Hey everyone. I'm in the club! I have a F2K that has been in my family for almost 30 years now. I think we got it around 1990. It was already a decade old by then. My parents had bought it to go in their new house game room along with Meteor. We eventually tired of Meteor but kept F2K. My parents are starting to downsize so I bought the machine off them and it is now in my home. I will be doing a bunch of work on it.

FLIPPERS
I'm putting in a flipper kit as the left flipper is weak from a botched repair someone did years ago. I'm going with a new coil as well as the crappy repair job led to the coil cracking.

SLING
I'm replacing the right lower sling coil (which works fine but is cracked.

LIGHTING
There were about 30 lights non-functional, both GI and control. Some were burned out but on many the holder is just going bad and will need to be replaced with some that aren't almost 40 years old. I'm going to experiment with some colored and white frosted LED lights for GI. It seems like the driver board is fine so I will likely go with one of the add-on boards so I can put some colored LEDs in the control lighting.

DROP TARGETS
The countdown drop targets are dirty as hell and it might be worth just putting all new clean ones in. A few don't stay up real well but I may try the trick of putting a little felt square on the lift bar to get them up higher so they catch properly. The lift bar itself looks like it snapped clean off at some point and someone reattached it with liberal and creative use of zip ties. (See photos) Not sure what to make of that. Apparently it has held up for decades like that. Seems like JB Weld might be a better solution.

BACKGLASS
The backglass is badly flaked. About 25 years ago I noticed it was happening and covered the entire back side with clear adhesive sheets. It has completely stopped any further degradation but it still looks bad. I'll be looking at a CPR backglass.

WIRING
There's some weirdness to the wiring. See photos. On the lower connector, clearly both outside wires burned out at some point. But, they appear to no longer be used as they are now empty. There is also something wired to the board with speaker wire. I'm not sure what someone did but the game is fully functional so it worked.

PLAYFIELD.
it doesn't look too bad. Some inserts are cupped. There is wear. Spots with mylar look great. I'm not really interested in trying to clear coat the whole thing for now.

15609007814003802092059602623174 (resized).jpg

15609008675231540876519191884914 (resized).jpg

15609008920096949318349549424750 (resized).jpg

15609009225101288093208093760038 (resized).jpg

1560900987827772892811786960346 (resized).jpg

Can the Siegecraft adaptor kit be used on F2K to remove flicker from control lighting or do you have to replace the who board with a new one from Alltek?

Thank you for the helpful information everyone. My new rubbers came in the mail last night and I started to put them on. Unfortunately one was missing from the kit and another was the wrong size. Does anyone know the correct size for the one to the left of the blast off lane? The one behind drop target "1". The kit came with a 1-1/4 inch but that is too large.

Got the left flipper all repaired on my F2K. Changed all GI to LEDs. I was going to get warm to match the tone of the incandescents but somehow I ordered cool white. I decided to give them a try. I like how they look. F2K is a blue-toned space-themed game so it looks good with a cold look.

I cleaned the playfield and waxed. Cleaned every switch (they were pretty dirty). Put on all new rubbers. Cleared the memory of some junk high score data. Still more to do but it is playing now. Lots of fun.

Still to do...
1. Install new CPR backglass (already ordered)
2. Install Siegecraft light board to get rid of LED flicker on control lighting.
3. Install color-matched LED insert lighting
4. Troubleshoot a few switches.
5. Build new rectifier board and repin scorched connectors.
6. Replace cracked right sling coil
7. Rebuild right flipper to keep it happy.
8. Touch up playfield paint

IMG_20190624_122011.jpg

What color is this 10,000 BONUS supposed to be? It is above all the other bonuses which are clearly blue but it looks like a dirty purple or something. The photo below actually makes it look a lot more colorful than it is in real life. Is mine discolored? What color do other people have. I'm thinking a colored LED could breathe some life into it.

2019-06-24 14.57.04.jpg

I had some more time to work on the machine this afternoon. There was some weird behavior going on. It sounded a little similar to problems others have posted about further up the thread but different too. I thought I would pass along my story in case it helps someone else.

