Picked this up today. It needs a complete tear down and rebuild, but is in decent shape. Lady had owned it for 12 years, I bet the batteries were never changed. Amazingly they didn’t leak. Anyhow, consider this my application to be in the club!

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I’m a new owner of creech. It looks like the Mike D hologram mod is NLA?

The rebuild begins. This thing was a re-import, and I didn’t catch it until I got it home. This game has seen a lot of play...but will clean up nicely.

The backboard is damaged where the metal “lift ramp” screwed into it. Any ideas on how to fix it? Seems like wood filler would crumble.

Here’s a pic of the playfield after novus and a coat of wax. Getting there!

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Thanks, I used kwikwood to fill the void. I haven’t drilled it yet for a screw, we’lol see how it holds up.

It doesn’t sand well, and it looks better in person. The game is players condition....so I’m not that concerned.
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Thanks. The laminate on the face of the board didn’t stick to the kwikwood, so it still puffs out a bit. I tried to get some superglue down in there to secure it but that failed too. Honestly, I’m not that worried about it though.

I’ll post again once it’s drilled and screwed. I have a long ways to go with the game, almost all underside mechs have been rebuilt. On to the topside next.

I assume based on what I’ve read that I won’t be able to find a replacement motor / gearbox for the mirror / hologram. One of mine is dead and the other makes awful noises. And if I’m reading correctly, the mods for it are NLA. Frustrating...

Not sure. If someone knows, I’d love to hear about it. My working one sounds like it has sand in the gear box...

Progress! Only posting it here because my wife and coworkers are tired of hearing about it, ha ha.

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I wish that riveted plastics came....riveted. The snack bar plastic I bought from Marco didn’t have the red dome attached. Here’s my cheapo riveting set up and the results. I may have got it too tight, but nothing appears cracked or spidered.

I put three layers of painters tape over the exposed side of rivet to protect it and used a thick piece of metal set on the concrete floor as solid surface to take the brunt of the hits.

All in all, I’m happy with it.

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Does someone have a picture of this area? Clearly something is not right with the setup for my snack bar plastic. When I got the game, the plastic was snapped in two. I assume I’m missing a hex post or something here?

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How exactly did you bend the scoops? By hand or ??

Well I bent the snackbar scoop a bit and it seems ok.

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Here’s my progress thus far with the rebuild. I can’t tell you how many post holes were stripped out. Thank god for the toothpick and wood glue trick.

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I assume the music playing at a low level after the game over music stops is a software bug. At least that’s my understanding. Would have been nice to have it fixed, but honestly, I’m grateful for what has been done.

I have the updated roms but need to finish my shop job, hopefully done tomorrow or Friday. I can’t wait!

I got this far into the reassembly of my machine and realized I forgot to install a ball guide for the lift ramp. Time to walk away for the day, not pleased. Oh well, some of the wire looms need routed correctly anyhow, so it’ll give me the opportunity to make that right.

Every damn ramp on this thing is broken somewhere, short of the ones I replaced. Seems like the older games can be real money pits.

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I finally got my creech back together this morning. First thing I noticed is the chaser lights on the swirl / whirlpool aren’t working correctly. They don’t turn off when expected. A little reading leads me to believe it’s due to the LEDs not putting enough load on the MOSFET outputs.

I assume the solution is to return to incandescent or buy and expensive aftermarket board?

Frustrating. This game, I bet I’ll have well over $1k in parts invested in it. And it still needs more. Seems like $2k is a reasonable budget when fixing up older machines. That’s what I put into STTNG.

I’m down for waiting on a viable solution. Ironically, I just wrote you on another forum.

I love the LED look, but about 1/3 of my chaser lights lock on. Maybe for the time being I’ll go back to regular bulbs...

Ok, next creech question. Should the jackpot sign push down on the “move your car” switch? Seems like I’m missing a spacer or something?

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Thanks, I guess I’ll just accept it as is for now.

Played my first few games last night, had a little dialing in and adjustments. But overall it’s working great.

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Has anyone noticed that some of the backbox flashers, if converted to LED, illuminate dimly when the flippers are activated? I saw some threads about it happening on system11 games, I assume it’s the same problem here. I guess I’ll put incandescent in the backbox for now...

