wires as "NCF" (no connection found) and after reassembly if I have wonkiness in that area of the playfield I can start troubleshooting there.

IMG_0230 (resized).JPG

Score Decal Update:

Got the waterslide. During mid-application, the waterslide broke into two pieces as I was removing the backing. I got the two pieces lined up pretty well, I think....the break occurred at the 1st zero in the 2000 score for the 4th target. There's a small blemish on that "0", but it's only noticeable if you zoom in fairly closely. You won't notice it from the player's position, even if you're looking for it.

As for clear coating - I've reviewed several options, none are appealing to me. I could send it off for a pro to do it for $500 and I won't see it for months. I talked to a couple local auto painters, one who has done this sort of thing before and 3 that haven't. I could do this for $150-$200 but I'd have to block sand it down myself, let it cure for months on end, and who knows how it will turn out (and these autoshop paint guys won't guarantee this kind of work...I'm on my own if it cracks, clouds, or is sprayed improperly). And I certainly don't want someone shooting a playfield who's never done it before. Lastly....I could do it myself. I'll still spend months curing and sanding, and this after I invest some decent $$$ into proper safety gear, air compressor, gun, pop-up paint room with ventilation, etc. etc. Not to mention I don't want to mess with stuff that toxic in the first place. All of this just to add the missing score numbers.

Instead of all that, I could simply use a strip of mylar, which I seriously considered.

The clearcoat purists are going to shudder at this, but, in the end I decided to use automobile clear touch up. I already had it, and I used it last year to protect the black paint I put on the saucer in my Mata Hari hardtop installation. With over 500 plays, it's held up perfectly.

So with this auto clear touch up, you apply it with a brush. I put on a few very thin coats, several hours apart. I may put on a couple more just to safe. If you look at it close up and at an angle, you can see the fine brush strokes. Looking at it head-on (or from the player's position), it looks just fine. And I think it will hold up based on my previous experience on the Mata Hari saucer.

The enemy of good is perfection, right? So far, I'm happy with the decal (despite me needing to re-align the two pieces I broke applying it) and with the protection (brushed on auto-clearcoat).
IMG_0219 (resized).JPGIMG_0220 (resized).JPGIMG_0221 (resized).JPGIMG_0222 (resized).JPGIMG_0223 (resized).JPGzAutoCC (resized).jpg

Harness made it through the dishwasher with toe-tag labels intact! Wires now all squeaky clean and free of dirt and grime....you can actually see the colors now!

Harness Wash 02 (resized).jpg

Arrgh....running into some trouble with drilling pilot holes for topside posts. Long story short - I've got a broken stud screw (right in half) down in the playfield. Taking a break from that for now as I contemplate different methods for getting it out. Vid and others have been helpful with their suggestions in the playfield restoration thread, and I will be trying the first one probably this weekend.

In the meantime, I'm focusing on other areas of need. First up - disassembling, cleaning, and putting back together the drop target banks with new targets. I've got the 111's, 222's, and 333's complete now. These things were grimy, grimy, grimy....a lot worse than the wire harness! A few trips through the ultrasonic cleaner and a couple of days each in the tumblers and while they're not exactly shiny, they're squeaky clean and moving nicely with no slop or sticking.

So....I was a little disappointed that they didn't polish up very much in my tumblers like other pieces have in the past. I'm wondering if it was because there was just so much white power/oxidation mixed with grime that it was beyond the tumbler's capability. I could have tried hitting each piece with the buffing wheel, but honestly I think I'm satisfied that they're clean and working. I've seen some restorers go to the trouble of painting each piece silver and/or clearing each piece for future protection, but I'm not going to take this restoration that far.

Here are a couple of "before" pictures of the 333's. The other two banks pretty much looked the same.

yy00 (resized).jpg

yy00a (resized).jpg

Here's an after pick of the 111's, 222's, and 333's.

yy01 (resized).jpg

Next Up: METEOR Drop Target bank. Will start disassembly tonight or tomorrow. I've got the slings and the pop bumper parts going through the tumblers now.

yy02 (resized).jpg

My playfield re-population has been stuck in neutral for a week or so. I got over the nervousness of drilling pilot holes into this pristine new playfield but after the 10th one, a #6 stud post broke off and I had the shank of a busted screw stuck below the surface. Live and learn - I'm now using screw wax to prep the studs and screws before going in...a lot less torque, and it still holds nice and tight.

So I contemplated several ways to get out the busted screw - the traditional screw extractors (which never seem to work) all the way to cutting out a plug from underneath the screw and using a dowel to fill the hole for re-drilling a pilot hole. While that mess topside wouldn't been seen under the post, no way was I going to attempt measuring exactly where the screw was (from underneath) and get it out within the plug. Too much margin for error on my part.

Thankfully, a fellow pinsider in Vid's playfield restoration thread pointed me to a product called Unscrew-Ums. He'd never used it himself, but the demonstration video looked promising:

https://tltools.com/

Long story short, I bought a few sized bits last week and they came in today. In less than 5 minutes, I had the busted screw out with no damage to the topside of the playfield!!! I'm back in business....

Unscrew-Um to the Rescue 01 (resized).jpg

...and we're off and running again. With the majority of the topside posts, rails, and brads in place it's time to put the new playfield on the rotisserie and work from there!

xxx03 (resized).jpg

On to the lamp socket phase. Rather than messing around with 40-year sockets (some of which are a bit touchy), I splurged for $40 and bought all new sockets and will use the bottom side of the old playfield as a guide for routing the wire braids and jumper wires. First to go in...the flush mount ones for GI that are secured with staples.