The behavior I was seeing was that when I would get my first ball into the ball stepper area the game would say stage one was go an then kick out a ball. A few seconds later it would repeat that message and kick out another ball. It would then step the first ball through the launch stages and I'd suddenly have all three balls in play even though I was not in multiball. If any of those balls drained I would more often than not instantly get a shoot again and a ball would be kicked out. Sometimes during that extended pseudo-multiball madness I would get blastoff and the countdown completed even though there were zero balls on the stepper. It would play all the sounds and go through the launch sequence and start an a multiball when it had not been earned. It was completely bizarre. I figured switches were to blame.

I went I to switch test mode and started to track down all the problematic switches. Two of the drop targets, 4 and 5 needed to be adjusted as they were always closed but I don't think that had much to do with the problem (other than making multiball easier.)

Testing the three switches in the trough was a bit tricky but I did determine that the first one was not tripping correctly. this is the service bulletin issue written about much earlier up thread. I bent the wire a bit to make better contact with the balls and suddenly the game was working fine.

If the problem comes back I will persue the addition of a post as described in the service bulletin (though I haven't seen an actual copy of it.)

It certainly is weird how the trough switches are what causes problems with the ball walker bit of course everything is connected through the game's logic and if things aren't as expected then weirdness ensues.

Ok, thanks for the info. Helpful as always. Mine is a weak purple so I'm going to go with a purple LED and see how it looks. I will be sure to report back!

Well, I seem to have the faulti-ball problem others have written about. I seem to have cured the problem I wrote about a earlier this week with regard to multiple balls being kicked out due to a bad trough switch and the game loosing track of where all the balls were. Changing the angle of the trip wire on the first switch in the trough allows me to lock two balls into the stepper without the game freaking out.

But, now I have the issue that if I have two balls locked the game will randomly think a ball has drained and end the ball and count up the bonus. It sounds like others have had the same problem. I did some quick testing and found that multiple different switches would trigger end of ball but none were consistent. I have seen it happen on multiple slings, drop targets and even on a spinner. Very strange. I suspected vibrations triggering one of the three switches in the trough but I held onto them to make sure they weren't moving and it still happened.

Here's what I know, it only happens when two balls are locked and as far as I know the machine only knows two balls are locked becaise they are no longer in the trough tripping the switches.

So, I immediately suspect those micro-switches. The wires leading to them seem a little toasted so they (and their diodes) may have seen some heat in the past. (See photos) I also discovered a possibly toasted cap on the upper left sling. I suppose it could have been discolored by a run in with an errant soldering iron or something could have stopped on it but it is a suspect as of now. (See photo)

Anyone have any success troubleshooting this faultyball phenomenon? Should I start with the cap and diodes and see what happens?

Anyone know propper replacement values?
IMG_20190630_084842.jpgIMG_20190630_084901.jpg

UPDATE:
The dark goop on that capacitor scraoed off so it really was just some gunk like solder flux. I tested every diode on every switch and they seem good. Not sure where to go from here.

Thanks for th thoughts. I had originally tested both of those micro switches via the built in switch test. I tested them earlier this morning when testing the diodes too. They tested out perfect. I'll go over all the blade switches too. Wouldn't that show up on the switch test though if they were backwards?

IThanks for the suggestions. I adjusted switch 34 and that seems to have fixed the faultyball. It wasn't showing as closed on the switch test all the time but was intermittent and that was causing the confusion.

New problem I'm working on now is the letter B inlane. It is acting backwards. When I start a game it is out instead of lit. When I roll over it, the light comes ON. This is opposite of what should happen. Also, rolling over it does not spot the "B" in the launch lane. It does advance bonus, make sound and award 3000 points.

Related, when I start a game the "L" at the top is also not lit. Rolling over it spots the L in the launch lane, scores 5000 points and triggers sound. The light does work in attract but does not display the backwards coming on like the B. It is just never lit during a game no matter what.

Weirdly, if I trigger the "L" switch at the beginning of the game it spots not only the "L" but ALSO the "B" in the launch lane.

If I then roll over the "B" switch the launch lane B is taken away and the light in the inlane turns ON as described above.