The looks really good. What kind of paint adheres to the covers?

Just following up, the Kwikwood worked great. I drilled it first and then drove in a wood screw. I’m surprised it didn’t crack or split, but it seem to hold amazingly well.

I bent both of my scoops and it's working much better. I bent both of them with they were installed in the machine. I had to "unbend" the KISS scoop a bit as apparently I went a bit too far and balls were hanging up there. But with a little tweaking, they both work and aren't bending the plastics much.

Finally got a jackpot tonight, first time. Keep in mind that I’ve probably played 25 games thus far since I bought and refurbished the machine. Man, that is not easy. The snack bar hole is a tough shot...

I think I’ve heard rumblings about a super jackpot. That’ll be the next goal...

I kinda regret buying my LED kit from pinballbulbs. It seems like their kits have gone down in quality. Some of the 44s should be flex bulbs, and the flipper LED strip came with one wire unsoldered and then started blowing fuse F109. I haven’t taken the machine back apart to see why it was blowing the fuse, but I won’t order from there again...

Yeah, I should have learned from TZ. All of my 44 inserts got converted to flex bulbs and it looks bad ass. Guess I’ll be buying some comet bulbs for creech. My only draw to the kit was the LED strips, but this time around it didn’t work out for me.

At what point do you get a three ball multiball? Two is easy enough, I’ve yet to see all three balls in play...

Ok, good to know. Two balls are hard enough to manage on the game...

That looks fairly consistent with my kit. I also like that it's a fairly neutral color. I shouldn't be so hard on pinballbulbs, as they immediately sent out a replacement LED strip after I contact them. I do with that they'd use flex bulbs for a lot of the inserts, as the "normal" LED bulbs don't do a good job at lighting the inserts (mainly for the inserts feeding the "Slide" popper on the right side). Oh well, I'll get some Comet bulbs to spice up that area.

And agreed on the lack of “rainbow puke” on the Pinballbulbs kit for creech. I have their kits on my STTNG and TZ, and arguably they are “pukish”, ha ha, but I think they look great. Proud dad moment in this pic, but you can clearly see the difference between the kits.

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I've had my Surf Champ for 5 or 6 years. Honestly, I'd love to sell it just to free up room for something more modern, but it's the wife's favorite game. So there it sits! =)

I have room for 4 games, or that's as much real estate as I'm allowed to use. Realistically, I could fit 15 games in my basement. But I just get the one room....

So today I started digging into my hologram motor. When I bought the game the wires were disconnected from the motor. So today, I reconnected them just to see what would happen.

I can only assume this isn’t the right motor. First, it goes really fast. Second, the sparks go flying inside the housing, lol. Needless to say, I disconnected it again.

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My creech window has seen better days, as has the light shroud that’s mounted to the playfield. I haven’t been able to find the window decals. Once I do, I’ll replace the whole bit.

But for now, I wanted to see how well I could buff out the scratches. I used a 3M headlight polishing kit. The results were fairly good. I’d say that it could be better had I spent more time on the final step, but honestly, this is a temporary solution anyhow...

The before and in progress pics. A gallon paint can, covered with a cloth, makes a nice stand.

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And a few after pics. The last pic is my epoxying the mounts back onto the window.

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There is a burn mark in the window that I couldn’t sand out. I tried and tried, but it wouldn’t budge. Oh well...

Anyone know where I can source decals for the window?

Thanks!

Not a bad first ball. First time I’ve got the super jackpot, yeah!

I’m still getting the hang of this game. It seems as though the right ramp is worthwhile, enabling other features. Or do people strictly go for FILM / jackpots.

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For what it's worth, I experience what he's describing. If I miss the snackbar hole and hit the oddly shaped rubber to the left of it, look out. The ball bounces all over the place.

Creech, IMHO, is one of the harder games to shoot. Bad shots often end in a drain. Compared to STTNG and TZ, it's a drain monster.

I need to check my coils too, as my game is a re-import with many, many creative hacks. I've corrected a lot of them. I'm sure there are more lurking under the hood.

