It's all cleaned very well and then hand painted. I need to do a clear coat (well several coats) but I plan on dropping in a playfield protector as well to help prevent any further wear.

Amazing work!

Very nice work. What type of playfield protector are you referring to? Also, did you use standard acrylic paint for the touchup work? And did you put some type of clear lacquer over your touchup paint after it dried? Now I want to do this to a few of my pins!

I have one from https://www.playfield-protectors.com/ on mine. And on a DE SW and Genie. Helps fix raised/sunken insert issues.

Mark... helicopter plastics on my machine are attached like this:

The holes in the two plastics pieces are staggered yet the hex spacers and plastic spacers and screws would all be the same height/length. Know what I mean?

Hex spacers are approx 1" in length and the little plastic spacers between the two plastic pieces are 1/2" or maybe less, like 3"8". Another one of those things where I doubt the "originality/correctness police" are going to dock you points lol. I'd say if you got 1" hex spacers female on each end (8-32 I would assume but might be 6-32) and then 3/8" plastic spacers along with screws that are say 1-1/4" thread length, you'd be good.

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That helps - I am starting to put it all back together so this will work for me to set it all up since my game never had those pieces installed in it...

Seems easy enough - I have all those kind of pieces should be no problem.

Thanks again!

Thanks! I’m new to owning pinballs and this is my second project pin and everyone here has given me a lot of good advice. I used polycrylic paint (decent kind at about $4/bottle) I also used a water based polycrylic clear coat that I put about 4 layers on, sanded flat and put one final layer one. I’m going to buy a playfield protector from playfield-protector.com but hoping for a decent Black Friday sale to save a few bucks. I’m also putting in new LEDs and I have a new vinyl wrap to add to the cabinet (thanks @wamonkey) so I’ll post pictures when I’m done.

Good luck - just clearcoated my playfield this week, turned out pretty good just buffed out the usual little things. Mine is black decals on the cabinet (that is why I sold the blue ones - that was a mistake), got the chrome gun handle from Pinball Plating - looks amazing versus what I had, new side rails, new lockdown bar, new legs all powder coated black from Pinball Life - just cheaper to buy them new then powder coat the old ones (which is absolutely crazy to me). I did something that people will think is crazy, I bought the cheapie beacon off Amazon that everyone uses (I got the one that is a little more tear drop shaped) and rather then use the whole assembly I just took out all of the insides and used the plastic base and dome with my old light assembly since all I needed was the dome anyway, cheapest way to a new blue beacon dome and was easy probably just as easy as putting a new molex plug on the one I bought but I thought why not at least try to keep the old inside parts seemed way better constructed then the China made beacon if you ask me.

I will post some pictures later....

BTW - STLOkie - that is some real good touch up on the playfield - really looks good! YOu can hardly tell it was done, you really have to look....it helps the art on LW3 is more cartoon'ish then a photoshop style art of many more recent pins.

GREAT WORK!

Thanks! For sure it helps that the art style is a bit more “hand drawn” in style. I wouldn’t have tried it otherwise. My art on the explosion isn’t 1, which I could have done, but I actually think mine looks better. Been fun to work on.

Speaking of "hand drawn", here's my new keychain. I found the image online and slightly tweaked it ...

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That is awesome!

Here is today’s project….start reassembling stuff.

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Looking good I did the same with a chromed gun and found a mode3 light bar for a topper. Black looks great for this game in my opinion and saves the headache of colormatching!

It is the plastic piece that is on the right side that covers the eject hole.
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Jeez dude, you sure you couldn't have found a smaller thumbnail? lol

Haha

O.K. found a better picture:
I was hoping someone has the complete raw plastic that is not knife cut.
lw3 plastic (resized).jpg

Mine is coming along. I have taken this opportunity to learn how to powder coat. I figured I could set up a powder coating operation for about the same price as hiring it out. And afterwards I can do my other pins for “free”! My wife was kind and helped me with the vinyl wrap today.

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Nice color matching between the cabinet and the decal looks good.

Thanks. I used the color code a member posted earlier in the thread. It matched the old paint almost exactly. The decals are a little darker but I don’t think it’ll be enough to bother me. I got the decals off EBay. They are very thick vinyl. Thickest I have ever worked with. Reminds me of a swimming pool liner! I had to modify my install method to accommodate them. I cut a 4” strip of the backing paper off along the top, dry stuck that border and then peeled backing paper from remainder and applied with water/detergent agent. Otherwise the decal just slid around too much.

