Make sure to swap the fishing reel drive belt. Nothing else comes to mind.

Its a straight forward strip down as far as 90s pins go. Once the wireforms and plastic ramp are out of the way. The entire boat assembly can be removed easily. The Reel possibly the only fiddly bit with the belt. Check the drop target in front of the casters club has the actuator arm present to drop it when necessary - these are often broken.

When I shopped my Mousin Around I didn’t label exactly where everything should have gone. As such, I had some difficulty reassembling.

What made it easier shopping the Fish Tales was to take a big piece of cardboard (maybe from a recent delivery) and form it into the shape of the playfield and then tape the plastics on the cardboard to where they should be relative to the playfield. You can also place any screws or bolts through the cardboard so you can keep track of where they go and they won’t fall off. While not perfect, this made the reassembly way easier.

Great idea. I did that (on a smaller scale) when I replaced a ramp for the first time on a Spider-Man pin. Too many screws and parts to remember. Extensive photos help too, take pics of the playfield as you remove everything. This cardboard playfield idea is awesome!

Left the club ......for the 3rd time ..... I'll be back fishing one day I'm sure

Anyone have this side plastic by the right side of the boat ramp they would want to sell me? If so PM me..

8E237254-528C-4570-BE2A-2993D72D7EEB (resized).jpeg

https://littleshopofgames.com/shop/playfield-plastics/playfield-plastics-single-plastics/fish-tales-water-plastic-set/

And, you may as well put a protector on that side. It's super easy to break. I learned the hard way.

Thanks just ordered it!

This.

Hi joining the club anyone sell the led light up launch button mod already wired up

I'm pretty sure someone did make a plug n play option of my original idea but i couldn't find a listing for it anywhere, could swear i spotted it once before though.

I looked all over too I had heard there was a kit

Putting things in plastic bags with labels best way to keep things straight imo. Notes should describe where parts go, where longer screws go, what gets a washer, or whatever. Taking pictures of disassembly along the way helps know how parts go together. I could see some things falling out of cardboard and then you would have no idea where it goes. Nothing gets lost in bags and you can thrown all of them in a box. I also label connectors in some way to know which two go together. Most of the time it's obvious but FT does have a lot of similar connectors.

How hard is it to change the lights in the topper to leds

All you have to do is take the clear dome off.

If you can do that, you can change the lights.

My FT uses anti-theft torq screws. Same ones on the head lock. Easy to do with the proper tool.

Torx it is indeed: T20

security torx

https://www.amazon.com/Ram-Pro-Point-Security-Tamper-Driver/dp/B01IUCONNY/ref=asc_df_B01IUCONNY/

But replace torx with regular screws.
Torx are meant to be single use.

Torx are meant to make theft harder. Especially security Torx. Not every thief in a location carries a driver for them.

LTG : )

How did you come up with this statement?

Cause i mangle them while trying to remove them. And why bother putting an odd screw back that takes an odd driver?
Unless your worried some one wants to steal your fish.

Not in this thread , because if it was , I would have brought it

Yeah i did another episode of googling and couldn't find any mention of a plug and play style for sale but i could have sworn it used to appear at the bottom of the page (when in this thread) that shows mods. I must have been imagining it i guess. I posted about this long time ago and how i went about attaching the LED angel eye button on my caster but that is a 12V LED button and is hooked up to my CDI board. I did add one of those control pads in the circuit so you can make it flash at different speeds and change the brightness (plus turn it off) and i also changed the black plastic panel the button goes through to a red acrylic with extra strip LED to highlight that. That's the other thing that made me remember the plug and play mod, pretty sure it was all wired directly for the existing caster connector plug to power the LED and that's only 6.3V not 12.

When is the drop target supposed to come up at the start of the game mine comes up but then goes straight down in test mode it pops up every time the down test that little coil is so weak it barley Wil bring it down I ordered a new coil for it but when u hit it goes down I thought it was supposed to stay up at the beginning until u hit it

Yes, in normal difficulty setting it goes up and down at the start of a game. If you have a successful multiball and collect a jackpot, it will pop up at the end of multiball and you need to knock it down to relight the locks.

The up/down feature allows it to reload the status for each player in a multiplayer game at the start of their ball.

Hi (waves),

A Fish Tales arrived in our house at lunchtime. It's our first pinball machine and it has its original decals (but is missing its topper). It seems to work fine, but we haven't tested it properly yet. We bought it because it was relatively cheap, due to the missing topper, and we'd played the game on Williams Pinball on iOS and found it really great fun.