Ring any bells for anyone?

33, 34 and 35 are the trough switches. I said it was 34 based on my memory but I believe it was actually 33 which is the right most of the three switches. It is the leaf switch while the other two are the micro-switches.

It was similar to your nine ball problem in that it involved that switch. It wasn't I stalled backwards though, just poorly adjusted. It would randomly be closed when it should be open as it was just barely open and little vibrations (or maybe even spikes of current?) Would cause it to close and the machine thought the ball had drained.

I had some time.tonight to dig out the manual and look at the wiring and it looks like all of the weird switches are wired up right. As far as I could tell everything was original and correct. The colors.of wires matched what was shown in the manual. The only thing that looked weird was that every switch aside from the "B" had two colored wires coming to it (aside from the ground). You can see in the photo below that the switch on the right has two orange wires but the switch on the left, which is the troublesome "B" only has the one brown wire, not.a pair of brown. There is no sign of a missing or detached wire, I just thought it was odd that it is the only one not doubled up. Doubting this is the problem, but thought I would mention it.

Since that wiring checked out I pulled the MPU out to look at the solder. It looks great. All header pins look nice and we'll soldered. It also doesn't look like anyone has ever messed with the board.

I noticed that the issue isn't just with the "B" but also with the "O" on the opposite side. They both spot the launch lane backwards. So weird.

IMG_20190702_174710.jpg

Can someone check if their F2K has this same wire? On the left inlanes there is a small jumper wire between the "B" and "F" switches (switches 17 and 24). On the right inlanes there is a jumper wire between switches 22 and 23, the other "F" and the "O".

I only ask as they appear to be different wire than all of the other in the pin. While they are white wires with blue it looks like a different brand. I want to make sure if someone messed with that wiring they put it back correctly. See photo. I'm pointing at the wire in question.

2019-07-02 21.07.36.jpg

Ok, thanks guys. That different type of wire just looked weird to me and I wanted to eliminate that variable before diving into troubleshooting the switch matrix. I've never tried it before but I found a good video tutorial online so hopefully I can figure it out.

No bad switches show up in switch test so I suspect it is a bad diode causing a signal to leak through the matrix the wrong way.

From what I understand, I have to look for four faulty switches that form a square on the switch matrix diagram.

Currently I am seeing problems with switches "B", "L" and ""O" and "T". Weirdly the diagram does not show a switch B but based on the wiring it must be the one just labeled "S.W."

Now I needed two more suspects, both in the same column and sharing rows with my other problems. I remembered that sometimes my bottom thumper would fire randomly during gameplay. I set about getting it to do it again. I could get it to fire when I hit D.T. #3. Ok, makes sense, it is in the same row. But, then my square would be completed with Top(R) D.T. and I have had zero issues with that. Since the main problem seems to be with the bottom thumper I can then complete the square by going up to (L) Top Slingshot. This makes some sense. Earlier that slingshot was actung weird. It would fire multiple times when hit and then the bottom thumper would go off.

So, I assumed my problem was one of those switches and set out to clip and test diodes. And....of course they were all fine.

While looking at the drop targets I noticed the switch had been replaced on target 2 and the diode was backwards as compared to all the others. Great! I unsolder it, test it, reinstall it the correct way and....no change except that drop target 2 now won't register at all. The replacement switch must somehow be wired different than the originals and need the diode the other way. When I put it back, the switch would again register in switch test.

I clipped a bunch more diodes and tested them including both thumpers/pop bumpers and some other stuff. Everything checks out.

Damn, I really thought it would be one of those given the behavior I am seeing. I need to think about this more.

Ok thanks, will try caps too. I appreciate your help.

Well, bad news. I clipped every cap on the game, one by one and nothing changed. It is sitting here now with every cap only attached by one leg and the problem remains so I'm guessing it is not the caps.

I took of the J2 connector earlier and all of the header pins looked great.

Ok, I will check the internals on the connector. When I inspected the headers earlier I removed the whole board. The solder looked immaculate.