Didn't think of it till just now...I suppose I should've bench tested these new sockets before committing to stapling them in! I hope there aren't any duds in the batch I bought.

xxx04 (resized).jpg

Had an "a-ha, why didn't I do this before" moment last night, thinking ahead for when I'm ready to put the wire harness back in (in a few weeks, most likely). Like anyone doing a project like this, I've taken a thousand pictures during the tear down to use as reference when putting it all back together. To date, I've been using my phone for taking pix and for reviewing. While that's worked just fine, it occurred to me that we have two TV's plus the larger projection screen in our rec room / home theater, and one of those TV's is hanging on the wall next to the pool table (where I just happen to be doing the bulk of the playfield work). Why not put the pix up on the TV, nice and large? I accessed the photos on my iPad via my cloud account, hooked up my HDMI out dongle for iOS devices, and plugged it into a spare HDMI port on the TV. Bingo! Nice large photos for reference (and zooming on stuff looks big, crisp, and clear) and my phone is free to take additional pix or for use if I get a call while I'm working on the playfield.

TV01 (resized).jpg

TV02 (resized).jpg

Today's progress: wire rollovers, lamp sockets, and 555 Twisty PCB lamp boards are in. Next up - soldering in the bare wire to the GI circuit and the positive leads to the control lamp sockets.

Prog01 (resized).jpg

Found myself with a couple of extra hours this evening. Knocked out the bare positive wire runs and about half of the jumper wires for GI. Should finish that tomorrow, but with family stuff over the weekend I'll probably have a few days of inactivity. Next up after the jumper wires is starting to put back in some of the assemblies. Still need to rebuild the flippers and put the proper coil in for the upper flipper assembly (previous owner had the stronger J-25-500/34-4500 in there, should be J-25-600/34-4500).

BTW - I'm surprised (but not surprised) at how many dimples are "off". I know these things were built by hand in the 70's from a template and will vary from machine to machine (and CPR says to use the dimples as a guide, not gospel), but at least 50% of the underside dimples on mine are off by a bit. Most of the lamp socket dimples were ok, but many were off. Almost all of the dimples for the wire rollovers are off by a quarter inch or more. Going to need to be extra careful with slings, DT banks, etc. Check/measure/align hardware 4 times, drill once!
Prog02 (resized).jpg

I posted this in the Meteor club thread a couple of days ago but no response yet, so I'll try here as well.....

In the posts behind the METEOR drop target bank, there is a dimple missing for the 8th post. For anyone who's done an early CPR....did you go ahead and add that missing post or just leave it out? Will balls get stuck behind there without it?

Original playfield on the left, CPR on the right.

Missing Post Dimple (resized).jpg

Thanx, guys - I'll be adding that post today.

Added the post with the missing dimple behind the METEOR DT bank. On to the mechs!

First up is the left sling and wow, the dimples are indeed merely "guides". At the very least, they let me know I'm in the ballpark with regards to bracket orientation. After lining up the hardware with the cut out, here are the holes I drilled for the pivot arm and coil bracket as compared to the dimples.
IMG_0319 (resized).JPGIMG_0320 (resized).JPGIMG_0321 (resized).JPG

A little surprised - the dimples for the right sling, the ball trough, and the 111 DT bank actually all aligned just fine!

The install of the 111 DT bank is just temporary...wanted to see how it operated (will be doing the 222 and 333 banks next). While they seem to work fine in a bench test, I've heard so many bad things about the repro drop targets in game play on this machine. I plan on refurbing my old chicklet targets and replacing the repro tombstones, but I may wait to see how it plays first. Also not crazy about the DT face decal sitting as low as it does, even after trimming the top of the decal before applying it. That lip/hood on the top of the tombstones is getting in the way...I think the decals on the chickets will sit higher and look nicer.
prog04 (resized).jpgprog05 (resized).jpg

I think I stand corrected.

In all seriousness, "tombstone" sounds more appropriate to describe the lack of lip/large/flat top "top" of the drop target. There's just so many people out there using so may different ways to describe the configuration, it's hard to get a consensus on the proper term.

Thanx for the input...I think I'll drop my "tombstone" moniker for flattop repros.

I didn't get much of a chance to work on Meteor due to family commitments this weekend, but what chances I got sure turned into a frustrating couple of days.

What went right...

• Dead Bumpers eventually went in ok
• Pop bumper went in ok
• I wasn't going to put on the new rubbers until nearly last, but I had to fish out the two that would go on the dead bumper bodies to get those installed so while I was digging around in there, I figured just put them all on.

What went wrong....
New Dead Bumper Base Plates
They're too damn big to fit in the cut out on the CPR playfield. I can't get too mad at CPR...they're too big for the original playfield, too! I could dremel the circumference of the the plastic base plate knobby down a bit and make them fit, but I'd probably just booger it up. In the end, I used the originals from the old playfield. They cleaned up ok, but they're green (not white like the new ones) and while I thought that would bother me, you can't see it anyway once the bumpers are installed.

Flipper Bats
I started to rebuild the lower flippers and after getting one of them done, I felt like putting it in. That's when I discovered.....I ordered the wrong new flipper bats. Or I ordered the right flipper bats (Classic Stern 77-80 Type 1 from Pinball Wizard) but the shaft is not compatible (too big) for the new prawl that came with the rebuild kit from Marco's. It's too big for the prawl that came on my machine as well, so I don't know what's going there. I have a couple of new early Bally bats in my spare parts bin that fit and will probably do, but I'll need to pick up a third.

Tiny Clearcoat Crack
This will drive me nuts cuz I know it's there, and I did it to myself. I must've over-torqued one of the screws for the 222 DT bank and the pressure from the playfield underside caused a tiny topside crack in the clear. It's about 3/32" long. You can see if you shine a light on it at the right angle, and you can feel it with your fingernail. I backed off that screw a bit, of course, and the DT bank is still rock solid on the playfield. It's the original screw, too, so I naively thought I would be safe from something like this. I did check the thickness with my digital caliper, and both the original and CPR playfields are the same thickness. I must've over-torqued it. Damn it.