I'm hoping to make a new topper (!!) from spare parts (I've found several sets of instructions on the web), but I'm a little concerned about the sheer height of the machine with a topper included!

Is this the right place to hang out?

This is the right place to hang out .
Welcome to the club .
And if you want to make a topper check out this thread .
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/guide-build-fish-tales-topper-from-scratch

Thanks! screaminr - I’ve seen that

Slight problem straight out of the gate. The ball is getting consistently stuck here (see photo), and it won’t dislodge without taking the glass off and dislodging it manually.

Any ideas? We’ve never owned a pinball machine before, so this is a new one on us.

D0317915-928A-4CE4-BAA9-DBB4648FF495 (resized).jpeg

Is it getting stuck on the underside of the wireform ? If so raise it up with some washers. It should be adjusted a little to the right to drop the ball in the center of the return lane.

If not that, be sure under the plastic there is the correct post holding the rubber ring - if too big that would make the gap smaller.

Pull the black rubber mini ring of the single post on the left. It should have one, but that will give you more room for the ball.

LTG : )

LTG Thanks. It seems to be getting stuck consistently between the mini black rubber ring on the single post to the left, and the large rubber ring on the left slingshot.

Both the single post and the slingshots look solid and original, but the rubbers don’t look 30 years old, so it looks like they’ve been replaced. I don’t know if the new rubbers are too big/wide, but - if so - I don’t know why the rubber on the right-hand slingshot is not similarly affecting the right-hand lane (?).

I’ve lifted the rubber ring slightly over the pegs on the left-hand slingshot (see picture), which leaves more room for the ball, but this is obviously an imperfect solution

D9980999-F541-4B66-840D-5C6E6A04C77B (resized).jpeg

Loosen the plastic post and see if you can move it over a little.

If not put the slingshot rubber ring back in place and remove the black mini ring.

LTG : )

So… I took off the plastic fish decoration on top of the slingshot to refix the LED that had come loose in its socket. I couldn’t see any way of adjusting the yellow post or the mini post from the top of the machine and, going by the position of the dirt, they looked like they hadn’t moved since 1992.

The rubbers on the left-hand mini post are the correct size, according to the instruction manual we downloaded off the internet. We switched the two rubbers on the mini posts around anyhow - just incase they were different sizes. The ball still got jammed. We tilted the playfield up using a spirit level. Still got stuck.

I’ve now bought a 3/8” mini-post rubber (correct size is 7/16”) on the internet in the hope that solves the problem, but I’m worried it doesn’t fit over the post.

Anyway, I now have this nightmare in my mind whereby this machine was always dud, the holes were drilled into the playfield in the wrong place when it was made, and it’s been floating around for 30 years hoping to entrap some poor innocent n00b

Anyway, we’ll see.

I think you should check the size and thickness of your sling rubbers also. They look too fat to me.

I'm hoping someone has been thru this I changed my display to color dmd and flipper fidelity speakers when I powered the game up I had no power to the dmd turns out was a fuse put the geme back on when to play both flippers are dead put it in test mode they work on switch its not seeing them at all

Sorry for the double post, I didn’t realize I put this in the journal and not in the club page.My old fishtails went to a pale a few years ago. The vuk Up at the very top of the playfield stop working. I see the part that is broke. But do not actually know what to call it to order it. Can anyone possibly help? Thanks!

2E02F4AB-4243-4C6C-9D66-7EF647C91AA1 (resized).jpeg

424387C6-7D44-435E-AA08-2809B956D327 (resized).jpeg

922D8C7E-05EA-4912-BC32-5261EBB2E408 (resized).jpeg

What you need is just the armature link but in order to change it, you'll need to remove the roll pin, which can be a bit of a pain.

https://www.pinballlife.com/search.html?Search=03-8085

Or you can just replace the whole plunger assembly, which would be a whole lot simpler.

https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/A-8050-2

How can u test the fliptronics board I don't think I'm getting power to the flippers

What's people usually do with the boat and the bottom 2 inserts with the clear have off since u can't buy them anywhere anymore

There are 2 on ebay right now.

U talking about the decals

I was going to buy the boat can't find any I have seen the decals

Has anyone put side art in there game I bought a set from tilt and got the left side on right side has zero room ruined them

I installed mirror blades. It's a tight fit and I need to wiggle the playfield a tiny bit when I lift it or the back panel with the mermaid and L-I-E printed can rub against it.

I had room on the left side none on the right tore them a up

Might try to lift the playfield up next time install set it up and get thise protectors cause when I was trying to do the right side left side got messed up from going up and down with playfield

I had no problem installing blades. I raise the playfield and kinda push it over a little towards the far side for each blade.