Just Fully restoring an existing pin (stripping down to Individ hardware pieces for cleaning and replacing) and stripping and redoing the cabinet with knowledge/experience working on pins is a huge task. There’s a reason not many people are attempting complete scratch builds of A list WPC’s..

I totally get wanting to take on a project, and the satisfaction of completing it. You’ve already delved in but I still echo a few others— start smaller or at least get a pin to familiarize with first. Manuals are great but it’s also not quite a factory how-to build this from ground up.. I love projects and have fully restored a classic WPC and in doing so I def. can say I’d never want to scratch build.. not to say u can’t do it but you’ll need to collect a lot of reference photos and there’s def. going to be irritation at times Sounds like you’re prepared for that though. Good luck!

Build a rotesserie for the Playfield - that’s a must.

To populate the Playfield, a rotesserie is pretty essential. You can’t build it up in the cab. That’s really why you should do the Playfield first, then get a cab to drop it in.

Didn’t know that, but I’d venture the majority are using them? I don’t know why you wouldn’t use one though... what is HEP using?

Loose wires become a mess quickly - not as easy as it sounds. Possible - sure. Def less $$ if not replicating color coded wires per original but extra work and diligence. Fun? Probably not too much.

I built skypilots and am still using it.. another option although it takes a bit more footprint

Curious —
Did you make your own harnesses? And Did you have experience with pins before you delved into the first one? How long are you averaging on a build?

Wow that’s impressive!! I love pinball but can’t imagine building those at that speed or dealing with scratch harnesses.

24g is smaller not bigger than 22

What the ...!? This post elicits at least 3 questions—

Why are you dying wire with mek and fuel dye? I am questioning doing anything to electrical wire that compromises ratings??

Have to ask — Are you talking about yourself in the 3rd person?

And finally - blew a filling? You HAVE to explain this one - how did this happen???? I’m assuming a charged large cap but holy crap!!!

Yikes, that shock sounds like no joke - could have been deadly? Those monitor caps hold a lot of charge.

I’m all for trying — but it does seem like the OP wants to do it his way, regardless of most advice from others.. some of which I’d say is pretty logical.. like checking off near-ubtanium parts first to ensure other efforts and funds aren’t spent in vein. End goals can be reached in many ways I suppose. We shall see... I guess having a play field and cab sitting in your house could be very motivating as well to an end goal!

Yup pretty much, looks like your in the home stretch! pretty playfield! You’re keeping your eyes out for unobtainium parts In the mean time right?

I got some other good stuff in there though!! Lol.

It WAS YOU!!!!!! You got my leg bolts!!!!! Lol

It saves so much hassle.. it’s a quick build and worth it. I’d collect all the parts for the pf first, then build it. You don’t want it sitting around for 3 years 1/4, then 1/2 then 3/4 populated. Will get dusty , and potential for shit to break if you knock it over, etc. when you’re installing stuff topside, I’d also consider putting tools on a towel on it and using the towel in situations you’re tightening stuff where you could potentially slip and scratch the clear. Also make sure you have the right tools to install.. hollow shaft hex 1/4” and 5/16 are must have.

Youd save a lot of shipping Costs on all the available stuff if you just made a full list of parts, then wait until you have the cash for a full order from Marco, and then other companies (or whoever you want to start with) who have other parts Marco didn’t, etc. and while you save cash for that, be watching eBay, Pinside, cL, wherever for the rare / unobtainium stuff.

You might want to drill a plexi template and clamp it over hole(s) - then drill - to be safe

You can build one for $50 or so (sheet of plywood, some screws, lazy susans) — I built sky pilots and it works perfect. Just saying— Don’t have to buy one

I’d be prepared for many ha! Even knowing what you’re doing with pin exp. it’s easy to make mistakes.. there’s just a ton of parts to keep track of and it’s so easy to install something and realize you forgot to install something that access is now blocked to. Its still hard repopulating a playfield you took apart yourself - with reference photos you took as well. Doing it with a blank slate with others photos .. Just take your time, could be frustrating

I don’t think that’s the right topper for TAF...

This is highlighting why you should be a bit more patient and hold off buying random parts that are generally always available in order to save up $500-800 bucks and keep it handy for jumping on the unobtainable stuff when it Happens to appear on eBay, Pinside, or possibly as NOS on a pin parts website like planatary or pinball resource.

You have all the exact lengths needed for each wire or just all the types?

Yeah def don’t cut anything until mechs and stuff is laid out. You want to know exactly where each wire is going to / from and it will be easiest to do similar stuff together probably if you can, then zip tie it clean— you’ll have several trunk bundles but lots of branches from the trunks that go to a few mechs, lights, switches here and there.