A lost parts order!
Was scheduled to arrive via USPS on Friday. When it didn't arrive, I figured "ok, Saturday". USPS tracking still said Friday all the way to Saturday afternoon when it changed to "in transit" with no delivery date. Arrgh. It's got my new bushings for the flipper rebuilds....only 2 of the 3 originals are usable (one is cracked). It also has new springs for the drop targets. The ones in there now work ok, but a few make the wonky spring noise, loudly, for several seconds after a target is downed. I moved the offending springs around, and the noise follows the springs. I want to get those out of there.

I need to step away from Meteor for a bit....

prog06 (resized).jpg

prog07 (resized).jpg

Taking a break from the playfield for a bit to see what I'm going to need in the lower cabinet. Pretty much all the parts seem to be there, but the knocker looks odd.

From what I can tell, aside from the wrong coil (I have a new, proper N-26-1200 in my parts bin), everything looks correct except for the plunger. Shouldn't there be a plastic tip at the end of the plunger to hit the strike plate? Unfortunately, the Stern parts catalog for that part isn't particularly helpful in that regard. Marco's has a blow-out Classic Stern knocker diagram that doesn't seem to show the complete parts list (no spring, washer, or e-clips on the plunger) but it does show some sort of tip at the end of the plunger. However, I'm having great difficulty in finding that plunger part or an equivalent online.

Any suggestions? What do your Classic Stern knocker plungers look like?

Knocker00 (resized).jpg

Knocker01 (resized).jpg

Knocker02 (resized).jpg

Knocker03 (resized).jpg

Yep - thanx Ken. Got those switches standing by....I haven't rebuilt the right lower flipper yet (reference photo of it below). I stopped my rebuilds when I realized I had a prawl / bat shaft size compatibility issue. I think I have that sorted but I got so frustrated with the playfield today that for a diversion I started building my parts-need list for the lower cabinet.

Don't suppose you know what the knocker plunger is supposed to look like....or where to find (if indeed mine is broken, i.e. missing the plastic tip)?
Right Flipper Lower (resized).jpg

Thanx, @ksuwildcatfan! I still consider myself a newbie at this (3 years in and this is my first playfield swap) and I appreciate the encouragement! It's a lot of pinside reading (95% of it Vid guides), trial and error, and trying not to go to fast. Each pin restore/rescue I've done has had some sort of significant failure or set back along the way, but there's no better teacher than failing and doing it better next time.

Speaking of failures.....OOOPS! And WOW....I know it happens to everyone eventually be it a backglass or playfield glass, and today it happened to me.

I was moving the trashed Meteor backglass out of my way in the garage, GENTLY placed it down on the concrete floor, and BAMMO it shattered into a million pieces. It was awesome. Awesome in how little it took to do it, how fast it happened, and the millions of pieces it broke into from one tiny, little tap on the concrete. One second I had the backglass in my hand and the next all I'm holding is the bottom lift bar in my right hand the and a side trim in my left hand.

The good news: I was going to throw this out anyway as a significant amount of the paint was already gone - this wasn't worth saving even if it could be saved. I had already factored in a new CPR repro in my budget when I bought this project.

BG00 (resized).jpg

BG01 (resized).jpg

BG02 (resized).jpg

Decent progress tonight - all drop target banks reassembled and installed. I'm really disappointed in them not polishing up in the tumblers - the plating is just so bad. In fact, the METEOR bank actually got darker in color after a trip thru the tumblers. BUT....they're all squeaky clean and functioning nicely (at least via manual test until this thing is powered up).

Got all three flippers rebuilt and in as well, and the spinner. I bought a new spinner and Meteor decals for it but I'm disappointed in it....while it weighs the same as the original, has the same thickness and dimensions, and likely would spin nicely, the diameter of the little rods that go into the bracket is too big for the bracket. I could dremel out the bracket's holes to accommodate it, but I'm not sure I want to do that. For now, I have the original spinner in.

Beginning to think I might tackle putting the wire harness back in this weekend. We'll see.

prog08 (resized).jpg

prog09 (resized).jpg

I was starting to get worried about all of the heavy assemblies being back on while the playfield is still in the rotisserie, so I put 3 of the 4 rails back on to keep it from bowing. I'm planning on using Reese Rails but it may be several weeks until his shop is running again after his summer break, so I used the originals.

The originals had this plastic wrap around the wood and it was peeling off - looked nasty. I took it all off but had to spend a long time getting rid of all the adhesive for that plastic wrapping. Once I got it down to bare wood, I put down some primer, a couple coats of black, and a couple coats of rattle can clear. I waited more than long enough between applications (and a week between the last paint and the first clear), but the clear still orange-peeled in spots. Either I put too much on in those areas or there was still adhesive chemicals left over or both to cause that reaction....looks like crap in a few places. But, this is temporary until I get a set of Reese Rails.

IMG_0106 (resized).JPG

IMG_0113 (resized).JPG

IMG_0107 (resized).JPG

IMG_0161 (resized).JPG

Rails01 (resized).jpg

I was thinking maybe I'd get to reinstalling the wire harness this weekend, but I totally forgot....I haven't re-pinned the connectors yet! Doh! This is a must, especially with the wire harness out of the pin and "on the bench". I can only take 60 minutes or so at a time for re-pinning so I'll be spreading this job over several days.

I've got my "re-pinning station" set up with my tools, connectors, and pins. First session is tomorrow!

Wire01 (resized).jpg

I managed to re-pin all of the .100 and .156 connectors on the harness in one sitting last night....it actually wasn't too bad. Put the TV on, glass of single malt, and around 2.5 hours later it was all done. Got other stuff to do today, so I might start the harness install on the playfield later tonight or tomorrow.
Wire02 (resized).jpg

Good progress tonight! A little more than 50% done on re-installing the wire harness. Having the reference pictures I took blown up on the TV screen from my iPad really helping things go smoothly. I may be able to finish this wire harness phase tomorrow and begin stripping the paint off the cabinet next week and enter the cabinet repair phase. The cabinet is in pretty solid shape - only a few gouges to fill in and some previous patch work to smooth out. I repaired the split wood on the neck already.

