(Topic ID: 289792)

High Speed & Taxi: 80’s brothers rebuilt

By Bellagio

3 years ago


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  • 233 posts
  • 19 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 6 months ago by RKip455
  • Topic is favorited by 22 Pinsiders

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There are 233 posts in this topic. You are on page 3 of 5.
#101 2 years ago

Next was another learning experience: decals. I would have gladly used Radcals, but they aren’t made for HS.

After a lot of research in decal application methods, I found the best and simplest for me were the dry application YouTube videos by @mccune. The videos are short and to the point. I had a helper doing the same tasks as the helper in the video. The dry method is quick and clean, but it’s also final. Basically, zero room for error as there’s no adjusting once it’s down.

I used this felt squeegee kit from Amazon and it worked perfectly.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GFGFY2L/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_image

#102 2 years ago

First I did the backbox. The decals are small so this was a good starting point to figure out how they are applied.

Backbox:
(Color in pic is very washed out from sunlight)
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I did the front of the cabinet next. The most difficult part was lining up the decal. The center was not cut out so I had to maneuver the decal around until I got it just right and level. I read that some people use a block of wood to keep the coin door hole from sagging, but I didn’t have an issue with that. I made sure to tack cloth the cab and the decal to avoid any dust or dirt from getting under the decal.

After applying the decal, I then trimmed the edges to the cab using a metal straight edge. I trimmed them back approx 1/16” from the edge of the cab so they wouldn’t be damaged when using a lift cart. Once that was done I cut out the coin door, the plunger hole and the start button hole. All of my trimming and cuts were done using an exacto knife with new blades. I had to change out the blade a few times because they would get gummed up with decal glue. Lastly, I ran a sharpie along the edge to blend the cut decal edge with the cab.

Last was side decals. Again, what took me the longest was lining up the decals to keep everything straight and level. I had to line up the stripe with the front decal and then take measurements from the bottom of the stripe to the bottom of the cab, ensuring equal distance all along the side of the cab. I easily spent over an hour on each one to get this just right. Considering how expensive decals are, it was time well spent.

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#103 2 years ago

The HS cab then left my garage and was moved to the basement for final assembly. Ground braiding was completed using 1/4” braid like the original.

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#104 2 years ago

All of my chrome parts arrived from Hot Rod Arcade and look great! The backbox was assembled first. The hardest part was centering and attaching the light bar on top.

As you may recall, toward the beginning of the thread I mentioned the early design stages of the lightbar. Instead of the design with multiple lightbars, I found an led red/blue police lightbar that looks modern, provides 360 degree light and fits perfectly on top of the game. I think it blends in much better than my earlier designs. Again, definitely not for purists, but I like it.

The chrome pieces above and below the speaker panel were attached. The backbox is assembled and finished.

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#105 2 years ago

I re-assembled the diverter and attached it to the playfield.

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Backboard was sanded, painted, cleared and attached. I added felt strips to the sides of the pf to prevent scratches when lifting/lowering the pf.

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#106 2 years ago

Building up the cab’s interior. I installed new plastic sliding channels for the glass, a new lockdown bar receiver, the cab wiring harness, the transformer and other interior parts. I placed the pf to ensure fit.

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#107 2 years ago

I then installed the side rails. Instead of the OEM side rails that are attached to the cab with multiple small nails, I opted to go with the newer style of System 11 side rails that use double-sided tape and just 2 bolts. I think this was the better choice as it looks cleaner, plus I really, really did not want to have to hammer anything on the beautiful chrome polished rails.

A couple of tips I gathered from Pinside-

- After attaching the tape to the inside of the rail, pull 5 inches or so of the backing off and let it hang down, then loosely install the front and back rail bolts to line up the rail to the cab. By having them loosely secured, you’ll know that the rail is in the correct position.

- Slowly pull down on the tape, all the way to the end and then press down on the rail to secure it. I used a microfiber cloth, working front to back to make sure there was a good seal. I then tightened up the bolts.

