As Meatloaf said, 2 out of 4 ain't bad.

This is a great post! it is less painful to learn from others mistakes... I had asked around the White Water club post for suggestions on how to maybe smooth out some bubbles on the foil of the waterfall topper... And got nothing. So I guess no one has tried... I am afraid maybe it cant be done and My bonehead move would be to try it...

I bought a super nice Tee'd Off and when I got it home it had a severe ground hum. I figured it must be a loose wire, right?? I'll just wiggle some connectors and see if it will go away. Well I proceeded to wiggle the connector to the aux. power supply a little too much and it became unplugged. That's when the wires arched and the DMD went to showing garbage. Now I am replacing chips on the CPU board. Hopefully that is all the damage that I have done. Will see. Worst thing about it so far is that I can't blame anyone other than myself. DOAH!!!

While trying to make my gosh awful cab speaker a bit less...brown on the metal parts, I accidentally knocked one of the screw heads a bit too hard.
Just popped right off

So if for amy reason I ever need to unscrew that, well...

My bonehead move of the week was to replace a 6.8V diode with a 15V diode. DOH!

Put (2) 3 inch scratches in my freshly decaled Williams IJ moving it yesterday

Nothing to add this week but I can just imagine the first game you tested after repair.

hrmm nothing major this week. Worst i can think of is tack soldering in an IC socket then took me a minute to figure out why the board wouldnt boot.

I got a z-back arcade cab. Took decals off, sanded, painted first couple coats....
I just noticed that I forgot to wood fill the 3 holes on the right of the coin door.

This week I decided to clean up SM, which required moving ramps to get under Sandman. After finishing hours of cleaning, polishing and modding the game, I was putting the last ramp into place. Just needed 2 mm to clear a plastic next to it in one spot. Just a slight squeeze and, CRACK, the whole edge comes off. Lets just say that Gorilla Glue doesn't work, and now I wait for another "mod"

In the dark I put 2 different color socks on! I know!!

I was swapping out some LEDs in my TZ the other day, and I forgot to shut off the power before unscrewing one of the lamp sockets. Blew out all the GI on the entire right side of the game. Luckily, it was just the fuse.

I read the schematics wrong and changed a whole series of components on a Sys11 board that did not need replaced.

Also I totally forgot my wedding anniversary. Didn't even have a card for her.

Ouch! How's that working for you?? How many years??

Went to a service at Ft. Snelling on Monday morning. Too cold, too windy, and too long. I've been sick ever since. not a fun week.

LTG : )

Rest up friend. The community is counting on you!!

My bonehead move of the week was setting up a deal to buy a pin that my wife found out about and shut down. Or maybe the bonehead move was that she found out about it to begin with?

I went to put a new plastic under the ramp on my Earthshaker without loosening the ramp like I should have to make some room.Scratched the shit out of the plastic on the posts that held it when I slipped it in.What a dumbass I am sometimes.

Ahhh speaker magnet always the last pkace I find something.

Not pinball related, but while walking though the family room , I was not paying attention and walked into the coffee table and kicked the leg off ,doh!!. It is a low profile one and now I need to fabricate a brace for it. LOL. I will get a picture of it

Last week: Did some soldering to fix a Congo speaker issue. Then spent the next 15 minutes getting a big solder dripping off the MM's glass. Sigh.

did a bunch of leaf blowing/bagging, not realizing a storm was 2 days out with high winds.

more leaf blowing next week! yay

Decided to shop my recently purchased LOTR. Taking off the mylar and removing the glue was the easy part. Apparantly I should have taken alot more pics of what I was doing. What a pain in the ass!

I would've thought that the speaker magnet would be the 1st place that practicalsteve would check for a metal part.

Ha!! That would've been the practical thing to do

Installed shaker in Spidey last night. Seriously spent two hours going everywhere looking for the brown and gray wire, cut my finger open, before working out that the 7pin is already wired up and just hanging there ready to go!