My Pinball Pimp stencils came in a couple weeks ago so they've spent a lot of time all rolled up. I opened up the tube tonight and I'm starting flatten them out under the weight of the playfield glass and the old playfield on a towel. Another day or two and they'll be nice and flat with no curls.

Wire04 (resized).jpg

Wire04a (resized).jpg

Wiring harness done! Wow - never thought in a million years that I could get the wire harness back on in 2 days. I guess it helps that it's a bachelor weekend with the wife out of state visiting her mom. All in all, it was about 6 to 7 hours of work spread across the two days. Meteor is a simple game compared to today's pins, and I'm sure a pro could've knocked this out in a few hours or less. But being my first playfield swap, I'm totally happy. Let's just hope it works.

While reference pix blown up on the TV certainly helped, I used my cheat-sheet more (the clipboard) when soldering in the control lamp wires for the 555 lamp PCBs. Using the notes I took before what was hooked where on the old lamp brackets, that soldering phase went a lot quicker than expected.

Wire Done (resized).jpg

Well this bodes well! Using a modded 7v wall wort, I did my first light test on the GI circuit and every single socket and bulb that was supposed to light up lit right up. I then walked thru all of the control lights one by one and they all lit as well.

Thinking about adding an LED strip in the trough area for more GI there....it's pretty dark. Might look cool with some light being emitted from under the apron out to the center post and flippers. I'll experiment....I can always pull it out if it looks hokey.

Light Test 01 (resized).jpg

Had another "oops" moment this evening. As I finished up putting the wire harness in, I noticed that I forgot to put the two T-Nuts in my CPR playfield (they secure the apron). Obviously the best time to put those in would be first, before you do anything to the playfield, so you have a nice, flat surface to hammer them in. Haha! This playfield swap is almost done, and I've got to get the T-Nuts in. At least there are only two, and they're near an outside edge of the playfield.

Necessity is the mother of invention. I propped up the playfield and used a c-clamp to apply enough pressure to set in the T-Nuts. Worked like a champ.

T-Nut (resized).jpg

I found a Comet LED strip in my lighting case and temporarily rigged it up behind the drain. Here's a shot of where it is, and what it looks like with the apron sort of on (clamps on the rotisserie prevent the apron from fully resting on the playfield, but you get the idea).

I think I like it and may keep this.
Light Test 02 (resized).jpgLight Test 04 (resized).jpg

Here's a $6 bet that paid off.

Determined the classic Stern knocker in my Meteor project is missing the nylon tip. I searched hi and low, new and used, and have been unable to find a replacement plunger. Knowing the classic Bally knocker plunger is shorter and doesn't have the groove at the bottom end (for an e-clip that holds on some washers), it looked to be the same diameter as the classic Stern so I added a new one to my last PBL parts order. Came in today - using vice gripes and pliers, I was able to pull the nylon tip out of the Bally. And with a heavyweight hammer, I pounded it into the Stern. Bingo!

Knocker04a (resized).jpg

Knocker05 (resized).jpg

I see what you did there.

With the playfield more or less done until I can reassemble everything and see how my swap went, my attention is moving to the cabinet.

While structurally sound and surprisingly with very little dings or gouges, both sides and the cabinet front suffer from some pretty decent planking. The ridges are fairly deep and rough to the touch. The ridges are present only below where the side rails went....the wood under the side rails is nice and smooth. This pin must've spent a lot of time in a garage or some other non-climate controlled area.

I'm experimenting with one of the sides to see how I'm going to approach the rest of the cabinet. I took the first layer of paint off with acetone and then used an orbital sander to see how the cabinet side would smooth out. While visually it still looks like there are ridges, the side is now totally smooth to the touch.

So now I'm wondering....if I proceed to the primer/paint stages, will this ridge/planking problem re-emerge at some point? Or possibly show thru the new paint and primer? I was thinking of putting down a thin layer of bondo but I hate working with bondo and would like to avoid that if at all possible.

I may section off a several square inch area of the cabinet side, put down some primer coats, and then put down a paint coat and see what it looks like. Fresh paint like that will come off in seconds with acetone when it comes time to start over for the Pinball Pimp stencils (or if I decide to put down a layer of bondo).

IMG_0439a (resized).jpg

IMG_0440a (resized).jpg

IMG_0441a (resized).jpg

Thanx for that....never heard of it, and just started reading up on it. Certainly looks easier to work with vs. bondo. Looks like a trip to Home Depot will be on my errand run tomorrow.....my local store shows more than a dozen in stock.

24hrs in a tumbler with walnut media - nice difference, especially the bolts and washers that secure the head to the lower cabinet.

Tumbled Parts 00 (resized).jpg

I picked up some Durham's today and practiced on some spare plywood with different mixing ratios for viscosity, from thicker putty for filling in holes to thinner glaze to smooth out scratches. Not too bad. It's more flexible than bondo in that way, and more importantly it does not set as quickly as bondo giving me more time to work. Within 20 minutes it was set hard and touchable. In under an hour, it was sandable. 4 hours later, hard as rock.

Going to finish stripping the paint this weekend and then working on rebuilding some edges with wood epoxy. After that, and perhaps a little more practice on scrap plywood, I think I'll try Durham's for smoothing out the cabinet sides (and front and rear) to cover up that planking.

It's been a few weeks since my last Meteor update - life gets in the way, you know? Plus....I had a long, drawn-out multi-week saga with JB Weld's QuikWood.

I've been a user of this product for years and like many others here who have recently reviewed KwickWood on various websites, I was beginning to wonder what happened with their quality control. I'd purchased 6 different packages over the last 5 months at Lowes, Home Depot, and Walmart and all had the same issue - the center/core was yellow-ish instead of white-ish, and fresh out of the box it was already hard in spots and very granular. It could not be kneaded or mixed without it falling apart and crumbling in my hand, and it would never seem to "set" or "kick" (it's supposed to be sandable in an hour). In the times that I could actually kneed it smooth and apply it, it would crumble at the lightest sanding even after letting it sit for more than 24hrs.