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#108 2 years ago

Last was attaching the backbox and preparing to get her up on legs.

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#109 2 years ago

With everything assembled and connected, the moment was finally here to flip the switch on what hopefully would be a fully functional HS rebuild. The game powered up perfectly and went into attract mode!! Success!!!

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#110 2 years ago

After verifying that there were no major issues, I started working on some homemade stadium lighting. Even with brighter GI leds, HS still has a somewhat dark playfield, especially when playing in the dark.

I was going to add spotlights, but I like the appearance of stadium lighting better. I just refuse to pay the ridiculous $300 price that PinStadium charges. They came up with a great concept and I would happily support them if they didn’t insanely overcharge for their products. Every mod seller needs to make some money, but damn. You can build them yourself for around $100 in parts that will make 2 sets. I had a set of the real ones that a previous owner had installed in a MBrLE I owned. I see absolutely no difference in the appearance, quality and function of homemade ones vs. actual PinStadiums. Sorry, I just hate seeing people get ripped off.

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If you decide to try it, there’s a great DIY thread on Pinside. AUKraut lists all the parts/sources you will need and HurryUpPinball has great step by step YouTube tutorials on how to assemble and install them.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/poor-mans-stadium-lighting

Building:

Installation:

#111 2 years ago

As a side note, AUKraut also came up with a method to add a small relay to the lights that connects to the GI. This is especially important in HS and Taxi because there are multiple GI on/off and flashing effects that wouldn’t look nearly as good if the stadium lights stayed on all the time. This cheap relay syncs everything up perfectly!

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Sometimes I like to play with them on, and sometimes not. It's fun to change the colors too. They are on a remote control so I can change them or turn them off easily.

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#112 2 years ago

Of course there were some dial-in issues to deal with. A poorly adjusted hideout switch caused me a lot of headaches by screwing up the multiball sequence. Also I was getting rejects from the escape hole/saucer that was due to the cliffy being new. Once the cliffy wore down slightly and bent itself a little bit into the hole it stopped causing rejects. Nothing too bad.

Some of the leftovers:

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#113 2 years ago

With those issues taken care of, I finally declared the game finished in October 2020. I added repro serial number decals and date of manufacture decal.

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I now understand what a difference it makes to play the game from new. It’s a completely different experience from playing the 30+ year old beat up routed games that I was used to. The orbits are rocket fast! Everything flows perfectly and smoothly. It’s a beautiful thing when you smoke a shot around the orbit to the upper flipper and then up the ramp! Finished it off with a sheet of Stern HD glass.

Here are the final pics:

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#114 2 years ago

So that concludes HS. If you’re still interested, stay tuned for the Taxi rebuild!

#115 2 years ago
Quoted from Bellagio:

So that concludes HS.

Your not done until the wall traffic light lights up the same as the stop light on the play field.

#116 2 years ago
Quoted from GRUMPY:

Your not done until the wall traffic light lights up the same as the stop light on the play field.

Lol! Believe it or not, I actually found plans online somewhere by a person who did that! I thought about it, but I already paid for a computer board that makes the big one sequence like a real traffic light.

#117 2 years ago

So as a quick review, I was well into HS when I decided I wanted a Taxi to go with it. My main criteria for buying the game was that it had clean boards and was fully working. Minor issues were ok, I just didn’t want a project machine. Cosmetics obviously didn’t matter because it was getting the same treatment as HS.

I picked up Taxi in Florida and got it set up at home. Mostly everything worked so that’s a good place to start from.

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#118 2 years ago

Overall, the machine was what I would call standard players’ condition. It certainly wasn’t beautiful, but it wasn’t terrible either. It had all aspects you would expect in a heavily routed Taxi- beat up cab, worn pf, liquid stains, dirty inside cab, etc.

Cabinet:

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#119 2 years ago

Playfield:
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#120 2 years ago

Compared to the rest of the machine, the boards were in surprisingly good shape. They didn’t have any of the white rust issues (see next post), no visible acid damage and no hacks. The MPU, sound board and interconnect board all had serial number decals matching the machine. The power supply and auxiliary board had different serial decals.

