Dont assume anything.
Check every step.
Test your work.

Jump off the cliff, go wild, wooo....don't listen to @pinballreno lmao

Seriously, @pinballreno is 100% correct. We will be watching!

How bad can it be? 50 years of abuse and then be subjected to wet salty warehouse? These are the before pictures of my Mini Playfield. It turns out to be mostly surface rust, and many of the rusty screws, nuts and bolts are in stock.

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In my quest to rebuild a Mini Playfield, after disassembly, I upgraded to a new wood playfield from CPR. I don't know what "silver" meant on the back side, but as I saw on multiple YouTubes, you need to trim about 3mm off the front of the new one. Which also means there will be a 3mm gap at the back. I measured all the holes, that needed to be added on both the front and back. After marking the holes with a pen on the new playfield, it is an excellent idea to trial fit the part that will be screwed into place. Then with awl or nail, punch a divet hole, to mark where to drill a small pilot hole. Pictures show the differences of original and new. I also scanned my measurements for the holes to be added. Noting that I needed to subtract 3mm from the vertical measurements from the back of the playfield.

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I drilled all the missing holes on my drill press.
I also used the drill press to mount the t-nuts also.

I posted this proceedure awhile back.

Search my posts and you might find something you need.

Feel free to ask if you have a question!

Is this the MPF that was listed for 1200?

Yes it was! I got it for a lot less. In my search for parts, I found that although many are available, many are not.

Cool! Best of luck in your resto. I really need to get my DW finished up. Someday....

The hunt begins...

Oh my, way to jump into the hobby. Wish you the best. I love me some DW.

Wait. Do you ONLY have the the MPF? So you don’t even have the rest of the machine? Or did I misunderstand? What do you actually have for a DW?

We tried to tell him on the sale thread...

You gotta start somewhere!

If you wait long enough you can grow the entire machine from the MPF.

True. But...but...oh never mind. Welcome to the club? Sort of?

Thanks. Yes I only have a MPF. It is my way of learning about pinball machines, parts, suppliers, tools and techniques. So far I have learned about after market parts, Back order parts, Out of stock parts, and refurbishing parts. I took an electronics class in college in 1976. I am re-learning soldering, flux, and the fine art of holding two wires together, while trying to solder them. I have learned about coils, plungers, sleeves and springs. I am having fun. I did not want to jump into a major pinball project, without first seeing if I liked it. Sorry if this club is for owners of the whole machine....

Ha ha ha. It’s all good I was just confused. You’re having fun. That’s all that matters.

It’s not like that. I for one admire your moxie. But dude you could be playing a machine right now for only a but more cheddar! I’d love to see you in a WHOLE DW
As soon as possible.

Hey Guys,

Quick question. I ordered new doctor who decals from ministry of pinball and I noticed the windows of the tardis have different colour windows on the backbox.

Is this normal? I note there is an official red Bally hologram on the prints.

I’m confused. Anyone with original artwork can confirm this is normal or a print error?

Thanks

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Looking at mine, they are both yellow on the backbox left and right side as well at the start button area.

I don’t think that’s the same as the original print, but it does look kind of cool!

I have the same decals, Its a print error.

My set also has white windows for the left side.

Its not a noticeable defect.

My only complaint was the lower cabinet side decals were 2" shorter than the cabinet. I had to center them aesthetically. In the end, I like it a lot with the borders I created.

Ministry of pinball was the only game in town at the time for official decals.

In spite of errors, they are next-gen and shouldnt fade out too bad.

They still dont have any more on their site and its been a year...

Maybe they will fix them in the next batch.

Any chance you can post a photo of what you mean. I want to make sure mine looks as good as possible.

They are exactly the same as the decals you bought from ministry of pinball.
I got mine from the same place.

Measure and check the fit.

I posted some pics here when I finished my cabinet.

Yeah I looked at it - I dont really like the way it looks prefer it go 2-3mm from edge.

Are you sure my Decals have that issue being too short ?