I contacted JB Weld through their corporate website complaining about their product's performance as of late and the next day, a customer service person emailed me back and explained that they indeed had an issue with their "chemical process" earlier this year and that there are bad batches floating around (and apparently still sitting on store shelves even today). No announcement or recall from them, no notices of how to identify the bad batches or how many date codes are affected, but at least an acknowledgement of a manufacturing issue. They took my shipping address and 4 days later I got a box of twelve 3.5" KwikWood sticks! Sure enough, these work fine and I'm back in business filling in small gauges and cracks in my Meteor cabinet.

I'm sure I'm late to the party, but a few weeks ago I discovered a little flex-tube thingy that allows me to hook up my shop vac to my orbital sander. Not sure I'd want to use this indoors, but it really does improve the saw dust / bondo dust collection while sanding.

IMG_0517 (resized).JPG

Here's some bottom edge work on the left side of the cab along with some filling in some of the deep gouges. The bottom edge has been sanded and blended in nice and smooth while the gouge-fills still need to be sanded down.

IMG_0531 (resized).JPG

So here's the back of the lower cab. I stripped as much paint off as I could, repaired some rotten/delaminated wood in the lower left corner, and used Durham's to put down a thin layer to get a good, sandable surface that hides/protects the aging wood.

Durham's seems pretty good and easy to use for small areas, but I don't want to use it for the whole cabinet....just too hard to work with. I like the fact that you can change the consistency as you're using it (add more powder to thicken it or add more water to thin it) and it doesn't kick to quickly. But for spreading it out over large areas, I didn't care for it.

IMG_0523 (resized).JPG

So, back to bondo. I've used it in the past with a lot of success, but I didn't like how much work it was to get it sanded down smooth (lots of pin holes and what-not that needed to be sanded down and blended). I've since discovered I was mixing it wrong - with my last two cabinets, I was using a porous surface and mixing the putty in circles with a wooden paint stick. Wrong. I've since gotten a non-porous mixing pad and am now kneading in the hardener with the bondo spreader before applying it to the cabinet. Much better.

In this photo, I experimented with bondo in the center and sanded it down smooth (white-ish color). Then for the second application, I put it down (gray-ish) around the first application.
IMG_0526 (resized).JPG

Sanded and feathered smooth and flat. I think I got enough coverage here and will move on to the cabinet sides sometime this week.

IMG_0529 (resized).JPG

Inspiration arrived from CPR last week - a brand new repro backglass. Can't wait to put this on a newly refurbed and freshly painted and stenciled cabinet.

CPRBG0 (resized).jpg

CPRBG1 (resized).jpg

Yes - I typically use Rustoleum 2x Cover rattle cans (oil based). I've gotten good results with it on my previous cabinet projects and it works well with Pinball Pimp stencils. After repairing/prepping the cab with 180/220, I'll put down a couple coats of Kilz primer, sand 320, then base color, then the other two colors, sand stencil edges 800, then clear (all rattle cans). I usually do this work on the weekends, so there's at least 4 to 6 days between the primer, base, color 1, color 2, and clear stages.

Right now, at least for the lower cab, I've gotten the corners, edges, and gouges repaired. The sides were planking pretty good, so I've sanded them smooth and put down a layer of bondo (one side so far, plus the back). The back turned out fine, but the left side needs to be leveled out (got some highs and lows that need to be flattened). Hopefully can knock that out this weekend and start the same procedure on the right side, then the front.

Bondo'd Side 01b (resized).jpg

Bondo'd Side 02b (resized).jpg

Bondo'd Side 03c (resized).jpg

After ultrasonic cleaning, walnut media in the tumblers to start, then corncob media with a couple ounces of Flitz liquid polish. That's my go-to routine for most metal pin bits for the plating on these old Sterns is so bad it just doesn't do much. But it's clean!

When I see under-playfield pix of other's Meteors, Tridents, F2K's, etc. I see the same type of tarnishes on the bigger mechs so I know I'm not alone.

Almost there - both sides and back are bondo'd, as level as they're going to get, and nice and smooth. The red marks are bondo glazing putty spots that cover up nicely the pinholes and small craters left behind by the bondo (this is my 3rd bondo project and I'm STILL trying to nail down an accurate mixture of hardener and putty).

I'll be working on the front over the next couple of days. Maybe I'll be able to start laying down the first coat of primer this weekend.

zzz000 (resized).jpg

I may look into that next time, but it's pretty pricey. You can't beat a 16oz tube of Bondo Putty Glaze for $5 at Walmart!

We're ready for primer this weekend! Everything sanded down level and smooth (with some tooth for paint), vacuumed, wiped down, and gone over with a tack cloth.

If you noticed the front part of the cab having more of a red tint for the bondo, there's a reason. In their infinite wisdom, Bondo includes a tube of WHITE hardener with the can of gray putty filler. What do you get when you mix white with gray? Basically, more gray and you hope it's mixed well. I wised up and purchased a separate tube of hardener with a RED tint. Now when you're mixing, you can tell how consistent the hardener is amongst the putty.

zzzz01 (resized).jpg

zzzz02 (resized).jpg

zzzz03 (resized).jpg

zzzz04 (resized).jpg

zzzz05 (resized).jpg

First primer coat done (Kilz). Got a few drips I need to address once it dries, will probably do that and a second coat tomorrow morning. Later this afternoon I'm going to get started on stripping the backbox.

yyyy01 (resized).jpg

yyyy03 (resized).jpg

yyyy04 (resized).jpg

Started on the backbox this afternoon, got most of the paint off. The sides and top are planking like the lower cab, so I'll be doing some glazing work before I get to painting. Need some repair in a few spots as well. Sounds like a good activity to start tomorrow.