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#121 2 years ago

One thing I noticed was white/yellowish powder-like residue on pretty much every metal part under the pf. Lamps, mechs, everything metal had this. The metal wasn’t actually rusted, just coated with the powder. The powder resembled pollen and would come off with a damp cloth. After doing some research I believe that this is what is referred to as “white rust”. I’m guessing that the game spent time on location in Florida where high humidity contributed to this, maybe? Who knows...

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#122 2 years ago

After a couple weeks of having a Taxi at home to play whenever I wanted out of my system, it was time to tear into the game and see what’s going on.

First issue I noticed is that the bell would just “ding” once when the bell should fully ring. This was just a switch adjustment issue on the bell. The switch contacts were firmly pressing against each other. The left leaf needed to be adjusted back so they are just barely in contact.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/taxi-club-members-only/page/37#post-5603950

#123 2 years ago

Another issue was that playfield GI did not turn on and off during gameplay. It just stayed on all the time. The backbox GI flashed correctly. Sounds like a minor issue, but it ended up being a much more complicated one. I did some research and found that Taxi has 2 relay boards for the GI, one in the head behind the light board and one under the pf in the lower right corner. The board in the head looked fine.

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Upon looking under the pf, I found that the relay board was completely missing! Near the location where the relay board should have been there was a .156 molex connector with a zip tie wrapped around it hanging from the wire harness as well as a disconnected 2-wire connector.
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#124 2 years ago

I figured one of two things happened- an operator needed the relay board for another game and just robbed this one or something bad happened to the GI and fried the board. Either way, to make the game whole I would need to get another board and then figure out how the wiring was hacked to keep the GI on all the time.

I discovered that the relay board was not made by any repro company since Great Lakes Modular made them and they are out of business. There were none for sale from any of the usual sources or Ebay.

Fortunately, I stumbled across the company LED OCD and one of their products, GI OCD. I pm’d the owner, @herg, who is a great guy, and was absolutely the key to solving this issue. He helped me dive into the problem, starting with this hacked GI connector on the IC board at J9. We also discovered some other issues, like poorly crimped pins in a molex connector at J7 that were causing intermittent problems with the backbox GI.

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#125 2 years ago

Pretty sure this guy doesn't belong in Taxi!

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#126 2 years ago

herg and I were able to track all of the hacks down. I then purchased two GI OCD boards to replace the missing one and the one for the backbox.

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#127 2 years ago
Quoted from Bellagio:

I then purchased two GI OCD boards to replace the missing one and the one for the backbox.

Glad you got this all fixed.

Quoted from Bellagio:

I discovered that the relay board was not made by any repro company since Great Lakes Modular made them and they are out of business. There were none for sale from any of the usual sources or Ebay.

For anyone reading this thread that may need one in the future ... I have these boards available as bare or complete. I have a thread here on Pinside and the first post lists what I have available.

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1 week later
#128 2 years ago
Quoted from DumbAss:

Glad you got this all fixed.

For anyone reading this thread that may need one in the future ... I have these boards available as bare or complete. I have a thread here on Pinside and the first post lists what I have available.
[quoted image]

Thanks for making these available again!

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#129 2 years ago

Yay Pinside is back!

Continuing on, with the GI problem solved the machine was now working 100% and I could begin acquiring parts for the rebuild. I already had the new cabinet, so my first purchases were a Mirco pf and a set of Radcals.

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#130 2 years ago

First task was to deal with the backbox lightboard/door. The old door was in pretty bad shape. It had areas of swelling as well as damage from liquid spilled on it. It possibly could have been sanded down, but I believe the best option was to replace it.

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I bought a piece of MDF and cut it to the size of the door. I then clamped it to the old board, routed it and drilled the holes.

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The board was painted and cleared.

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#131 2 years ago

After removing displays, hardware, wiring harness, etc. from the old board, I removed the lamp sockets. I tried to leave as much of the ground braid as possible so I would have a template for it on the new door. I also marked locations of other large objects on the door.

