Might be worth having a quick look at why it blew. If that's the column with the lane change switches on it, make sure the nylon spacers etc are all in place.

I just did an experiment.
I just compared two 89 flashers side by side on my F-14. One was an incandescent, the other, a WARM WHITE Cointaker Super5 LED. My wife and I could not see any difference between the two at all! Notice I said WARM WHITE. COOL WHITE is too bright and annoying IMO. And this was without the warming resistor installed.

I'll give you this, it is beyond clear you DO NOT care for cool white LEDs.

Grumpy, the fuse was fine. Could it be a transistor? I am obviously a newbie. Thanks!

Did you check fuse F-4 on the power supply?

Not for flashers or above playfield. I do use them under clear inserts in places.

Check the fuse with an ohm meter. Remove it first. I have found bad fuses that looked good.

I have a question about the Launch Lane VUK Saucer. I've been having a problem with the ball bouncing back out of it during play. A direct shot up there often (about 50% of the time) just bouces out. This is so frustrating, especially during multi ball. I have tried adjusting the guard rails and stop up there to no success. Any suggestions?

Added over 6 years ago: Solved!
See below..

Thanks to vid1900, I solved the problem above.
Here are some pictures. Notice the first one where the ball stop is square to the saucer hole? It needs to be angled counter clockwise slightly to kill the ball energy so it drops down into hole and not bounce out. As I stated before, these repro playfields have holes that are not drilled in exactly the same place so these adjustments are needed. I just epoxied shut one screw hole and drilled another to set the stop at an angle. It plays great now. No bounce backs!

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Vid1900 is the real king here!

Dont sell yourself short my friend....

I agree with superbee! There is lots of good help here on pinside. It's what keeps me moving forward!!!

Has anyone removed the clear plastic guards that are above the ramps on the right side of the machine? I must say I hate how these look.
-J

Has anyone removed the clear plastic guards that are above the ramps on the right side of the machine? I must say I hate how these look.
-J
yep I removed them from my machine . thinking about getting that decal set for them . I like it either way plays fine without them

also, were these ever made with yellow beacons? Mine are Red, Yellow, Blue. Did the clear just yellow over time?
-J

Age, UV damage and smoke turned them a gold yellow color.

yea, I figured as much. My Blue one is pretty beat up also. Maybe one day when I get around to actually restoring the playfield I'll buy some new beacons.

Always love hooking a buddy up! Installed lighted flipper buttons and put blue led in target for him.

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Papa's gota new bag! I mean new avatar.

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I don't know this game that well is there a two ball MB and Four ball ?. Sometimes ill get two balls kicked out of the locks by the center pop bumper . I did put it on easy maybe that's it IDK . thanks James

No two ball, you have a problem. First ball should go to far right lock. Then one in left center and one in right center lock. Only 3 ball multi's not counting ball in play.
Goto page 56 in this thread and start at post #2769 (me) and follow along. GRUMPY helped me with this. I had a broke spring on the out hole kicker. Computer was loosing track of ball. Also, ball lock trough switches not registering can cause this.

Hey GRUMPY , would the solenoid saver on the 6 special solenoids do the same to protect the diverters as an inline fuse? I believe the saver has 1.5 SB fuses, though

Yes it will, it's labeling isn't correct for a system 11 but it will work fine. You can mix and match any amperage fuse you want on the board. Install 2 1 amp fuses for the diverters and use the 1.5 amp fuses on the other 4.

I have an f-14 display panel that I bought to restore as a project. The front plastic plastic isn't attached to the MDF speaker panel anymore. The back of the plastic has a old layer of black adhesive that dried out. There is more glue on the plastic and speaker panel that looks like an old operator fix. Anyone have a good way to reglue this back together?

What was wrong with the coil that you sent back?