IMG_0569 (resized).JPG

IMG_0570 (resized).JPG

IMG_0571 (resized).JPG

IMG_0572 (resized).JPG

IMG_0573 (resized).JPG

IMG_0574 (resized).JPG

IMG_0575 (resized).JPG

IMG_0576 (resized).JPG

IMG_0577 (resized).JPG

IMG_0578 (resized).JPG

First coat of black base is down. Tomorrow I'll sand out the drips and put on a second coat. Might be able start the stenciling, at least for the lower cab, next weekend (but will mask off the cab and paint the neck red first). I'm still working on backbox repairs - might be able to primer that next weekend.

p003 (resized).jpg

p004 (resized).jpg

Painted the neck yesterday, and will hopefully start the lower cab stenciling this weekend. I started preparing the front this morning and quickly discovered that the cardboard cutout I've used on the coin door space to prevent the stencil from sagging doesn't fit. Duh! To date, I've re-painted 3 cabinets but they've all been Bally, and the coin door area on this classic Stern has slightly different dimensions (slightly larger all the way around). Going to need to make a new cutout before putting on the front stencil.

Neck Painted 01 (resized).jpg

Neck Painted 02 (resized).jpg

Neck Painted 03a (resized).jpg

Got some time this weekend to work on the cabinet - front colors down.

xx03 (resized).jpg

Also got the red down for the left side. Edges are nice, sharp and crisp....very happy with that stencil job. However, there is a strange drip line across the M and E....it's actually in the black base and not the red stencil I just laid down. It's perfectly smooth....you can't feel it, and from most angles it's not visible. I actually didn't notice it until this morning, and I've been staring at this cabinet after laying down the black base a week or so ago. I'm not going to sweat it - you gotta been at a certain angle with light just right to notice.

xx04 (resized).jpg

xx05 (resized).jpg

xx06 (resized).jpg

xx07 (resized).jpg

Yes - Pinball Pimp:

http://pinballpimpstencils.com/meteor/

Left side stenciling done. Got a couple of boogers that should touch up fine....will do all the touch up work after the stenciling is complete. Weather permitting, will start the right side Friday.

Left Almost Done (resized).jpg

Good question - I felt that would be more work when it comes to masking/re-masking to protect areas of the cabinet that I don't want to get accidentally painted on or misted (including the cabinet interior).

I wrap the entire cabinet with a few layers of packing wrap - takes only a few minutes. I exacto-knife cut out a panel of the wrap, like a hinge, to expose only the side I want to work on at that moment. After both colors are down on that side, I bring the hinged wrap back up, tape it down, move on to the next side, and repeat the process of hinging that side's wrap.

Another reason is that I spray paint with the cabinet on its side so it's laying flat - helps to avoid runs if I accidentally spray on too much. With all of the other sides already masked, it helps protect the rest of the cabinet from scratches and dust/dirt while it's spending time in my driveway and garage during this process.

That might seem like more work to someone else perhaps, but it works for me.

I'm using Kilz for primer and Rustoleum 2X Ultra Cover for paint, one of the recommended ones for Pinball Pimp stencils. Works well for me, this is my fourth cabinet for repainting.

Lower cab is done except for some touch-up work I'll do this week. Under the harsh shop lights in the garage, it looked ok. In the basement rec room lights where it will live, it looks great. Even better when the lights are dimmed.

IMG_0648 (resized).JPG

IMG_0649 (resized).JPG

IMG_0650 (resized).JPG

IMG_0651 (resized).JPG

IMG_0652 (resized).JPG

Sun Yellow and Apple Red.

Paint (resized).jpg

Always, always, always take lots of pictures during tear down. Sure glad I did!

I'm working on the backbox door harness this weekend while re-painting the door itself. Cleaned up the door harness (got 40 years of crud off running it thru the dishwasher) and started re-pinning connectors. While getting my connector parts lined up and ready, I noticed one of the connectors on the harness was 16 pins 0.156, but I didn't have a 16 pin housing in that size. I had pretty much everything else...4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, etc....but no 16. Then I started wondering....where does this go? I checked all headers on all PCBs....no 16 pin 0.156. I re-checked everything multiple times, and recounted the connector pins multiple times. I surmised from the location on the harness that this connector housing should go to the transformer rectifier PCB but the three headers there are 9, 10, and 20 pins. I probably spent a good 30 minutes in the weeds on this and then decided to go thru my tear down photos. I was close to gluing two 8-pin connectors together!

Sure enough, I found a tear down photo that must have been a note to myself, because I purposely took it of the rectifier board with J1 and J2 off so that J3 could clearly be seen with the interesting mod a previous own did. He used a 16-pin IDC connector AND a 4-pin Molex connector for the 20 pin header J3. I guess you do what you have to do when you're short on parts and (presumably) on location trying to make money. I did the teardown something like 6 months ago and totally forget this picture-note to myself that basically says "don't forget to fix this when you get to that stage of the restoration"!

Here's the original tear down photo. Yep...that TA-100 board is really nasty (burned and missing parts, too!) so I opted to replace it for this build and will put the old PCB in my "future fix" board box. Second photo is the harness on my bench showing the 16-pin IDC and 4-pin Molex making up the 20 pins alongside the new 20-pin 0.156 housing. The last photo is the properly re-pinned connector on the new rectifier PCB.

Rectifier (Original) J3 (resized).jpg

Rectifier (Original) J3 Housings (resized).jpg

Rectifier (New) J3 (resized).jpg

I did my first power up a couple of nights ago. I naively crossed my fingers hoping everything would just work. Ha! It started off bleak - tripping a circuit breaker as soon as the machine is switched on. I'm making progress now - here's my punch list and status so far (which may grow as additional progress is made):

*Tripping circuit breaker turning on machine*
This put me in the weeds for hours pouring over tear down photos since I had this machine working before starting the restoration. I had every connector to a PCB disconnected and it still tripped the breaker. I read and re-read my notes and photos of the line filter and MOV and how the new AC cord was wired into the filter. In the end....it was the service outlet on the tilt board. I still don't know what's wrong with it yet, but I have it disconnected and out of the machine. My guess is the wired tabs inside the 3-hole plastic piece came loose and are touching.