I pulled the J2 connector to take a look. It is a lot harder to see inside the small brown connector as opposed to the larger white ones but it looks ok. I took a look with 48x jewelers loupe and it looked good.

So how about this funky wiring on the right flipper? I'm assuming the stereo speaker jumper is not factory original.

This seems to be wired up different than the left. Not sure if that could be causing any of the weirdness I am seeing but thought I should mention it.

IMG_20190703_164911.jpg

UPDATE: Nevermind, I see from a photo on page 2 of this thread that one of the posts as supposed to have 3 wires going to it. Someone must have just figured a jumper was easier to solder than 3 wires. Well, scratch that one off the list.

So focusing on something other than the mixed up switch signaling for a moment, am.i correct in thinking this spinner switch was assembled wrong at the factory? Both of mine are like this. The large gold contact point is visible and the smaller rivet is what is being used as the contact point. That isn't right is it?

IMG_20190704_090645.jpg

Ahhhhhh! Success!

I figured out my bizarre problem. I tried a number of other troubleshooting methods and I did overed some strange grounding faults that disappeared when I disconnected the ground wire from the Siegecraft lighting boards. Then it hit me. The switch problems didn't exist before I out the boards in. Even though I had double checked them before, I took them off and set up the lighting direct to the board. There was LED flicker galore but my switch problems all disappeared.

Ah ha!

I carefully put each of the three Siegecraft boards back on one by one testing for the switch errors after each one. Once they were all back on and the ground wire put back in place the game operates perfectly. I'm not certain but I'm thinking I was one pin off on my original placement. That would explain why some lights would come on for the wrong switch and why some wouldn't come on at all.

Oh well, lesson learned. I hope it helps someone else in the future.

Next up I need to see if I can fix one of the displays and then install my new CPR backglass.

Thank you to everyone who gave me suggestions on tracking down this gremlin. I learned a lot about my machine in the process!!

Moving on to other items, someone had replaced the left spinner with one from another game. It was originally yellow so they painted it black. I have no idea why other than I can just assume they were lazy and only had black paint.

I stripped it all off and I'm putting on multiple coats of white. I have a vinyl cutter so I'm tempted to try making the stars and "S" myself. Looks like decals are pretty cheap too though. I thought about cutting my own numbers for the drop targets too.

IMG_20190713_094414.jpg

I believe they are just press-fit together on the originals. I would think a drop of super glue would do the trick but perhaps others have different advice.

Looks good!

I had some time today so I did a little work with a black 1mm Molotow acrylic paint pen. Here's some before and after shots on the bonus insert area.some of the other colors need a lot of help but touching up the black made a big difference.

IMG_20190728_105730.jpg

IMG_20190728_125116.jpg

That's a great question. I have not but I assume it is lead paint given the age. I see people sanding down cabs without a respirator and it makes me cringe.

Let's talk paint colors! I'm working on my playfield now. I found that Liquitex Professional Heavy Body Pyrrole Orange is a very good match for the orange straight out of the tube.

Liquitex Professional Heavy Body Prisim Violet is close to the purple as well. It is a teeny tiny bit dark but I used it as-is in a few spots and you would not notice if I didn't point them out.

The green is tougher. I finally hit on a mix that works. A good starting point is the Liquitex Light Amber Green. To this I added a LOT of Liquitex Basics Cadmium yellow light hue that I happens to have on hand. The pigment load on the basics line is pretty weak so my green paint probably has more yellow than green! I added a small amount of white to lighten it and was close but still off. I added in a VERY TINY amount of the Pyrrole orange and it came out very good. The orange has a very high pigment load so it goes a very long way toward changing the color.

It looks like the green is darkening a hair as it dries (and the camera exaggerates the difference) so I'm going to go a tiny bit lighter on the second coat. The finish is still very rough, just posting these pics to show the colors.

IMG_20190806_080620.jpg

IMG_20190806_160311.jpg

IMG_20190806_161831.jpg

I lightened up the second coat and got a whole lot closer on the green.