I cleaned my panel all up and used 3M 77 Spray adhesive:

3M 77 Super Multipurpose Adhesive Aerosol, Clear 16.7 Oz. Aerosol Can https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000AZ735/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_-sl-AbVS6EDQ9

It worked perfectly. It gets tacky pretty fast so be fully prepared and commit when you are sandwiching everything together.

Did you have this connected and then tested with the new cpu? If you did then you blew up the driver on the new board. This will be a very important learning lesson for everyone in the club, always test new parts before you install them.

This really isn't your fault, someone sold you a defective new part. You took it on good faith that it was good and installed it and pop goes the mosfet.

Fuses are there to stop the wiring from catching fire and nothing more.

You're not alone! I fried my U11 logic chip on my new Rottendog MPU board adjusting my pop bumper because the 2.5 amp slow blow fuse didn't blow in time. After repairing, I installed a 2.5 amp fast blow fuse instead.

GRUMPY would the 1 amp SB fuse inline that you talked about earlier save damage to the CPU?

Most likely no, when you have a dead short on a circuit that is switch by a transistor the amperage will climb past the transistors maximum current and or wattage limits in a few milliseconds and a SB fuse will not blow for @ a half a second. But what is important is that the 1 amp fuse would limit the damage to just the driver transistor and there will not be any board trace damage, so it will be a simple repair and look good as new if done properly. What you need to remember is that coils do not just short and this is not a typical problem, so the only safeguard from this is to test all new parts before installation.

Had my father in law over to play some F14 this weekend, he loved it! Instantly was like "wow this game is cool, when did it come out again?!?"

1987

Yeah, I had a great time showing it off. He was blown away (when I showed him) the multiball start and fighter jackpot.

Hello I'm trying to replace my pop bumper switch and it's not been a good experience.
Could someone snap a picture of the switch I want to make sure all 5he wires are in the proper places. Thanks

do these help?

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Yes that's perfect thanks

Time to make mine pretty. I've done a full LED job, (except for flashers) I am missing the top diverter ramp plastic which I actually like. I was playing it last night and I thought I might spray the whole diverter ramp and the side insert areas with chrome paint. Chrome paint looks more aluminum than anything else, and I think it would fit with the F14 theme. Might even get the wife to make some "rivets" on her vinyl cutter and put those in strategic areas.

DO IT! or DON'T DO IT!!!!!????

Also, My clear beacon is basically yellow. I was looking online and found a lot of info about using hydrogen peroxide to restore old plastics that have yellowed. I'm thinking of trying that as well unless someone says DONT DO IT!!!!!

-J

I was thinking the same thing. There's a few headlight restoration products that explicitly mention they remove the yellow from plastic headlights. I'd probably give one of those a go in the first instance.

If anyone is interested, clear domes are available here:
https://www.pinballinc.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=63&search=Clear+dome

I think more specifically the hydrogen peroxide method + sunlight is called the 'Retrobright' cause of its use in restoring old game cart plastic... I've used it old controllers to pretty solid results and know others in this thread have done it for the beacons... It won't get them perfect, but will certainly improve things.

Completed my playfield swap, and now have the following problems (everything worked prior to swap):

1) When starting a game, ball does not eject, and several solenoids fire. Game does not start. All the switches in the trough work correctly.

2) Lower right flipper does not fire when button is pushed, however, upper right flipper works. I've gone thru the schematics and I can't figure out the problem. However, when I add a jumper (shown in red) from the coil's BLU-VIO wire to the flipper button's ORG- VIO wire, and push the button, both upper and lower right coils fire. From the schematic, there appears to be connections between the coil and the button, but I can't locate these connectors/connections.

3) Lamp column 2 works when I play with the connector and wires between the playfield and the back box. I don't think this is a big problem, but problems 1 and 2 are the concerning ones at this time.

Anyone have any ideas where to start looking. I'm wondering if all the problems are in the connectors between the playfield and back box, but it's pretty straight forward.

flipper jumper (resized).jpg

How did you test these switches?

Take a pic of the cabinet switch showing the wires.