I was kinda wondering about that.. didn’t study list too much but it seemed way short lol. A full list of all wire lengths .. off top of my head say 20 drivers, 80? Switches, 30? GI, 60 inserts.. that’s somewhere in the 400 wire range if you ran 2 wires to each device. Of course sometimes wires are doubled up in places,and/or share common grounds,etc. still.. it’s a shit ton of wire. There’s a reason that when you talk about amount of wire in a 90s wms pinball- it’s Often quoted in units of miles, not feet. Not that it’s 10 miles, but it certainly isn’t a 1,000 feet..

Nah —Even closer.. I’d say 75 lol

Did you buy the paper manual yet? That should give you a very good idea.

Not sure what you mean by what’s left percentage wise— there’s a lot of work and parts left bottom line. Besides the cabinet parts left and whole wire harness including IDC’s and Such— you’ve got all the mechicanical and opto switches, ball trough , opto PCb?, motor driver pcb, ball guides, Ramps, light boards, lights, flasher assemblies, backboard and associated parts, rubbers, plastics, random posts still left?, a ton of hardware, some other stuff, and all the unobtanium stuff. Quite a bit left

Have you checked the manual for star post locations? That’s usually all diagrammed out and with part numbers/ descriptions

If it comes down to a manual build of the wire harness— It’s of course proven to be possible but without an example it won’t look like a production harness (esp if you aren’t familiar with pins and how the harnesses are made up and tied together) and I’m foreseeing a lot of headache and troubleshooting. Hell, troubleshooting a factory made game can be a nightmare sometimes - just for stupid little mistakes like a reversed diode on a switch.

To do it right though seems like you’d be sitting down with the manual and cutting and soldering wires very methodically and carefully. Not sure how you’d get all the lengths.. overestimating and clipping excess later maybe? (If you do this shredder, keep in mind you need enough cable back to the boards to pull the pf out of the cab and to lift it vertical.

yeah I've had some tight roll pins.. secured over a solid surface once the holes are def. aligned and try some soft hammering on the pin??..

Not aware of any laser cutting svcs that also will bend for you, pretty sure you’re getting flat pieces back

Wire them? Are you talking about just soldering the header pins to the boards? Should be straight fwd, the boards should have empty holes and that should tell you how many pins you should be soldering to each..

Yeah the clip in spacers are nice, I’d Order and wait for those to come. U can order headers and diodes and get those coming while your at it.

The metal around each light hole faces down and makes contact with the plastic light socket holder contacts when you turn it a quarter turn to ‘screw’ it onto the pcb.

Diode looks fine. You probably will need some for switches if they don’t come on them - I’d order Extra. Other sites may be better for common electronic items like header pins and diodes.

I believe the boards use the non-locking style headers. You could install whatever you want though, as long as you get the correct connector for it. Using the Hi-res pictures available From other restores / builds should tell you. You don’t need 5 each, you just need either the correct Pin numbers for each or buy bulk length and clip to size for each board.

Actually diodes appear correct, at least against the reference ones posted on the last page. I would also expect them on the same side as the drawing for them, but perhaps not?

Uniform diode bends are pretty, that’s a good reccomendation.

Note that you need to clip the ‘key’ pins off the boards, where the white arrows point to. Your connectors will have a plugged hole for that pin (once you install it) to keep things clear as to which connector goes to which board.

Also hard to tell but sone of those solder gloves are questionable to my eye. Make sure you apply enough heat to the legs of the diodes so the solder works to both the board and the legs. The solder makes a kind of volcano shape when correct, usually.. vs a large rounded glob

The weller gun type soldering ‘iron’ is great though for coil lugs and larger items outside of board work. I love mine

Unfortunate u now gave two holes in that board. Minor damage.. better that then the playfield at least

And they used to be separated that way in here as I remember, you prob can find a couple taf builds from a few years ago all in 1 thread if you search on here or his started topics. That said - as mentioned, yes they are also organized well on his website

Rivets would seem best..

True.... but it would be easier to fit it while it’s slightly lighter vs complete and fully populated.

Just a though, As you assemble the topside don’t forget to add rubbers where they go before things get installed in the way

They don’t come cheaper unless you do the non color dmd version. Not sure that anyone did DYI color Roms for that yet though. ColorDMD is the nice, yet pricey, plug and play version. Or get a used standard display for now, for cheap..

You can watch the short video on the colordmd site and see— color is a huge difference and while original is fine.. color is just so much better unless you are an absolute purist (in which case you’d better send back that speaker system and install insert melting incandescent bulbs too).

after the boards and colordmd, you've hit most the big ticket items if you have got all the "unobtanium" parts and mechs and stuff taken care of, and the wire harness. But all the remaining little things still add up quickly.. also LEDs (or LED kit), OCD boards (if you want them), rubber kit, kickers and other coils/mechs/targets not purchased. If you still have boards to buy, I bet you easily hit 9k

By progress so far, looks like you’ll have something flipping within a year. Just make sure you double check what your soldering and connecting when the time comes.. shorting wires and potentially blowing a board could be painful.

