That's hilarious! I have no idea how I missed that, that's the great thing about having more eyes put on your work. I'll pull that plastic during my next cleaning/maintenance and add the 6th post. Thanks!

Another tedious, yet very important part of my pf swap process is electronics QC. With a laptop to display pics nearby, I go through each and every connection and lamp. The things I look at include:

- correct color wires are connected to the proper terminal and that the connection is solid
- bad solder jobs or solder blobs
- switch/lamp terminals near anything that could cause a short
- diode orientation
- Molex connectors

Once I verify each connection, I cut the label from the connection and check it off the list.

At the end I was really pleased. The only thing I found was a switch molex connector with a crimp that I didn’t like. It was re-pinned. Other than that, everything looked good.

That’s a lot of checks!

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The pf is ready to come off of the rotisserie. I place it against the wall to add the final parts that I couldn’t install because of the rotisserie brackets. (ball gate molex was connected after pics taken)

Playfield swap is finished!

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Another big moment, putting the finished pf into the cab!! My HF lift cart makes this a much easier task by lowering the cab.

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Legs back on and done!

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Overall everything looks good. No clearance issues.

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Now for an issue I was dreading... the infamous Taxi shooter lane. This is a critical part of the game and has to work perfectly.

After adjusting the shooter rod housing, the tip is perfectly centered hitting the ball. I shoot the first ball on this game and get a clunking mess that only yields around 4 revolutions in the spinout bowl. Ugggh, not what I wanted to see!

There are 2 important transitions- the beginning of the shooter lane to the wireform and the wireform to the entry lane of the spinout.

I found that the best tool for getting these transitions correctly lined up was the Slo-mo video feature on my phone. I filmed shooter lane shots over and over, looking for any places where the ball was losing momentum.

First transition looked good. Entry to the wireform is sitting correctly in the grooves, just slightly above playfield level. Ball is going straight into the wireform without hitting the sides.

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Moving to the other end of the wireform I saw that as the ball exited the wireform, it was just catching the left side of the entry lane to the spinout bowl, bouncing the ball off the walls of the entry lane and slowing it down. As you can see here, it's a little off to the left:

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I adjusted the wireform to get a straight shot directly to the spinout bowl.

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Fixing that got me up to 7-8 revolutions, enough to get up to 100k, but still not where I wanted to be.

I then remembered from the Taxi club thread that new barrel springs on the shooter rod tend to be too large and reduce the force of the tip hitting the ball. I swapped it out with a new shorter one and it did help slightly- I got up to 9-10 revolutions, but still not enough to make it a true skill shot.

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I then saw this thread from years ago by @blackbeard. In it he eliminated the barrel spring completely, replacing it with a rubber ring. I was curious to see the effect it would have.

The effect actually made me laugh! The ball did an insane amount of revolutions around the bowl, probably somewhere around 30!! Now we’re getting somewhere!

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/taxi-spinout-issues-remedy

Unfortunately I couldn’t use this solution as it takes away the factory look of the machine. It was very important information though, because it showed me that the real problem was the barrel spring killing the shooter rod’s momentum.

I cut the original spring down and re-installed it. Now I’m exactly where I want to be, generally getting about 15 or so rotations on a full plunge. This forces you to adjust your plunge to target the 2 best spinout bonuses- 100k or 25k plus passenger, making this a real skill shot. Mission accomplished!!

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Also installed new Mantis playfield hooks.

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Time for the first power up, always a scary moment. The MPU was still out so I ran the test with only the power board and the aux board. The switch was flipped and the boards powered on without issue. I then got to see the beauty of the GI turning on for the first time!

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While planning to build stadium lighting, I looked over the mounting locations and realized that there would probably be issues with the spinout ramp, the limo plastic and the blue plastic over the catapult wireform. I searched for info on this and discovered from the PinStadium thread (thanks to Southerntwang71 for posting his installation notes and pics!) that the plastics do interfere with stadium lighting.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/new-pin-stadium-lights-official-announcement/page/122#post-5614452

Taxi is a somewhat dark game, so I was ok with the adjustments. It's also easily reversible to original.

Here I'm getting the parts together to build them. The left rail is standard size and the right rail is cut shorter to fit with the spinout ramp.

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After test fitting the stadium lighting rails, I found that I could still use the limo plastic, I just had to adjust the angle.

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An interesting quirk on Taxi builds is that the shooter lane wireform was slightly changed. Some machines have the Taxi limo plastic attached basically flat on top of the wireform. One riveted bracket attaches to a spinout support post and the other bracket is screwed to a woodrail, as seen here on my original pf:

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They later welded two support brackets to the wireform and screwed or riveted the limo plastic into place, as seen here:

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I’m guessing that this was a time saving measure or maybe they thought it looked better?

The blue plastic, however, would have caused a problem with the stadium lighting rail. I didn’t want the space to be empty, so I came up with a custom plastic. This custom plastic also allowed me to add a personal touch to the game.