*No playfield solenoids would fire in Self Test. Knocker works.*
I had 6.25 VDC at each coil instead of ~43 VDC. Traced this back to mistake on my part - I re-pinned the J1 connector in the Rectifier incorrectly. The original TA-100 board has 8 pins for J1 and the aftermarket XPin I'm using has 9 pins for J1. When re-pinning this harness, I didn't pay attention to that and used a new 9-pin housing incorrectly assuming that's what I pulled off of the old harness. I incorrectly stuck the last three wires in that header (which included the 43 VDC line) in the last three positions meaning they were off by one. Moved those three pins to the left one spot to where they're supposed to be, and the playfield solenoids are back in business.

*No lamps lit up in the playfield alley to the spinner*
I replaced the OEM bayonet lamp holder assembly with a PCB replacement that uses twist in sockets. The +5v jumper that I soldered from the control voltage to the PCB came loose. Re-soldered, and all the lamps in that assembly now work.

*Machine coins-up but won't start a game*
Another bad soldering job by me....one of the wires to the leaf switch behind the credit button came off. Fixed.

*Shooter rod angled downward, not level with playfield, doesn't make contact with the ball*
So I didn't know there is a correct orientation to the replacement Beehive I put in....but there is! Reinstalled it after rotating it 180 degrees and it works normally now.

*Some METEOR targets drop after reset*
This DT bank needs some adjustments given this issue and the next two. I might have to pull the DT assembly out and get it on my bench again. Now that the playfield is off the rotisserie and in the cabinet, this is going to be a pain.

*Second "E" target in the METEOR bank doesn't always drop down all the way*
Queued up.

*"O" and "R" target solenoids in the METEOR bank not working*
Queued up.

*Switches stuck closed*
Had 4 switches showing up in Self Test as closed/stuck. Adjustments made.

*Left flipper doesn't work*
Queued up for resolution but first looks aren't obvious. Flipper coil getting 43 VDC on all tabs, leaf switch continuity tests ok when leafs are pressed together (contacts are clean), continuity tests ok for orange wire back to Right flipper as well as the blue wire back to the SDB J2 Pin 2. I'm assuming the relay on the SDB is ok since it's shared between both flippers and the right flippers work ok. I've got a spare SDB....that might be my next move.

*Middle drop target in the "3" bank doesn't score*
Most likely a switch gap adjustment is needed - queued up.

*LEDs flicker only on Rocket #1 row + SPECIAL + the top few values in Rocket #2*
This is a very annoying one. I'm using OEM boards for the MPU, SDB, and Sound. The Rectifier board is an XPin, and the Lamp board is an Alltek so that I can use LEDs.

The vast majority of the control LEDs are working, but several flicker. I’m using the same brand and style LEDs everywhere, and have swapped LEDs from locations that do not flicker with locations that do flicker and the flickering stays at the location and does not follow the LED bulb.

I have the control power going to TP13 ok on the Alltek lamp board. I know it’s working because if I remove it, all control LEDs will flicker. With it attached, control LEDs no longer flicker except for these that continue to flicker:

- All 7 lamps in the #1 Rocket column
- The top 3 lamps in the #2 Rocket column
- The Special lamp in front of the #1 Drop Target bank

I don’t really think there’s anything wrong with the Alltek lamp board. In fact, I have two of them and swapped in my spare and it does the same thing. Here's the kicker - if I swap out the OEM MPU for an Alltek MPU, all control lamps work without flickering. IMO, that eliminates any potential connector issues with my re-pinning exercise. I'd stay with the Alltek MPU except with the Alltek MPU, the sounds are all screwed up (sound is perfectly fine on the OEM MPU but with that board I get flicker on 7 out of 55+ control lamps). Arrgh! I did the memory clear function on the Alltek which is supposed to resolve Meteor sound issues, but it didn't help. I did try that only once...I need to do it again in case I did it incorrectly....still need to dig into this more.

Thanx, Quench - I may look into that.

A couple of updates tonight:

*Alltek MPU with garbled Meteor sounds*
After the second memory clear attempt on the Alltek, audio now works fine! I must not have done it right the first time. In my defense, the family is using our rec room (where our pins are) for watching movies tonight and they insist the lights stay off since they had the room first. My debugging work is being done by flashlight - I probably missed a switch setting to put it in CLEAR mode (Switch 1 OFF, all others ON).

*Left flipper doesn't work*
File this under "DOH!". Flippers were rebuilt with new coil stops, switches, prawl, etc. Switch is Normally Closed, and the leafs were slightly opened leaving a small gap and no connectivity. Should've made that simple check first before breaking out the MM and checking voltages and wire continuity.

*Middle drop target in the "3" bank doesn't score*
Upon closer inspection, one of the legs for this switch's diode was broken. Replaced diode, drop target scores correctly now.

Quench - plot thickening on the flickering LED's issue. Whereas before 7 out of ~55 control lamps flicker with the OEM MPU and all worked ok on the Alltek MPU, now 3 out of the ~55 are flickering on the Alltek MPU. I think I've had enough for one evening and will look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow afternoon. But if you have any more ideas, I'm all ears!

Quench - you are the man. Not just for your fix guidance, but the explanations behind them. I think my flickering issue is addressed!

The three flickering lamps were #1 Rocket 5K, 6K, and the SPECIAL lamp in front of the 111's drop target bank.

I did a quick test by alligator clipping a 470 ohm resistor to the SPECIAL lamp socket and bingo, no more flickering. The other two were slightly more interesting in that I'm using the aftermarket PCBs for the Rocket lamps (555 wedge lamps in a twist socket). Didn't have to solder - just jam in the resistor leads into the empty wedge socket and forced the LED bulb in. Just enough clearance that it fits into the PCB and twists to lock. Bingo again....no more flickering lamps anywhere.