Someone had the files already, you just send them out to get laser cut.

Usually there’s a grounding post in the bottom of the back box that the braid would be attached to. Then you run insulated ground wires to dmd and speakers with the circular terminal that fits over the list with a nut on top to lock them down.

I will recommend a soldering gun for the under playfield portions where too much heat and refinement is less of a issue (vs board work). Soldering guns are cheap and awesome for coil and switch connections. But for sure, you can’t build a pin without a fair amount of soldering. And you want to make sure you are fairly confident in the connections you make.

They all should be socketed, so once you have them plug and play. Just be really careful the legs all line up before pressing them in. Personally I’d get the batteries off the boards at least with a remote holder. Unless you’re planning on doing nvram soon

haha yeah, can you tally up those? I'd guess your approaching 100 orders by now? Say $7 average shipping.. You may end up over $1000 just in shipping by the end of the day. Unfortunate as that would cover those other boards.

If you haven’t already at this point you should create a desktop folder, and go thru HEPs Addams pics and other TAF restore threads on Pinside and download all the pictures into that desktop folder. Having that handy to reference can answer a lot of questions as you go along. Esp once you’re back to the playfield, and for the cabinet.

It just presses against the glass, should not be any wrinkles. All the plastic bevels along the sides hold it in place

Something looks caddywompus with the speaker panel plastic - is that loose or something? It looks tilted down on the left vs the right side

Looks like a controller for an lcd?

I don’t know that the cable has a particular name, but it’s just wires. I’d splice in a longer length or just make you own new cable of the corrected length. Good practice anyway for all the taf wiring.

Wait, you connected all the connectors on the boards? Are you going to run all the wires and solder stuff with the playfield in the game?

Otherwise, you’ll want to make all the connections with the playfield in a rotisserie, then put it in the cab and pull the connector housings up into the head and plug into the boards.

Could be me but something looks off with the start button switch stack - looks really bent back like the stack isn’t far enough off the cab?

If you are going true to original, every wms/Bally game Ive seen of that era has The service outlet and fuse box mounted on the floor of the game. I don’t *think taf was different. However I’m not sure it makes any difference.

Coming along..

Oh wow, been so long since I owned it I guess I totally forgot or never noticed lol

Technically I think you’d want the legs leveled to the correct pitch first, then the tilt bob installed so vertical when the cab is pitched

I’d start with the inlane guides and sling posts, sling mechs. You have all the rubbers? Install those as you go.. don’t want to get to 95% done and realize you didn’t Install rubbers below something you now have to remove again.

are the pins labeled on the board? Usually a key would have a triangle pointing at the pin I believe, or be marked "K" or "key". You'll either have to clip the key pin or remove the key on the connector.. best option would be to remove the pin and have all connectors keyed. Just make sure its the right one before clipping!

These are a slightly different style (from a junk yard), and used. But if you can’t find new or want these for free I’ll donate them to the cause and ship them for free.

255AAEF9-9A77-4804-90CB-8F267487544A (resized).jpeg

Solder all the connections to light sockets.

Depends on the switch. Leaf switches typically in $2-$10 range. Really the bodies are all the same but the blade/actuators are different sizes and/or with different bends

Hahahaha. Def not a way to save money or time. There’s still some unobtainable parts to source I think that I am curious about. If you don’t have a way to get that wiring harness though, that’s a real hurdle to jump. Shredder lucked out big time on that

That’s a bunch of full assemblies though, not switches. Switches alone should be $4?- $12 per switch or so

Try searching Spades on Marco

Make sure anything you’re leaving to be done will be easily accessible if you drop it in cab. There’s a number of things that can be hard to get to or very uncomfortable to work on once a playfield is in a cab.. and also be aware that it’s a bitch to drop wms playfields in. It’s much easier if you take the legs off and have the cab on the floor, then a 2 person job to angle it in correctly and get the latches set.

It’s typical to break down a pinball by removing the back legs, lowering the back end down, then the font lifts up so the legs are horizontal and you take them off. (You fold the head and strap it before doing any of this obviously). Then you can hand truck it. Reverse the process to put pegs back on. So in your case, you’d drop the playfield in without legs, then lift the Front up and do the leg install process. Usually nice to have a helper for raiding the back end and a stand to hold it up while the back legs are installed (or helper holds it up)

Yeah something is definitely not going right.. after the end of the connector that’s crimped to insulation, the wire/insulation should look perfect/untouched. I’m not sure how yours are getting so messed up but I’d redo every one of those after you figure out what is going wrong. Makes me wonder about the crimper you’re using, to start.