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Next was new ground braid. I used the same better quality wire from PinRestore that I used in HS. This is a very tedious task that took hours.

Along the ground braid all new lamp sockets were installed.

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The wire harness was cleaned and re-molexed. Lastly, the jackpot display was replaced with an X-Pin led display.

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#132 2 years ago

Back to the cab. I could start painting right away since the cab was already drilled, primed and sanded along with HS:

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#133 2 years ago

Acquiring paint for Taxi was a little more difficult than HS since I had to match it. I am using Radcals, which somewhat match the original Taxi color, but have slightly more of an orange tint.

I took the Radcal to Sherwin Williams to match the color. Due to the reflectivity of the decal, their scanner wouldn’t read it correctly. I went back to my original cab to look for a place with minimal exposure to fading or dirt. The best place I could find was on the cab under the head and under a bracket where the paint was very well protected. I cut off a small sample and returned to SW. They scanned the sample and mixed in a little more red to make a color that matched the Radcals very nicely. The color is washed out by lighting in these pics.

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I painted the interior and front of the head with the same black paint from HS. I allowed a week of cure time between coats.

Painting is really messy and cleaning an HVLP gun sucks!
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#134 2 years ago

I moved on to dealing with the harnesses. Unlike HS that has molex connectors in between, I discovered that Taxi’s harnesses go directly from the pf to the boards. You cannot quickly disconnect the pf on Taxi which is annoying. I like being able to pop a few molexes and pull the pf if I ever need to. Lots of work, but much better!

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#135 2 years ago

I used a different process for cleaning the harnesses this time. I liked the dishwasher process, but saw the method Jjsmooth used, putting the harnesses into a bucket full of Grease Lightning for a day. I tried that and found that it worked equally well as the dishwasher. I also threw the mechs in there. Most of the parts will be replaced with new, but some unusual ones will be refurbished.

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#136 2 years ago

Like HS, I cut off all of the connectors (IDC's) to the boards, re-pinned the wires with trifurcons and molexed them. Most of the IDC's were yellow but ok. A couple were molexed (poorly) by other owners:

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Some were cracked and a few even had signs of fire!
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Lots of pics, lots of patience and they are all re-done.
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That’s a lot of connectors!

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#137 2 years ago

Some pics of old pf topside teardown

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#138 2 years ago

Underside teardown

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#139 2 years ago

Like HS, I sourced new boards where I could.

The power supply and auxiliary board were replaced with Pinball PCB. I will replace the sound board and MPU in the future when they produce them.

The IC board was the only board with obvious physical damage. Some of the header pins had heat damage. It's really just a pass-through board that doesn’t have any electrical components. I found a repro made by Gulf Pinball.

The MPU was sent to @Chrishibler's shop for modernization/refurbishment.

I also replaced the large 30,000uF 25V cap, the bridge rectifier and the fuse holder with new.

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#140 2 years ago

I removed all of the pcb's from the large metal board in the backbox and found an interesting bit of information about the history of this game. Here’s what I saw-

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Well, that explains the power supply and auxiliary board being replaced as well as the burnt IDC's!

The metal board was sanded, painted and cleared. Like HS, I didn’t paint the back of the board or standoffs to avoid grounding issues.
[att

#141 2 years ago

This is great to follow along with. These machines look tremendous.

#142 2 years ago
Quoted from jjga:

This is great to follow along with. These machines look tremendous.

Thanks, I really appreciate that!

#143 2 years ago

Back to the cab. Needed to do some more gutting to get all of the metal parts off.

IMG_3808 (resized).JPGIMG_3808 (resized).JPGIMG_4511 (resized).JPGIMG_4511 (resized).JPG

#144 2 years ago

Pulling the siderails. You have to be careful or they will crease, destroying them. My method was a heat gun along with a few putty knives. You slowly work your way along with one putty knife, loosening the tape from the cab. Stick the extra putty knives under the rail as you progress to keep the rail from re-adhering to the cab.

