Who's gonna make a proper BG for Cheetah?

BG = back glass ? If so, then B G Resto.

I meant to ask -- who's gonna make a proper alternate?

And what is a proper alternate?

Would an owner mind posting some photos of their wiring pinouts? I'm starting to get things going on my scratch build and the original playfield harness I got is decently hacked up. Of course SEI's schematics have their flaws too, so even just starting to re-pin the harness I've had a few headscratchers.

For example, the schematics say the "ball kicker" coil uses a red-white wire, but my connector seems to be pinned with a white-black. Scouring through photos, it looks like @tractordoc's may also have a white-black coil return wire?

76AE2020-D9D9-421F-8D1D-FEE7F9F5AC56_1_201_a (resized).jpeg
Screen Shot 2022-11-07 at 4.24.38 PM (resized).png
Screen Shot 2022-11-07 at 4.36.50 PM (resized).png

I think slochar has mentioned wanting to clean up these manuals. Does anyone have a list of errors for Cheetah?

And just an example of what needs to be cleaned up...
IMG_7311.jpeg

Stern substituted wire. On my Big Game 4 wires were subbed. Purple/black was replaced by brown/black, for example. I figure the production line ran out of pur/bulk and was not going to shut down the line. I’m guessing this is what you are dealing with.

It will be 2-3 days before I can get time, but I can pull my Cheetah harness out and take some pics of the connectors for you

If your blk/wht wire traces back to the correct pin on your connector, then the wire was substituted

In the end, your key is what color of wire is on the connector and that is what you go with.

I am assuming your blk/wht wire traces back to the connector pin at A3-J2-15. Is this correct?

Currently I’m only making best judgments on where the connector > wires are going. I haven’t started laying out the pf yet.

0E6FAFCD-DE43-4291-9FED-47EE198A8D1D (resized).jpeg

Can i get a playfield picture from this vantage point from someone’s completed game? I need it to do a minitorial on the games rules, and mine is not complete yet. Haha.

D85FEDEF-5F98-41E8-B214-2F8C7F21FCEB (resized).jpeg

Just picked up a nice Cheetah! Not sure if I'll keep it or sell it, I want to play it for a while & make it play/sound/look as good as possible. Anything I should do? I have black cabinet. I see there are alternate sound roms that I might try, but is there any alternate or improved roms for the game code?

As promised, here are some pics of my Cheetah play field harness.

It stretches out to 9 feet long.

IMG_1766 (resized).jpg

Here are the board connectors.

IMG_1768 (resized).jpg

IMG_1775 (resized).jpg

I have wiring for 3 connectors on the SDU. I am missing the connectors for two right hand side pins.

IMG_1772 (resized).jpg

I have wiring for the two top connectors for the MPU.

IMG_1771 (resized).jpg

And I have wiring for 3 connectors on the LDA.

The cabinet harness will take up one set of pins on the MPU. But I don't know where my other connectors are at. I bought a populated Cheetah play field off of Ebay. And this is all I can recall of pulling wire from the play field. I'll have to headache out the missing wire connectors when the time comes ( since I was so new when I bought this play field, I may have put part of the harness into my grab bag of wire).

I can get you pics of the connectors that I have. Tell me what you need to see pics of. I will oblige.

Thanks cottonm4 -- I look forward to you getting that project off the ground too. We may be ships in the night on our current projects as after I do Cheetah, I'm going to do Nine Ball. I think I have the connectors figured out (at least theoretically until I get to laying it out on the playfield, which likely won't happen until December because of a long vacation to Australia coming up in about 10 days!

Does anyone know if there are roms that provide both the prototype sounds, as well as the rules with 1 bonus shot per ball?

Yep rev 16
http://tsqmadness.com/slochar/ZIP/

Awesome thank you!

What do y'all think? Can the Cheetah gal be considered a Gypsy?

I don't think so.

Upon further inspection, Africa (where most of the Cheetahs are) is one of the largest concentrations of the Romani outside of Europe. African Gypsies aren't so uncommon to this day.

Screenshot_20221123-233728 (resized).png

My Cheetah has an AQ-26-600 coil for lower left flipper assembly. The other two are 25-500. Is this typical for cheetah or should I replace?

Per the manual they should all 3 be J-25-475/34-4500*

*Technically the manual says "J-25-475/34-3400" but since SEI manual were prone to error (that's not a coil that exists, to my knowledge), I'm going off Inkochnito's tech chart: http://www.pinballrebel.com/pinball/cards/Tech_Charts/Stern_Cheetah_Tech_Chart.pdf
Screen Shot 2022-12-22 at 10.30.15 AM (resized).png

Screen Shot 2022-12-22 at 10.31.39 AM (resized).png

Stern manual calls out for J-25-475/34-3400. It does not specify any other flipper coil number so assume all 3 should be this number.

https://www.ipdb.org/files/500/Stern_1980_Cheetah_Manual.pdf

Screen Shot 2022-12-22 at 10.29.46 AM (resized).jpg

Put in the 475s and you will probably enjoy playing it more.

