If your LEDs don't when there installed, the polarity on the socket may be reversed. It was about 50/50 on mine that I had to reverse the wires on.

I finally received my resistors and installed one on the flasher 5 board and it fixed the problem. I removed the smaller "warming" resistor, installed a 89 flasher LED replacement and it worked. Over Christmas I'll be changing all the other 89 flashers with LEDs now that I know what to do. Thanks Grumpy for helping with the problem and telling me what no one else could on the correct thing to do to replace the flashers with LEDs.

In my opinion F-14 has the best light show of all times, then when you LED the flashers it's just blinding. But in a good way.

Yes - I was one landing away from the 3rd landing vs. my son right after I replaced the 1 LED flasher (testing it out of course). The LEDs are much more brilliant and rich in color. With dim lighting in the room there were a lot of really bright light shows. We will need to play it with a little more light in the room - especially when I change all the other flashers. After my 6 million + game (on 3 balls per game), I told my son that I have to set it to be a little harder. My son said "NOOOOOO!" Later my wife and daughter said "NOOOOOO!" I guess they just need more practice ... and more play time vs. our newer WOZ machine. I had to do all the facelift upgrades on the F14 as it was looking like a poor neglected stepchild next to the newer machine. Now it is a little more "flashy" [pun intended].

Sounds great that the whole family enjoys pinball, now add so under cab lighting to f-14 to finish it off. Raybans required.

Hey Grumpy - Can you do me another favor? Take a look at the back of the translight where your LED flashers are and compare it with my attached pic. When I removed the warming resistors on the translight and installed the LEDs, one circuit of the LEDs is on all the time. If I take out the LED and put in the 89 flasher blub, the 89 stays off. I remembered you saying that I may have to switch some polarities. If I do that, I may have problems as all the grounds are tied together with the other circuit. Let me know what is different on yours that got you to make them work correctly. Thanks!

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No problem, start with your power wire. The red wire is power in, and its on the wrong terminal. It then goes to the wrong terminals on all the rest of the sockets. So you need to switch every wire on each socket to make them work. Sorry for the bad news, but I sure you can have this fixed in a hour. Have fun and let me know how it turns out.

I switched all wires and now the right two flasher lights stay on. Not sure what flasher numbers they should be but both right flashers blink on flasher 9. Neither of the LH flashers do anything running through all the flashers. Note that nothing is connected to one of the ground terminals on the dual flasher board. Any suggestions from here?

Ok - I saw that a wire was crossed. Now flasher #9 works - top LH and bottom RH. The other 2 stay off all the time through all the flasher tests. This is the same side of the board as where nothing is connected to the "ground" terminal near R1. ???

Ok so the white/black wired pair work, but the white pair don't. Correct, then check the solenoid table for 2 #89 bulbs in the back box. Flasher 9 and flasher 10. You said #9 works so you need to check flasher 10 which is solenoid 15. Service bulletin #41 shows how the wires where reconnected to eliminate both red flashers. Check your pin to see if this was done.

ok, I figured it out that the bottom left and top right are flasher 10. The 89 flashers work. The LEDs stay on now. Weird. I can get it to work with the flasher 9s as being LEDs and flashers 10 as 89s. But putting the flasher 10s in also as LEDs and they stay constant on. ???

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You only need one ground wire because the circuit board trace connects both pins.
Take a pic of what you have now so I can double check it.

Your wiring looks good. Now since there are bulbs on the playfield and the back box, there are two flasher boards connected together and the warming resistors need to be removed from both boards. You have removed them from the backbox, now check the flash board next to the shooter lane with the same brn/blk and brn/vio driver wires. See if you have removed those warming resistors.

See the pic above your post - back side of it, so this would be the top left and bottom right in the back side pic orientation. Just checked again and the 89s work.

ok - I didn't get to that board yet. I did not realize that multiple flasher boards were connected. I removed that warming resistor and still get the same thing. Is the bulb from the playfield board wire backwards possibly?

Very possibly.

Both brown/black wires disappear on that playfield board disappear in the harness but go toward the back of the machine. Any idea which bulb that could be? I haven't found it yet.

Are you looking for brn/blk flasher #9 or brn/vio flasher #10?

#9 flasher is the blue dome at the top of the playfield and #10 flasher is the right red dome at the top of the playfield.

Ah, both secondary warming resistors! Pulled the brown/violet playfield warming resistor and it solved the problem. Good deal. If I'm replacing all of the 89 flashers with LEDs, should I just remove all of the warming resistors on all flasher boards I can find? Any reason not to? Asking if those are used in some other capacity? That might be the "easier" way to go ... agree?