I've since soldered in the resistor to the SPECIAL lamp bayonet socket and left the flashing Lamp portion of the Meteor Self Test running for about an hour - still looks good.

Now on to the balance of the punch list - METEOR drop target solenoid issue for the "O" and "R" is next. I might have to pull out that sub-assembly to do it right.

Fixed-a (resized).jpg

Uh, oh. Worked through the electrical, lamp, and switch issues so far and actually played my first test game the other night. Then noticed this.....WTF? Right flipper and the middle drain post are too close together and the ball won't drop through with the flipper in the down position. It's not like I can easily move that post or move the right flipper. What the heck do I do?

This is an early run of the CPR playfield with the missing DT scores (which I've added back in). I can take the rubber of the middle post and then there's enough clearance for the ball to drop through. Do I just try to find thinner rubber (for the post or flipper bat or both)? I suppose I could fill in the hole and drill a new one next to it to move it left, but I really, really don't want to do that. But I think I'm going to have to.

I was so excited to get this playfield. I didn't plan to put in a new CPR for this project....was just going to get it running as a nice player, maybe re-stencil the cabinet, and then wait for Outside Edge to someday produce a hardtop. But I got the CPR for a steal - brand new, never used from a guy local to me so no shipping costs or sales tax. The price was so low (slightly more than I paid for new CPR plastics and cheaper than what I paid for a new CPR backglass). The guy I bought it from took a bath - he paid full price from CPR a couple years ago but never used it. I didn't care that the METEOR DT scores were missing - I had the waterslides in the correct font and put them on myself. The wrong fonts for the other DT banks text didn't bother me, either. The smaller cut out for the 333's DT bank didn't affect me because it worked ok with tombstone drop targets (which I had).

During topside assembly for the playfield swap, I noticed even before the flippers went on that the middle drain post seemed closer to the right than the left. It become more apparent after putting on the flipper bats and the rubbers, but I noticed on other Meteor machines that some playfields had that "slightly to the right" look so I pressed on. It wasn't until I actually put a ball in play that I saw that the ball doesn't even fit between the two. You've got to be kidding me.

I'm going to think about it some more, but I've got a feeling the only right move is going to be to fill in that hole with wood epoxy and carefully drill a new hole slightly to the left. It should be close enough that the base of the post, while in the new hole, will cover the old hole. If not, perhaps a very thin washer between the playfield surface and the post base will extend enough to cover the previous hole.

Arrrghh......I was so close to finishing this thing.

0 - Ball Stuck Right (resized).jpg

Ball Clearance Left (resized).jpg

Yep - the distance is definitely off. I think both the right flipper hole and the center post are slightly off, not just the middle post by itself. The distance from the playfield bottom edge to the post is consistent between the too, tho, at 14cm.

I don't want to mess with the flipper hole, so I think I'm going to wood epoxy the middle post hole tonight and measure out a new location tomorrow, probably down and to the left a bit enough to make the post equidistant from both flipper holes. That means the middle post will be a cm or two closer to the playfield bottom edge vs. the original, but that's a good tradeoff to me so that I don't have to mess with the right flipper hole.

Middle Post Distance Comparison (resized).jpg

While both the middle post the right flipper hole are off a bit, I can't move just the flipper hole. If I move the right flipper hole back enough to create equidistance for the post in-between both flippers, the right flipper will be too close to the inlane wire guide. I'd have to either move both the middle post and the right flipper hole each "a little", or just the middle post "a little bit more". I'm opting for the latter - I already filled the middle post hole with wood epoxy last night. Today, I drilled a new hole after some careful measurements.

I think I'm pretty happy with the results. Here's a picture of the old hole filled in with wood epoxy and the new hole drilled right next to it after carefully measuring for its new location. I used a brad-tip drill bit to minimize issues drilling into the clearcoat:

02 (resized).jpg

And here's the post installed.

06 (resized).jpg

The tip of each flipper is now 3.8cm from the post with enough clearance for the ball to just drop through when the flippers are in the down position. I seriously considered removing the post permanently as the game is quite easy, and that middle post-save makes it that much easier to carry on games seemingly forever. My family rejected that idea, so it stays. Keep the family happy, and I can keep putting pins in our rec room.

I had a small black washer in my parts stash and it nicely covers the area where the original hole was located. I was going to paint the exposed wood epoxy black and dab on some clearcoat but now I don't think I'll bother - the black washer blends in nicely and hides it while protecting it at the same time. And the rubber on the post protrudes enough that the ball hits that and doesn't come into contact with the washer at all.

On to the next issue on the punch list! I think I resolved the two solenoid problems plus the free-falling drop target problems in the METEOR DT bank (at least on my bench) and I'll get to test those fixes next when the playfield goes back into the cab.

With the middle post issue behind me, I moved on to the METEOR DT bank issues:

#1 - the O and R wouldn't drop in the self test but do drop fine in gameplay and they reset ok
#2 - random targets in this bank don't stay up...one or more targets fall after every reset.

#1 was easy and my fault after reassembling the bank when I cleaned it and put in new targets. The two memory solenoids for O and R were mis-aligned - took them out and screwed them in straight. Works again!

For #2, resetting the bank by hand on my bench worked consistently well, but not in the game. I surmised that the targets were not getting enough height on solenoid-activated resets and therefore could not consistently rest on the fingers of the memory solenoids and instead, they'd just drop. There didn't appear to be an inordinate amount of play on the reset bar, but taking a closer look there are definite worn-in grooves from the DT arms rubbing against it for more than 40 years.

DT01 (resized).jpg

My solution for that was to secure a piece of rigid PETG plastic (1/32" thick) on the bar to give the drop targets a bit more height during reset and more of an opportunity to latch onto the memory solenoid fingers.

DT02 (resized).jpg

DT03 (resized).jpg