Sound board rebuild today. The panavise and desoldering gun made this job a lot easier. No through holes were damaged. Yeah!

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And done. I added a jumper from C21 to J509 per Clay’s guide, in hopes of obtaining a line out for my sub.

It’s installed and working, yeah!!! Hopefully that’s good for 20 more years.

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Correct, what I purchased is a panavise. Seen below is my exact setup. It was cheaper to order from Amazon than it was from the manufacturer...which seems odd. I just got it yesterday, so I’m new to it. But I was impressed today. No more wobbly boards on my bench as I try to solder.

My desoldering gun is a Hakko 808. I believe they are discontinued, but I’m sure there’s something equivalent or better. Mine is probably 10 years old, maybe more. Funny, for 8 years I never used it. Then a few years ago I learned how to use it, and now there’s no going back.

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My creech was a re-import and the hologram motor (not the mirror motor) was non-functional when I got the machine. Upon investigation, I found that the wires had been cut. So, I connected the wires to see what would happen. What happened were sparks flying from the motor. Not good. Upon further research, I found that the motor wasn’t correct, and furthermore, someone had added a bridge rectifier between the motor controller board and motor.

The motor was 12VCD. I’m too lazy to run the numbers, but the DC from the rectified AC certainly exceeds 12VDC. And there weren’t any filter capacitors. No wonder sparks went flying.

The motor shown on the playfield / rectifier image is the new motor, I don’t have an image with the old motor installed.

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I found somewhere on the web that motor a-14593-1 is nearly the same voltage and rpm. I figured it was worth a shot.

Original motor was 48VAC, replacement is 50VAC.

Link to reference site:
https://www.flippermarkt.de/community/forum/threads/cftbl-replacement-motor.178815/

The motor I ordered and installed:
https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/A-14593-1

What the reference site didn’t say is that physically, the motor won’t fit - even at the hologram location. You have to elongate the mounting holes on the hologram bracket. My machine is certainly not pristine. So this mod didn’t bother me too much. It’s not pretty, but I elongated the holes (which had already been elongated some in the past).

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After elongating the holes, I reinstalled the motor. The new motor is AC, so I removed the rectifier. So far, everything is looking good.

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I ran the hologram test and it certainly turns as expected. However, I somehow thought I’d see more movement on the hologram. I found another video on the web and it looks much like mine. Only the bottom of the hologram is really moved by the motor. Am I expecting too much? Is this normal?

Thanks. Another question. My hologram looks great, other than the his left hand - it’s blurry. Is that a bad hologram, or is there some way to fix it? I don’t see a lot in the way of focus adjustments....

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There are unobtanium, correct? I’d prefer his mod. Just trying to work with what I have.

Does anyone know what rubbers are correct for the window? Pic added since my description is lacking, ha.

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Thanks!!

Got two? I need one too.

What’s the driver transistor? If it’s a TIP102, you should be able to ground the metal tab to see if it’s possibly an issue with the transistor itself. Or just ground the wire at the coil, if you know which side to ground...

I suppose a cold solder joint could be at play, restricting current flow? Or a partially failed transistor. Or some added coil resistance? All seem unlikely, but I suppose anything is possible.

Back on page 70 I documented using motor a-14593-1, which requires some hacking of the bracket. It won’t work for the mirror motor due to space constraints, but works for the hologram motor.

This past weekend, I replaced my right ramp and my whirlpool ramp. Now, when I hit the right ramp directly, the ball often “airballs”, flying off the ramp. Anyone seen this before? I got the ramps from Marco, for what that’s worth.

I know often there’s a plastic shield / cover over ramps at the transition from ramped to level to prevent airballs , but I didn’t have that before. I assume it shouldn’t have that?

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Yack, I hope it doesn’t come to that. I’ll have to compare it to the old ramp. Unfortunately, my old ramp was very busted up at the entrance. But at least it didn’t airball on me.

It is the right one. It rests against the whirlpool ramp at the back. I tweaked that a bit last night, pulling up the right ramp so it sits a little higher. It helped, now 95% of the balls don’t fly off it. I may keep trying to train it higher…