(Topic ID: 176240)

F-14 Tomcat playfield swap club

By damageinc55

7 years ago


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  • 214 posts
  • 45 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 3 years ago by RickInFl
  • Topic is favorited by 30 Pinsiders

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#27 7 years ago
Quoted from StylesBitchly:

I have just finished rebuilding all the flipper assemblies per vid's guide (thanks again vid) and unsoldering all the hardware from the harness and labeling the wires and rebuilding all the snubber boards with new R1 resistors and capacitors. Waiting for new flush mount (staple) 44 sockets for lamps. I will not use the old ground braid wire. Next is to rebuild the pop-bumper and then any other moving parts that need it. Make sure to replace the caps on pop-bumper and slings.
I will wash the wiring harness in the dishwasher. I'm sure you know to remove the snubber boards first! You don't want to get water in the relays.
Cheers!

Are you going to put stapled down ground braid down on the new PF? I know it would probably be more work, and make the game less original, but I don't think I'd want to solder that many points up against a brand new PF so I'd want to use feature sockets and run ground wires between them all instead. Just curious what the predominate method is when doing a PF swap.

#46 7 years ago
Quoted from bronco-jon:

I have a later production and my original PF has a gap in front of the ball kick out.
There is no sign of ball wear in that gap area (between the blue and the wood), however there is slight wear just past the blue, like the ball jumped that "gap" every time.

Same here - pardon the blurry photo but I don't have the game here right now to take a new picture.

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#50 7 years ago
Quoted from bronco-jon:

That's something I'm not even gonna worry about. Why would I when It never became or caused an issue on my original from the manufacture that has that gap?

Based on where the damage is in all the pictures I think I would put some mylar down at the eject path to help protect that spot.

#71 7 years ago

I decided to take the plunge and buy a new PF (I was on the pre-order list but had to drop out for personal reasons, now Peter is hooking me up anyway). I won't be installing it anytime soon but my game does have the light boards so if any of you currently doing a swap have the light boards I'd appreciate details on how you go about addressing that!

#85 7 years ago
Quoted from damageinc55:

Wow, holy hell. I'm surprised I mixed up the coils. I should take some more inspection photos
I'm pretty sure my board is okay, just a bad photo.

R1 does look toasty, just like every single one of them were on mine. I put larger power resistors in to replace them as something is clearly inadequate in this design.

#90 7 years ago
Quoted from damageinc55:

If anyone else is looking into this see: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/f14-snubber-board-resistor-value
Copy/paste:
What most people did was use a 150 ohm resistor of 2 watts rating to replace the burnt resistor. Williams had drastically undersized the wattage rating and had only used a half watter there.

I couldn't find 150 ohm 2 Watt resistors at any of my usual suppliers but they did have 300 ohm 1W so I used two of them in parallel. Not as clean looking as using a single higher wattage component though.

2 weeks later
#106 7 years ago
Quoted from shirkle:

They pry up very easily too.
By the way, my swap is nearly complete. I need to order two new posts, and I'll be done. Once the bottom side was done, the top went really fast. I enjoyed the whole process and would definitely get another new playfield someday. Though, I will say, my inserts are already slightly raising on the new one...I guess that's just the clear settling though.

That's concerning, can you post some good pictures of the inserts in question?

1 week later
#118 7 years ago

Is that a giant Fifth Element Poster on the wall?? I frickin LOVE that movie!

The F14 is looking awesome!!

#121 7 years ago
Quoted from TomDK:

Yes it is
"Borrowed" it in a cinema ... Uhhh, have to bring it back .. anytime, later, maybe ...
This is my working area .. the gameroom is behind ...

I always thought that would be a great theme for a pinball game, collect the four elements, save Lee-loo, etc. and then save the earth. I'm sure it was too much of a cult hit to actually make it to a game and the license for Bruce Willis' likeness, clips, etc would probably be too expensive but I can still dream. Can you imagine custom Chris Tucker call-outs though?!?!?! Sorry to derail the thread, please keep posting updates on your progress.

2 weeks later
#129 7 years ago

Just got my PF from Peter on Friday, it's a 2nd with a couple minor blemishes but wow is it beautiful, the clear coat looks SO good. I'm going to let it sit for several months before I embark on my first PF swap ever but one thing is for sure, I'm going to have to re-finish the cabinet. I thought I could get by with leaving it as is but this PF looks too damn nice to put it in there.

#132 7 years ago
Quoted from StylesBitchly:

Well I accidentally wired the three 89 flasher sockets on the right side of playfield in reverse polarity (ground to socket pin and hot to socket) and decided to test another 89 socket out on my Sharkey's Pinball machine by connecting it with jumper clips. It still flashes in reverse polarity as well so no need to rewire them. I just made sure sockets were insulated well. I have coin taker LED 89 Super 5 flashers and pinball life LED flashers are supposed to work this way as well according to them.

An incandescent bulbs is never going to care about polarity, LEDs will if they don't have diodes in them to deal with it. I assume you removed your warming resistors to make them work as well. The other thing to watch for is that many games (mine included) have flashers wired in series rather than parallel. I haven't decided if I want to switch it back to the original design per Vic's guide when in do mine.

2 weeks later
#150 6 years ago

Has anyone with light boards on the underside done the swap yet? Curious how hard it will be since the new PF is dimpled for individual sockets.

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