Remove all of them, no other purpose.

Ok - thanks. That "should" avoid some more confusion on my part. Another night for those.

Don't forget the shades!

I tried LED flashers in my F14 and took them back out again. I like bling (see my Second Sortie project) but LED flashers just hurt - I find when that row of flashers at the back go off, your blinded almost to the point where you can't see the ball get ejected. Your mileage may vary of course

Ok Grumpy ... you got me thinking with the under cabinet LED thought ... does that "unused" flasher #7 actually work with the F14 code? I'm guessing that use to be for the "original design" flashers behind the targets on the upper T-O-M C-A-T targets. If flasher #7 does actually work, can I hypothetically hook that up to an LED strip under the cabinet?

KingBW to answer your question, yes and yes. Also you can hook up under cab leds to any of the controlled solenoids that you like. If you using single color strips then it's easy, but if you want different colors like purple or aqua you will need to add diodes inline each color for isolation. Let me know if you need any help with the connections.

Hmmm. I think it would really be cool to hook up blue under cabinet LED strip(s) to the flasher #7 circuit for a flash that would usually occur during MBs and the small flash for the locks. Then hook into the "kill flash" at the center target to flash a yellow LED strip under the cabinet to make it look like that kill flash is going right through the cabinet from the player's point of view. (I have yellow LED flashers for the target kill flashes - white is too bright, and yellow fits the back glass theme a little better.)

In theory, what would that take? Could I hook up a LED strip directly to the circuit? Or would it be more difficult with relays and such? I see that CoinTaker has 12v LED strips that can plug in directly to Stern machines. Could those work, or would I need to hunt for some special "other" voltage LED strips? This is interesting and could be pretty cool.

Are you thinking one blue strip and one yellow strip or one RGB strip to make both colors. You can't make yellow on the RGB strip without a controller. Simple colors can be made like blue, green, red, purple and aqua. Any 12 volt led strips will work and they can be connected without relays. If you use a RGB and want multiple colors connected to multiple circuits you may have to add some diodes to isolate one circuit from another.

I like easy. One blue strip and one yellow (or amber) strip sounds the easiest. I see that cointaker and pinballlife changed over to just RGB strips now. Any suggestions for good bright single color ones? Or maybe two strips each color if not real bright? I also saw a post suggesting a fused power strip off of some main power connection.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/i-need-12v-for-an-led-strip-on-my-f-14#post-1212619

Is this fused power strip the way to go? Needed?

I like using 5050 60 leds per meter, no special brand. All are made in China anyway. I think you will like one strip of each color if using 60 leds per meter, if to bright you can always cut some off. The other topic about led strips for GI lighting all the time on 12 volts is totally different then this. First we are using 34 volts B+ power not 12 volts. Also you have replaced all the bulbs with leds so the load has been reduced to cover the led strips you are adding. This B+ circuit is already fused at 4 amps on the power supply. I have six red strips going side to side connected to solenoids 1-6 and have a white and blue strip going front to back with no problems. About 20 feet in total, you really know when you get an extra ball. Since you are going to use single color 12 volt strips just connect them across the bulb socket that you want them to work with. Polarity is a must or they wont light, + to the center pin and - to the side pin. Remember the shades!!

Sounds like a good plan. I'll do some internet searches for some LED strips and try it out. Sounds like yours is pretty tripped out for the light shows. Maybe worthy of a welding helmet. It will be a while (waiting for the LED strips) before I can report some results or bug you more. Thanks for the help!

I will be watching for your results. I'm always interested in different peoples ideas on how to do things. As I can also learn from them.

Grumpy - I'm taking it to the max. I attached blue LED strips to the back of the translite box so that one corner (two blue LED strips) will light up for the #9 flasher and the other top corner will light up with the #10 flasher. This hopefully will give the illusion that explosion flashes in the translite will light up the sky in the background. I like it a lot. Those were the easiest to route and wire, so I did those first. Question for the others ... can I (should I) just connect bottom LED strips for flashers 1-6 to the board connections at the back of the playfield? If so, do you have a suggestion? A pic of that board is below (took the pic from a EBay post).

I've been side tracked a bit with beta testing new software on my WOZ and got hooked over there. I should pick back up on the f14 mods next weekend. (SQUIRREL!)

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Yes.

No.
Since all ( 1-6 ) flash lamps are A/C select circuits I would connect one power wire for all 6 strips to the C terminal on the A/C relay. The negative wire for each strip can go to the lamp terminal on the correct flash lamp board. Let me know if that doesn't make sense.