Ive heard reports from people that these decals can shrink over time - is that a possibility for your decals or do you think this is a printing issue.

Im not convinced that this artwork is original Bally/Williams

I might have to get a refund ...

Measure then and check for length.
No shrinkage on my decals.

I happy with the thickness and durability of these.

I just measured - Mine don't seem to have the length issue - they are 20mm longer than the cabinet length ..

So the white Tardis window aside - they are also missing the trademark R on the Bally logo on the cabinet decals.

Seems like they aren't official repro units.. They also look alot darker and the blending on the backbox art doesn't quite look right.. Fades into white dots rather than if you look on the official artwork looks alot better

You might see if there are other decals available if you dont like them.

I have seen a couple places but dont know anything about the quality,

I just ordered a set from these guys.

https://pinballdecals.eu/shop/doctor-who-pinball-cabinet-decals-set/

I installed a road show kit from them for a friend and was happily impressed with the print, coloring , and quality. Will let you know how these look once I get them. Not sure if it’s normal, but my friends decals took almost 2 months to get. Seems they were stuck in NY for a loooong time.

Right now my order is in Croatia waiting to ship.

Have just joined the club! My second pin, arrived yesterday, and I couldn’t be more thrilled with it. This thread has already been a great resource for me, and in time I’ll be looking into new decals and motorizing that topper.

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Welcome to the club!! This is a great challenging pin with numerous ways to up your scores using the right Doctor and or getting the video modes completed. I’m not great at this game now, best score so far has been only 495,553,860, usually score around 140,000,000 with 5 balls, but oddly play it the most in my small collection.

Putting in some work on my Doctor Who. It has been an on and off type project unfortunately. Lots done so far, but a bit more to go. I have a new motor drive board coming along with a few other parts. I will post a picture of this hacked up motor board once I pull it to install the new one. Very interesting bypass of the chip. It does turn CW, but not CCW at the moment though.

The new topper dome went on last night. The old one was shot with a big hole in the side.

All the bulbs have been swapped out. Comet 2SMD frosted sunlight in the GI. Color matched inserts where appropriate. The LED's are a major upgrade to this game with the dark colors all over.

I installed cliffy's on the MPF. It seems to just clear without rubbing. I think I will end up pulling the MPF again to check adjustments and may see about moving it back a hair.

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New dome looks fantastic!

Finally had a great fun game with my best score to date. And yes, all my pins are set to 5 ball, myself and my wife are not good enough for 3 ball play. But wow! Was actually thinking about selling it since I keep getting low scores and has just been frustrating actually.

Finally got the shots down, mostly. Got all the doctors, beat all the video modes (I think) beat Davros once. Is the “wizard mode getting all the doctors, or something beyond beating davros?? Don’t think I will ever beat this score for a while, but much better than the previous game since I only got 5 million with 5 balls!

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The other thing you can do instead of(or in addition) to 5-ball is enable 4 replay levels that auto adjust. Replays and specials award extra balls. No limit on extra balls. So when you are having a good game you are rewarded but as you get better the levels automatically adjust to make it harder to get extra balls.

All my machines are set up like that (3-ball play though). You get a brief period of easy extra balls but after a while you really need to have a good game to get the extra balls.

I'm just over 1.9B as a high score. The first extra ball gets awarded at 495M right now and then 2X, 3X, and 4X that score.

Great Score!

Your game looks amazing.

I like to try and get 4x from loops before I go into the multiball battle.
My pinsound 13 doctors mix has an audible cue on the ramp that can help with the timing of the shot.

I have seen 800 million points available in about the 4th davros multiball.

The game is pretty deep:

http://pinball.org/rules/drwho.html

The best strategy for big points is the video mode all time said by expert who plays on this video.

The biggest smash of points on DW is to hit the sonic boom and then spell W-H-O. Each shot is worth 40M, and then if you can start the multiball and kill a Dalek, you are in the money!

I’m hoping Santa will be bringing me a pinsound board so I can download your file. Really looking forward to it.