I had a display problem on Rollergames. I touched the ribbon cable and it made it better/worse. At the time I bought a new ribbon cable and a new ribbon connector, which I squeezed on the existing ribbon cable. Everything was fine for months.

Then I installed a remote battery holder, and after putting the CPU back in the game the display had errors again.
When I pulled the new installed connector the top broke off, so I put in the new ribbon cable I had bought and was never installed.

That didn't work either, every segment was fully lit for the digits that were controlled. So I put in the old ribbon cable, and saw I forgot to connect a connector which is used for the display as well. After that everything worked fine again. Remember: if something does not work after some work has been done: check that again.

But the new ribbon cable still caused the problems for all the segments. What was the problem with the new ribbon cable? I had bought one with an additional connector (used for games with the display configuration next to each other like Elvira), and the extra connector was making shortcircuit between all of the wires.

Responding to a craigslist ad and arranged pickup at 4pm. Didn't tell the wife I was buying a new game. When I was on the road to pickup the game I used my handsfree to call the seller and left a message on the voicemail saying "I have the cash on my way to pickup the game ". Only my hands free called my wife and the voice mail was hers. When she called me back I had an earfull. :/

Pictures of the table....

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Just finished my Funhouse Refurbish/Restore, Did not test all coils before hand. Thought it was finally a good idea to test them. Found one bad coil on Rudy's eyes. LOL
Thankfully I needed to order a bunch of stuff from Marcos with the coil.

I picked up a Whirlwind that was in pretty rough shape and I reconnected a couple solenoids from which the wires had come loose.

OT, but it seems that some have already gone that direction. I'm a University of Tulsa alum and yesterday was homecoming (though someone forgot to tell the team). I was asked to chair the bonfire again this year after someone had to bow out. I did it last year, so felt much more comfortable knowing what to do/expect. What I didn't plan on is my back going out stacking pallets and wood for the fire on Friday . . . Didn't even make it to the "game" yesterday. Getting old sure does suck sometimes!

This is a pre-emptive post. Recently bought a Whirlwind and I'm definitely technically/mechanically handicapped. Ordered LED kit from Cointaker. Machine needs, I think, some coil/switch repair, general cleaning,etc. Only time will tell what stupidity lies ahead.

I picked up a Whirlwind that was in pretty rough shape and I reconnected a couple of solenoid from which the wires had come loose. Upon powering up, smoke poured out of the back box leaving a very scorched System 11 board. It turned out all of the fuses had been replaced with higher amperage ones. Two lessons learned the hard way: always check that the right fuses are in place and never trust that a wire was not intentionally cut rather than simply loose...

Wow! Maybe I can avoid that one

OUCH

Not recent but I knocked my soldering iron off the table and caught it before hitting the floor.....

(It was NOT room temperature)

Tried to unscrew a switch without turning off Breakshot and accidentally touched it to a solenoid. Everything reset and now the previously working game gives a "improper driver board" error. Also, one of the ICs melted.

Photo on 11-3-13 at 7.54 AM.jpg

I'm pleased to report that I *FINALLY* recovered from the bonehead move I made over a week ago. It was a long hard struggle that nearly destroyed the CPU board of the game, but I finally got it put back together and working again. This time I vow not to try to make any more improvements unless it starts throwing codes again.

I can admit to my bonehead move of the day. I decided to take some pics of the flipper led mods I made and lifted my AC/DC playfield without removing the balls. Things were good until at attempted to slide the pf an inch or so back so that it would be firmly against the stops. All four ball came out (one at a time) and hit the center of the glass on my Black Rose. I thought for sure one of them would have busted the thing because they were loud as hell. My wife came running into the room to see the damage. Thankfully, not even a scratch on the damn glass.

It will probably disintegrate when I try to remove it this week...

Still not buying a magnetic bit driver. Did a tear down of SST and shopped Wipe Out this week. Spent way too much time searching for dropped screws.

I am stupid stubborn about that too. Everytime I am searching for screws I swear I am going to buy one, then I forget. Rinse. Repeat.