IMG_4561 (resized).JPGIMG_4561 (resized).JPGIMG_4563 (resized).JPGIMG_4563 (resized).JPGIMG_4559 (resized).JPGIMG_4559 (resized).JPG
#145 2 years ago

I considered giving Taxi the same chrome treatment as HS. I decided not to for two reasons:

1. I absolutely love the look of the chrome on HS. It’s beautiful. BUT, after a month of having that chrome I realized what a pain in the ass it is. Every time someone plays there are fingerprints all over it. It has to be frequently polished to look good.

2. After seeing several Taxi restorations (including HEP) that used black powdercoating for the game’s armor, I felt that it ties into the game better than chrome. The black/yellow contrast just looks right to me.

I shopped around for powdercoating services. The best service at the best price I found was HemiOrange09 (Steve at MI Pinball Refinery). His $250 deal can’t be beat! The downside is that shipping a big, heavy box full of metal parts back and forth is not cheap.

Turnaround was quick and I was very pleased with Steve’s service.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/i-can-powder-coat-your-pinball-armor-for-29500-plus-return-shipping

IMG_5268 (resized).JPGIMG_5268 (resized).JPG
#146 2 years ago

While working on the cab I got a big shipment of parts from PBR, including a mostly complete new set of coils. The two more unusual small coils (bell and upper pf ball gate) came from other sources.

I first re-built both flipper mechs. They are built with the newer-style extended spring.

IMG_3772.JPGIMG_3772.JPG

I re-labeled all of the coils with wrappers made by @athens95. His coil wrappers look great, are easy to apply and are made of a vinyl material that cleans easily. (Note- diodes were later cut off)

IMG_6179 (resized).JPGIMG_6179 (resized).JPGIMG_6180 (resized).JPGIMG_6180 (resized).JPG

#147 2 years ago

Next is soldering new wires to each coil and molexing them. This takes hours to do, but it will make things very easy when rebuilding and placing the mechs on the pf.

I have the old mechs nearby to verify wire colors.
IMG_6183 (resized).JPGIMG_6183 (resized).JPGIMG_6184 (resized).JPGIMG_6184 (resized).JPG

The graduating class of new coils!
IMG_6206 (resized).JPGIMG_6206 (resized).JPG

Packed and set aside until they are needed to build mechs.
IMG_6207 (resized).JPGIMG_6207 (resized).JPG

#148 2 years ago

In that big parts shipment I also received a ton of lamp sockets. Like HS, every single lamp in this game is being replaced (with their diodes...uggggh).

I prepped the lamps with diodes using the same procedure as before. I then laid out the harnesses and began cutting off old lamps and attaching new ones, including new flasher lamp sockets.

IMG_5550 (resized).JPGIMG_5550 (resized).JPG
#149 2 years ago

Another side project was making the wood rails. Like HS, Taxi has wood rails made of super cheap wood wrapped with black laminate.

IMG_6262 (resized).JPGIMG_6262 (resized).JPG

I bought oak board at Lowe’s and my friend again easily cut and straightened the rails. The only additional challenge with Taxi’s rails are the cut out notches in the shooter lane to accommodate the wireform. He came up with a way to perfectly cut these notches using a table saw.

IMG_6259 (resized).JPGIMG_6259 (resized).JPG

With the rails cut, I sanded and edged them. I then primed and painted them.

IMG_6324 (resized).JPGIMG_6324 (resized).JPG

The new rails are MUCH better than the old ones!

#150 2 years ago

With the cab painted, it was time to install the Radcals. For those not familiar, they are essentially a thick plastic cabinet decal that has a high gloss appearance.

The great thing about them is that since they are thick plastic they are WAY easier to install than standard decals. You don’t have to worry about them getting creases or air bubbles or sticking to themselves. You also don’t have to worry about them amplifying every little imperfection in the wood like decals. Also, they are already cut to the shape you need so there’s no edge trimming required!

They have paper on the back covering the adhesive and plastic protective film that you peel off on the front side.

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