The border visible in the top photo is not paint/vinyl. It is vinyl/vinyl. Back box decals were too short so I spliced in a couple of inches of cutoff from the sides. Don’t tell anyone

Good to know on that paint staple color, I found that same post as I'm also about to wrap my cabinet but need to touchup all the other exposed sides. Looks great.

hey guys,
i need to pull, ideally, 5v from somewhere in the head box. any help? if not 5v, 12v will work also, will just need a voltage converter.
Cheers

12v at head flasher location.

If you want a plug and play solution, you could purchase something like this ...

ebay.com link: itm

Does anyone happen to have a spare gun barrel lying around? The chrome finish on mine has partially peeled off ...

Gun barrel (resized).jpg

Just getting my LW3 up to speed. Really surprised, I thought I didn't like this game and sort of happened into one and... It's a winner! Maybe since it's so different than all the other DE games that start to feel sort of samey, but I dig it.

A few questions, glanced through the thread and didn't see these so sorry if they have been answered...

The mirrored plastic in the back is broken, is there a place to get new mirrored plastic?

My translite is pretty bad. Any source for new ones?

Anyone else have weird metal targets on the skill shot targets?

How much does the sound benefit from upgraded speakers?

Thanks!

gdonovan just did a run of them. They came out great. Perhaps he has an extra one.

There are currently both used ones and repros on eBay.

I printed off some circuit boards that plug into the power supply and then the factory connector piggy backs to my board. It allows you to use a four position molex to grab 5 and 12 volts directly off the power board and not alter factory wiring.

$15 plus shipping.
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Awesome on the plastic, thanks for that info.

And I apologize, I should have asked... Are the repro translites good quality? I don't see the used one, but I had seen these.

I don't know about the quality of the repros. Hopefully, someone else can chime in. Here's a link to the used one ...

ebay.com link: itm

It's confusing, because it says "New" under condition, but if you read the description, it is clearly used. Of course, it could be a used repro.

Nice looking job you did there It could be Retro Refurbs vinyl. I did mine in black, the decal was super thick. Potentially look out for some "shrink" in the first few months. Might not happen to you but it happened to me. I applied without detergent and may have been too tensioned.

Are you talking AC or DC?

Wondering if anyone has an electric copy of some apron cards for LW3? Cheers..

Maybe check on:

http://www.pinballrebel.com/game/pins/instruction/index.htm

Thankyou for that. Appreciate it.

Thanks for the link.

DC to run a few led strips

could i tap into this from the back of the DMD? i have a PIN2DMD installed.

IMG_1620 (resized).JPG

looks sweet!! but i'm scared to ask what postage to Australia is currently. Probably just happy to tap into the cables.... just want to make sure where i grab it from won't overload anything. Planning in running ~50 led rgb 2812 strip

i need some new playfield glass channels for my machine, i cant find the original part number ones #545-5017-00 . Will the b/w ones fit ? #03-7135-1

Anyone replace the stand up targets recently?

I purchased new stand ups from Pinball resource but they came without diodes, just looking to see how someone else did it so I make sure I do it right…

Anyone got images of their diodes on new drop targets…

Mark,

Here's a couple pictures of how mine are. These photos aren't very good admittedly as it's hard to focus on things underneath as I'm sure you know.

And the sketch, which may not be how LW3 is wired, is what I found when redoing stand-up targets on a Funhouse. Similar pattern and direction for the band on the diodes? Maybe, maybe not.

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Superdog switch wiring sketch (resized).jpg

Thanks you have been a huge help on my restore… my game at first seemed pretty good when I bought it but when you dig in there is always things that need work.

Much appreciated…

Adjustments question...

I'm using Chads code update from pinballcode.com but I don't think it should make a difference.

Is there a way to stop the game from auto-adjusting the amount of ramps needed to light extra ball on the LW1 kickout hole? After a factory reset it is three times but the more I play the higher it gets until it maxes at (I think) 17 ramps before extra ball is lit. I would like it so the extra ball is lit at three (or a customizable fixed amount of) ramps and doesn't change.

Can this be configured while at the same time:

- Allowing the SPECIAL to still award an extra ball.

- Keeping the VICTORY LAP enabled?

I cant seem to get all three criteria met here with any adjustment configuration.

Thanks!

I ordered mine about a month ago and Steve said he was out of the translucent yellow standups. Are they back in stock?

Hi, can someone please tell me the codes of the lamp socket in the backbox? For
flash and normal lamps. Thanks

I got mine from Pinball Resource - Marco or Pinball Life never had them - always out of stock. They worked great thanks to ALexRogan84 for the pics and the help on the install (they differ slightly on the tabs).

I should have clarified, Steve is the owner of Pinball Resource, he’s the “grumpy” guy on the phone. Did you email them instead? I’ve never gone that route.