I've fixed up my Police Force & added little mods to my Aerosmith so I felt pretty confident about doing a resto on my dad's F-14 Tomcat. I love this game it's need need of some help. I've been reading up here seeing what other people have done so I moved it to my house & got to ordering parts. LEDs, springs, coil sleeves, rubber set, belts for the beacons, lamp holders to add the 2 flashers, stickers, etc.
it needs a new battery holder and I'm feeling OK about puling the board so I can solder the new one on. i'm not great at soldering my I had to do some on the police force to repair the GI solenoid board & it was fine. besides my dad bought it from TNT about 20 years ago and they obviously had pulled the board before. they numbered all the wire sockets & tails so it should be an easy enough process unplug / replug them.
i smelled very musty. so much so that it was taking over the house. I used clear ammonia to deal w/ that. wiped the whole thing down inside & out. found black gunk inside near the coin door that I assume started out as a spilled beer on the glass a decade or 2 ago. I'm pretty sure this was my problem. it cleaned up surprisingly well & my musty smell is gone!
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After playing a couple game my wife comments about the insert decals being worn away so I order a set of those too. I started ripping it apart yesterday & cleaning the playfield w/ the ammonia when I realized, there's mylar over the decals. I'm sure all of you would have known that immediately and it was right there in front of me but it didn't click in my head what that meant. honestly I wouldn't in a million years assumed that TNT would have put mylar over the worn out insert decals. I've been reading the board & watching videos trying to decide if I peel the mylar & fix the inserts or just leave it as is. this seems like a little more than I bargained for. I don't want to damage the thing. most of the insert decals look fine & I wasn't going to do anything to them. it's mainly down at the lower playfield. now that I realize it's the mylar that's making the upper playfield look less than perfect, I'm feeling that shit needs to get replaced. after reading the board I've seen lots of posts saying as an armature, don't do it. I could do more harm that good & others saying it'll be fine, just time consuming. Should I give it a try using the freeze can / goof off method or just fix the ballance?
these need repair
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these are ok
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my other issue is how the hell do I peel this TNT sticker off w/o messing up the Williams logo painted under it? any tips
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same w/ these packing tape marks. any tips on cleaning them up w/o hurting the paint? by the way, my dad has never moved this pinball which means TNT sold it to him w/ this packing tape on it. how could this be? was it just so long ago that it was before they restored tables?
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