??? Is that on the flasher boards or someplace else? Or would that be one main power wire to the said terminal to the under-side with a split under there to the multiple LED strips?

Put your pin in coil test and lock down the advance button when you get to AC relay. With the AC relay clicking, lift the p/f and find the relay. The C terminal on the relay should be an orange wire, solder on a wire to it and this will become your positive power for all six led strips. Each negative will go to the lamp terminal on the flash board for that flasher. So flasher #1 led strips ground wire should be soldered to the white/brown wire on the flasher board just above the left sling. Flasher #2 led strips ground wire should be solder to the white/red wire, and so on. Also would you like to know how to run LEDs in your beacons?

Thanks! I will go that route.

I already have some LEDs in my beacons. I bought some "direct replacements" that were for the correct voltage at cointaker and they work real good. I had to replace the motor and re-wire it as previous owners cut that connection. Do you have a way to make something else work with those?

Yes, I add a bridge and a resistor then I can run standard 12 volt leds. Are yours colored leds? I ran a 13 smd 5050 red, white and blue. It makes for deeper colors.

My beacon bulbs are just white - that's all they had. My other 89 flasher LED replacements match their mini dome color so I know what you mean. Did you do the blue lit up LED star posts? I did mine and they look pretty good.

And expensive I bet. I have less then 10 dollars in mine for everthing.

I been thinking of doing this to a few of my pins, but so many other things to do first.

When you finish your led mods you need to do a video of it.

About $4 each.

I'm doing a progressive video of the transformation that I will have to piece together. I compared about 15 or so LEDs, playfield protector problems, adding the post LEDs and the popper top LED, the popular f-14 decals for the clear plastics that the dude from Canada sells on EBay, and a few other things. I have a F14 "toy" that others have used, but haven't figured out how to attach it yet. I'll post the video once I finally complete all these LED strips.

Not as bad as I thought they would be.

This will be very cool, I can't wait.

Grumpy ... Where is the decoder ring for the negative wires on the flasher boards so that I don't have pull things apart to see what wires are attached to bulbs? Do you have that handy? If not, I can trace them down.

Flasher 1 = white/brown
Flasher 2 = white/red
Flasher 3 = white/orange
Flasher 4 = ?
Flasher 5 = ?
Flasher 6 = ?
Flasher 7 = Not used
Flasher 8 = white/gray
Flasher 9 = solid white
Flasher 10 = white/black

I found the AC relay (snubber relay board) right next to the diode board at the top of the playfield underside and found two orange wires on the "coil" solder pad that I will attach to. I looked online for a nice power distribution block to make it a nice clean setup for future trouble-shooting and ran across a 10 port fused distribution for about the same price that makes it "seem" better anyway. Waiting for that to arrive for the power side.
http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QMULSUI
I also ordered a barrier screw block terminal strip for the negative side. Over-kill, but hey, I'm an engineer and that's what we do even with hobbies. This way I can easily disconnect one LED strip if it is giving me problems. I purchased a package of 10 different colors of wire 25 foot long for the negative so that I can trace things back to the boards more easily in the future - prepping those wires now.

It should not say snubber.

This is sweet.

Yep

Yep

Yep

White/Yellow

White/Green

White/Blue

White/Violet Mine is hooked up.

Yep

Yep, but if you are doing these two you will need to use a different power source. The CPU turns these two on the at the same time that the solenoids are fireing so there wont be any power on the orange wire of the A/C relay.

Ok - Thanks!

Flasher 7 - when would that phantom one typically trigger? After #6 that is in the back row? Or is there a special function like a kill for that to go off? Or is that kind of random? I have a extra LED strip that I can use for that.

Flashers 9 & 10 - I'll just go directly to the bulb and flasher board behind the translate for those. Those added blue LED strips will be mounted behind the translate box anyway for the sky flash effect.

It does say "Relay" ... I went backed and checked.

Yep!

Perfect!

It flashes in a pattern with #9 and #10

Ohhhh ... maybe I'll use one of my yellow LED strips and put that one on the back with the blues also. Interesting. I'll have to see which will look best before I permanently mount (stick) it.

Nice, I can't wait.

This thread prompted me to contact Grumpy via PM about my hardbody flashers not working. I had eyeballed the fuses and they looked fine. Grumpy gave me some ideas which required me to run to sears and buy a new multimeter. Upon checking the fuses (that looked fine!) I found out they were actually blown.

I replaced fuses and BAM! My flashers started working again! You all know that flasher bulbs make a game so much more exciting.

So thanks to Grumpy for helping me out with my issue. You are a huge benefit to this site and its members.