I have a relative that was a taxi driver for years. When he heard that I was restoring this game, he asked if there was a way that I could somehow incorporate his cab number somewhere in the game. I designed a simple black plastic to accomplish this. Of course I'll always keep the OEM plastic so it can be reverted to original.

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Finishing the apron. I found this apron card set on @Inkochnito’s site and think they perfectly complement the apron. I had the FedEx store print them out on glossy stock card and then laminated them with these Scotch lamination pouches.

Also made a donation to @Inkochnito’s site, thanks for what you do!

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Apron and stadium lighting being installed.
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The boards are back from @chrishibler’s shop. He did an excellent job with them, and as an added bonus made a YT video of the work he did!

The boards are installed and all molexes are connected.

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Leftovers. I keep all of this in a box in the attic in case I need something on a future machine.

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It’s time for the super stressful first full power up. You just pray that you got it all right and flip the switch. I keep the backbox open to watch the fuses.

I saw “Taxi” come up on the display and heard the wonderful “bong” sound of the game booting up! Fuses are good and the trough kicked looking for a ball.

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I spent the next hour or two running through the diagnostic menus doing an assessment of everything. Overall, extremely pleased. All coils good, two controlled lamps out and left kicker switch stuck closed. All were easy fixes- switch just needed adjustment and the lamps were just not twisted in correctly.

Pressed the start button, a balled kicked out and Marilyn says “Ooh Taxi!” So far so good!
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Played a few test games and made notes of issues I found.

First was the Gorbie shot. For some reason, the controlled ball gate was not allowing the ball to enter.

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The ball gate is supposed to stay shut most of the time so when the ball is kicked out from under the spinout it’s blocked from going into the Gorbie/Jackpot hole. I found that the switch that controls it is the wire gate to the right of the CAB lanes. When the ball hits that gate switch, it's supposed to open the ball gate for a period of time, allowing you to make the Gorbie/Jackpot shot.

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Coil test was good, but when I looked closer, I noticed that the ball gate was not being lifted high enough to allow the ball to enter. As you see, there's a spring on the left side of the gate that is pulled by the coil to open the gate. I used the correct spring (10-194), but it was slightly too long. I cut the spring about a 1/4” and reconnected it. Good to go!

Another annoying problem was crazy airballs from the Santa/Gorbie/Jackpot hole kickout when the ball strikes the rubber ring on the back of the Marilyn target bank.

Solution: The kickout was sending the ball to the correct spot. The issue was the Titan rubber ring is too springy for this location. Of course, this ring is one of the worst in the game to get to because it involves taking the plastic off and then both wireform ramps to get to it. I switched it to a generic 2-1/2” rubber ring and that fixed it. I love Titan bands, but they caused a problem in this spot.

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With that, Taxi is finished! Here are the final product pics:

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Here is a list of vendors I highly recommend that were used in these rebuilds:

Pinball parts-
Pinball Life
The Pinball Resource
Marco’s Pinball
PinRestore
Comet Pinball
Titan Pinball
Flipper Fidelity
X-pin

Playfields/decals-
Mirco Playfields
CPR Playfields
RetroRefurb decals

Boards/board work-
PinballPCB
Chris Hibler

Electronic parts-
Great Plains Electronics
DigiKey
Mouser

The most satisfying part of this whole experience is just looking at two like-new pins from the 1980’s in my gameroom. It feels good knowing they aren’t something that I could go buy from a distributor. I’ll definitely always remember the amount of work that went into them.

In closing, I want to sincerely thank all of the Pinside people mentioned that helped me along the way to complete these projects. Your help was invaluable!

So that’s a wrap! Thanks for following along and I hope you enjoyed the thread. Here are the two 80’s brothers back together!

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Thanks man, much appreciated!

Thanks man, I appreciate that!

Your HS thread from years ago is what gave me my first glimpse into what all was involved with a pf swap. There were a ton of valuable tips in there I still use.

Not sure of the level, I just requested gloss black. The job was done by Steve at Pinball Refinery (@hemiorange09). I was very pleased with his service.

So I found out that I what I said in post #207 was not the best option. I had cut down the shooter rod barrel spring to get more power when plunging the ball:

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It worked fine, but eventually led to this:

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There was just too much force on the shooter rod. It also bothered me that I had to modify it from original to make it work. I decided to really spend some time and get to the bottom of the issue.

I bought a new shooter rod and a new barrel spring. After hours of working with it, I found that the problem was a slightly (and I mean slightly) misaligned wireform. After watching slow-mo videos, I could see that the ball was bouncing off the walls of the spinout ramp as it approached the bowl. Giving the shooter rod more power with the shorter spring cancelled out most of the loss of power from the bouncing.

I loosened the two screws at the transition between the wireform and the spinout ramp. I moved them and lined them up until video showed the ball going directly to the bowl without hitting the walls.

Now I’m averaging about 20 spins on a full plunge with a factory spring!

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Glad to hear it! For me it was definitely the most frustrating part on Taxi to dial in, but once I got it right, it’s my favorite skill shot of any game.