That and the motion control with shaker!

All I can say is that Pinsound did an amazing job on the shakerizations for Doctor Who.

Its a totally different game, and as good as any of the current offerings.

How is this adjusted in the settings? Great score by the way. Think I am around 950 million, haven't broke the billion mark yet. Thanks.

Haven’t had time to deal with the shaker yet - which one did you install? Thinking about doing that.

Im using the pinsound shaker.
I really like the way they programmed the settings, they put a lot of work into it and it shows.

Worked a bunch more on my game the past couple of days. The MPF was in and out a few times working on alignment and really trying to get it right. One thing that always worked were the target optos. Well I got it all back together again and the right hand opto popped up in test report and didn't work on the test menu. Started a game though and it worked great! Fingers crossed it stays like that!

Running list of repairs:
Who ramp entrance switch
New topper dome
A couple lamp sockets
New motor driver board
New coin door service buttons (two were bad)
Random wires broke off under playfield
Upper flipper rebuild and new coil (hold was not working)
Coil sleeves
All comet bulbs sunlight frosted for gi and color matching in most of the inserts, led flashers, backbox has a mix of cool and sunlight (haven't decided which I like most yet)
New MPU (original had corrosion that I couldn't 100% repair)
Clear titan rings, red for flippers
New DMD
Mini playfield adjustments
Evaporust treated the legs

Have a few little things to do and then will get some pics posted. Feels good to be almost done with this one.

Great list. Here are my comments.

When u evaporust those legs, Make a PVC tube and submerge them for a few days, then rinse and polish. Will look like new

MPU- Buy one from @dumbass, sells great products.

Read this thread! Lots of great repair info hear and many of us willing to lend a hand.

If you need any decal files for printing, send a PM my way, I can email you what I made or touched up along the way or made brand new.

Happy Repairing.

Ken

Thanks!
To clarify, I already did all in the list. MPU is rottendog. I did the PVC tube for the legs. That worked really well. They were in for 24 or so hours. Rinsed with hot water then dried them. Also thanks for the offer for decals. I will keep that in mind for sure.

What size PVC tube did you use 3", 4", etc and how much evaporust did you need to get to fill it?

Did you do all legs at once or one at a time?

I need to try this on some legs and other parts.

I recently picked up my first DW. I'm loving the game so far, but one thing is kind of bugging me. I have pretty strong flippers on my game, and I've noticed that a lot of times when I shoot the left orbit the ball will hit the pop bumper and then come back down the orbit and SDTM. Is this a common issue with the game? I was thinking of perhaps installing a one way gate right before the pop bumpers, but I don't know how easy this would be. Another thought was to stick a thin piece of foam on the ball guide so it would kick the ball to the right on its way back to the flippers.

Mine does the same thing sometimes. If I nudge the machine, it usually doesn't happen. I don't have a tilt bob installed right now, so I can nudge all I want.

Check your horizontal level, adjust as necessary.

Also maybe tweak/reshape the flatrail a little.

The ball should return to the left flipper from the left orbit.

I spent a little time on this. DW playfields are notoriously warped due to the heavy time expander.

Also the playfield mounting brackets/holders were not aligned straight across from each other on my game, and probably lots of others. The holes in the playfield are actually drilled wrong from the factory. Possibly a bad template (not the first time, lol).

The time expander warp and the crooked playfield mounts cause a weird twist the the playfield that makes the backboard drag on the cabinet side and lowers the right rear corner so that it sits at an angle.

A 1/8" plywood or plastic shim under the playfield holder on the low (right) side helps a lot.

It can be installed without totally removing the playfield by inserting a cardboard box under the playfield backboard while its standing up to support it.

Most DW games have gouges/scratches in the rear right, cabinet wall due to this assembly error.

I resolved the crooked playfield issue during assembly by elongating the playfield holder holes and mounting it properly.

I posted some pics of this during my restore.

After putting in the shim the ball should hug the flatrail a lot better and serve it to the left flipper.