IMG_20190806_232202.jpg

Taking a break from many fine laters of paint for a moment, I finally traced down my one remaining inoperable insert light to a bad SCR. Q13 was no longer functional. I was able to find a suitable replacement at the local surplus store. They had both N25061 and N25062 SCRs. I went with the slightly heavier duty 5062 which is rated for 100v. Swapping it out was easy peasy. I picked up a few extra for down the road as well. The bonus lights are very handsome in attract mode. I don't think I had ever seen that work correctly. The pulsing outward effect is completely ruined by even one light being out.

IMG_20190811_164659.jpg

It is an interesting game. It isn't terribly deep compared to other games but that multiball is damn tough. How many games have a 16 step process for getting multiball? When you finally get it, it is very rewarding because you really had to work at it.

Anyone else have the CPR backglass? I was so excited to put it in place but it looks really washed out and pastel to me. Curious if anyone else had a similar experience.

IMG_20190818_135550.jpg

I'm not sure which process this is (old or new). I may experiment with some different bulbs to see how they affect it

Who has used the beehive playfield protector? Thoughts? What did you have to do for install?

There is a "looking for playfields" thread you could try. F2K playfields come up once in a while. What condition is yours in? How much work does it need?

That's an option. Does the paint look good under the mylar and is the mylar in good shape?

Success! I swapped out a bunch of lights behind the backglass to get better color. I left in a few white LEDs but mostly switched to some 47s I had laying around. I have a few orange LEDs in there as well behind the fire and planet on the right. Im probably still going to ditch the orange behind the planet I don't love it. It is looking much better though!

2019-08-19 11.39.07.jpg

IMG_20190819_113147.jpg

Looks like some interesting changes on your playfield compared to mine. You have white acorn nuts instead of metal. Also, looks like someone cut down the plastics on the inlanes right at the flippers and added posts (or is rhat a production change?) Looks like big star posts at the outlanes too. See pics below of mine.

2019-08-19 15.27.19.jpg

2019-08-19 15.27.36.jpg

Great question, here's a quick list off the top of my head.

• Cleaned playfield
• All new rubbers
• Rebuilt both flippers
• Replaced several cracked coils.
• Added cool white frosted LEDs to general illumination lamps
• Added Siegecraft boards and color matched frosted LEDs for control lighting.
• Troubleshot all light baynottes, mostly tightened them up and they came back to life
• Replaced one bad SCR on the light control board.
• Cleaned and adjusted every switch
• Created a mod to help balls go down the drain correctly and not miss the first switch.
• Touched up worn spots on playfield.
• Adjusted drop targets so they would stay up correctly.
• Replaced flaking backglass with a repro from CPR.

Still to do
• Add correct decals to the incorrect left spinner
• Add correct numbers to two incorrect drop targets
• Replace power rectifier board and molex plugs

Man, if someone made a decal of the planet it would make so many playfields look better in just one step.

Cool. Ordered. Excited to put it in place. Getting so close to done.

Well my beehive protector arrived and it includes an image that showw how to hold the protector dow. The protector is held in place by the two star posts at the outlane. Arrrrrr. Those are the two posts that someone swapped to be metal posts instead of star posts. I guess I need to buy some new star posts before installing this thing!

Yeah, I'm doing some swapping around. Install was pretty easy but it is getting hung up on the ball walker every once and a while. There is just too tight of a tolerance and too much movement up there. My flippers are being jerks about being adjusted too. Oh well, enough for tonight!

Six plays for a dollar coin. I wish places still had this deal today!

2019-08-23 18.05.43.jpg

I got back to work this morning on my spinner. Ordering a decal would probably have been easiest but where's the fun in that?

My wife has some new software for her Silhouette vinyl cutter that can take any image and turn it into a pattern for cutting. She was excited to try it out.

I am very happy with the results. I could have also used this to make a stencil for painting as well but I figured why not apply right to the spinner. The blue is a little darker than the original but you would never know when it is on the machine.

IMG_20190825_100705.jpg

IMG_20190825_102242.jpg

IMG_20190825_102234.jpg

IMG_20190825_101846.jpg

IMG_20190825_101418.jpg

IMG_20190825_101937.jpg

IMG_20190825_101541.jpg

IMG_20190825_102813.jpg

Yes, you can use it that way. I actually just applied the cut out vinyl right to the spinner since the colors were close. You can also do the inverse though and remove and discard the inside and use the vinyl as a stencil and paint. I saved the outside area to use as a stencil in the future if I choose to go that route.