AQ-26-600 is a Bally spec coil. Stern didn't use them.
Swap it with the upper left coil for now until you get the right ones.

I figured that was the case. I have the correct coil here I just wanted to make sure this wasn't intentionally done by Stern. Thanks everyone!

Can anyone tell me why this could be happening? Maybe wrong rubber for the mini post? I got the rubber ring set from marco. Should this be using the even smaller rubber? Ball does fit down the same lane on the other side but just barely.

20221222_175859 (resized).jpg

Looks like you have 7/16" minipost rubbers on there, switch to the 3/8" size. But still might be a tight squeeze on that side, make sure the post is not bent. Perhaps the slingshot rubber is just a bit thicker than another brand.

Looks like bad CPR spotting strikes again. I double check ALL of them now after getting burned on trusting them on three different replacement fields.

The sling posts might need a nudge to the left.

That doesn’t look like a CPR playfield to me.

Yeah looking back guess not my phone screen is small.... So rubber and you could still move the posts.

This.

Try putting the slingshot rubber on the inside of the wireform. All my Sterns slingshots are rubbered this way.

Lightning_Right_Lanes.jpg

Slingshot rubber needs to be tucked behind the metal ball guide.

There’s also really no point to have rubber on that post.

On my Lightning those two rails are not high enough to have the rubbers tucked behind them nor would they stay there if they were. They are merely touching the bottom of the rings, barely, they are not affecting the position of the rings. I have no problems with clearance, and I even have larger 7/16" minipost rubbers.

Cannot really tell how high those rails are on the Cheetah from that angle. Problem could be the rails are actually a tiny bit *high* and the rings are being pooched outward a bit, reducing ball clearance. But the rubbers along there seem to be straight and not pooched out. Having them tucked in like that does not look 'right', to me anyway. And the point where the ball is going to get stuck is practically right next to the top sling post so can't see the tucking making a difference here. Well, maybe just enough to let the ball barely eke thru there if it's still getting stuck.

Put smaller rings on the slings will fix it too.

Probably didn't have a problem if it had the skinnier type rubber rings in them old days, along with 3/8" post rubbers which the manual does specify instead of those fatter ones. So yeah a little bit smaller sling ring would thin it out too. Still seems the alignment of everything around there is just a tiny bit off, enough to cause this issue. I think you can still find skinnier rings but you shouldn't really have to resort to that.

Is the other side the same way?

Thanks for the tips. Between tucking the rubber in & using the proper smaller post rubber things are definitely better.

My cheetah should be ready next month!!

911F0F6E-63EA-46D8-8519-FB3D5A40A031 (resized).jpeg

preeeetty

Are those Bally flippers?

Looking good. The back rail shouldn’t go across the entire top of the playfield though. The posts behind the drops won’t fit. Can’t find a better pic off hand…

0C924C33-3A0A-4BF4-9004-AC8FC7769B8D (resized).jpeg

Not sure. If they are, I’ll fix it later.

Would it be any different to leave it this way and skip the posts?

It would probably increase the chance for the ball to get hung up behind the drops or something, especially since you’re using the tombstones? Reduce bounceback action from the pops? Heck if I know but I assume they made it that way for a reason.

Regardless you need to make room for the one-way gate too. Easy enough to cut it down and reinstall, right?

I assume it works as this is his second cheetah he’s done. Shrug. I’ll ask him.

I suppose you could get a piece of rubber and bond it to the back rail for the rebound effect.

That's a hard spot to hit directly so the rail being there might be ok. I think those drops are intended to be hit by either grazing them from the left or right orbits or from the pops directly.

Confirmed it will be cut before final assembly and posts added.

Got the base down on my F2K > Cheetah cab (technically cabs, plural. The head and body were scavenged separately). I chickened out on custom painting it pink even though I think it’d look good and better suit the rest of the Cheetah artwork, particularly the backglass. But I have one of the blue insert repro pfs, so let’s keep it stock.

E2802B13-90D5-4DC2-AE02-A9806C7C11AC (resized).jpegF92B6295-2E92-4067-935B-EB18FC5D841B (resized).jpeg

More pictures, please. And I want to know how you rate/rank it to your Big Game.

I need a source for the spinner switch arms that go through the playfield. I need 3 of them.

Pinball Resource

Get the one on top. You will need to make 2 bends ( a U-Bend ) to the straight end to match your spinner switches. Make your bends but do not cut any excess rod away.

They are cheap. But a couple of extras for just in case.

Screen Shot 2023-03-05 at 3.05.12 PM (resized).jpg