Nice. I will go to one eventually. Someone installed a big lithium battery on mine over a decade ago and it is still going strong. I'll go this route when that battery finally gives out! I can't believe it is still going.

Oops.

IMG_20191015_173457.jpg

I went with a playfield protector on mine because I will probably do more paint touch-up in the future and didn't want what is there to get worse. If yours is NOS and is perfect now then protect it with clear coat. Much better option.

And remember, det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlige clear coat.

The new code that Slochar is working on adds the missing knocker back into the game. Looking forward to adding it!

I went with cool white on the GI and it works well with the cold blue space look.

I also found going with all LED on the backbox washes out the colors.i went with a mix of cool white LED and incandescent with a few colored behind the flames. I also left out some along the top row as it was plenty bright there and more seemed to wash out the art.

2020-07-17 17.08.44.jpg

Can't help you there, my snapped bar has been held on with zip ties for almost 30 years.

Happens on mine from time to time. Doesn't tilt if you don't ever have the tilt bob attached.

I try to align the front face of the flipper at the same angle as the inlane ball guide. But, yeah, the pins are weird.

Interesting. I will try mine drooped and on the pins. I have found that having them aligned to the lane guides makes it harder to hit the ball walking mech.

So this week I broke another plastic on my F2K. I got my wife a laser cutter for her birthday so she can cut custom acrylic now. If I want to put a clear acrylic piece under the existing plastics so the new stronger acrylic takes all the hits should I make it the same size or just slightly wider? Anyone have any experience with that?

Yeah, that was my assumption. I just wasn't sure how much wider to go. I'm thinking of trying a quarter of an inch border.

Laser cut the sling protectors today. This video is sped up 5x. I wish it was this fast.

PXL_20201224_182417921.jpgPXL_20201224_182742456.jpg

I have a couple repros in my F2K and have no problems.

Light up star posts. What do we think? Yea or Nay?

679FC5E3-9104-4780-A4CB-33B7114615C8 (resized).jpeg

Also trying the light in this position. I’m on the fence. It is about twice as bright as it needs to be. Seems like more of a distraction. A warm glow would be nice but this is a bit much for the feel of the game in general.

That special light is on in the outline and you can see the lit star post kind of blows it away.

I’m not sure hacking these to be dimmer would be worth it.

1C88866A-58D0-497F-A19D-1F7BC7EDA463 (resized).jpeg

Tracking down issues like this can be frustrating but you end up re-doing and bullet proofing against a bunch of other future problems along the way!

Anyone have any weird issues with saving high scores? I have noticed some weirdness on my game. For reference, I have NVRAM instead of using batteries.

I noticed my high score did not save so I went in and cleared out all the memory. I then can play a fresh game and sometimes a new high score will be remembered but yesterday I raked up a game over 2 million points and when I truned it on the next day it had a score around 700,000 as the high score. Then a few days later it shows a 500K score as the high score. Very odd. It seems like it is just randomly saving certain scores as the high score. Anyone have any experience with this?

It is this one. I did just reseat it so we’ll see. If I turn the machine off for a short while it is fine. Seems to lose memory overnight.

IMG_3001 (resized).jpeg

I shot you a PM. I'm interested if you can find one of the doubles!

Big improvement. I like my beehive protector. Smooths out all the inserts. One thing to note, you may have to trim it in the ball walker area. They cut it too tight and it can cause trouble. Watch out to make sure it doesn’t run at all up there or interfere with the mech or switches.

Interesting. Both of mine are yellow with blue. No white.

I feel like this has come up before but I couldn't find it. Does anyone have a solution for balls getting stuck on the drop targets? When the top two targets are down the ball often gets stuck resting on the bottom drop target like a little shelf. The only way to fix it is to take the glass off and remove the ball. I could see maybe moving the rubber out a little but then I think it would hit the drop target. Anyone had success with a fix of any kind?