Playfield inserts being raised.

I think thats the million dollar question, (removing mylar)..I have never tried it, so I am a little apprehensive to try it. My F-14's mylar is in good shape so I am considering just polishing it and leaving it. On my Grand Lizard, its bubbled in some spots and lifted on a few edges. If you do a search, I know I ran into a thread where you can inject glue into the bubbles and it appeared guys have had good results. Best of luck with your F-14. I was lucky to find one that had the lights that work on the back box and inserts not raised. As soon as I saw that, I paid full price.

Dang...I was going to look at that pin during lunch today but they told me that it was already sold. I spoke to them Sunday night but today was the earliest I could go. Let me know how it works out. Would love to play it once you get her all shiny and stuff.

Darin

What threads discuss this? I couldn't find any.

I hope you get it up and running. From talking with the seller I thought it might be out of my league. Getting my 3rd pin delivered on Thursday so what you really did was simply remove out of my life a temptation...thanks!

Seriously, if you get it playing, I would not mind seeing it sometime.

Take care.

Darin

Thanks, but I'm very far from the "somebody who knows what they're doing" lol.

There is a place on Magnolia Ave, (Baxter's I think) who sells and works on pins. I don't know if they are any good or anything else about them. I did go see a few pins they had for sale but was underwhelmed in their quality. I wonder if they could be of help if you get in over your head.

Darin

Make sure the lights function and the plastic light covers are in good shape expensive if not impossible to get original parts.

A fellow pinsider and a case of beer would have that machine working in no time!

You best hope you didn't just fry your switch matrix by sending 50v to it. But usually you would see the backbox turn into a smokestack in that event.

Looks like you fried a capacitor used to enlongate the 5v switch closure to register lane changes. Which means it looks like you definitely fried something on the CPU board... check the boards in the backbox for any signs of burned components.

Drill the lock out, they only cost $3 to replace .

If the CPU board looks fine (biggest one on the bottom) then you may have gotten off lucky. Put the game in switch test and see if playfield switches still register. Press the center coin door button to where it stays down and press the service/test button to enter diagnostics (see the displays). Press the center switch again to lift it and press test until you see the switch edge test.

I was actually talking about a switch test just to see if your playfield switches still work but since you provided that information it looks like you blew a fuse somewhere in the backbox based on my experience. I was working on a system 11b and the flippers got weak all of a sudden. The voltage at the flipper coils dropped from 70v to something like 36v while not under load. Under load it's normally about 50v and it was in the 20v range in my case. Turned out a fuse on the auxiliary power board to the right of the driver board blew as it was a fast acting fuse instead of a slo blo. I can't remember which one it was but that's irrelevant anyway since F-14 is a system 11a game and it only has a preliminary aux driver board. The fuse bank to the right above it is probably the system 11a equivalent of the aux board fuses. Pull the fuses from that bank and test them with a multimeter on continuity/diode test. But because you shorted something the failed one will most likely have a burned appearance.

Where exactly did the short happen? Was it on one of the flipper lugs or at the flipper button? Do your playfield switches work? The way a flipper is fired is the flipper power ground line hits the flipper relay on the CPU/driver board. This allows the CPU to turn the flippers on and off using a transistor to drive the relay. The actual 50v power hits a connector and arrives at the flipper coils and other high power solenoids such as the vertical up-kickers and this wire is chained as a common across all involved coils. Going back to the flipper ground line, this comes off the driver board and each flipper coil's ground goes to it's respective flipper button leaf switch and this completes the circuit when the switch is pressed. If the flipper goes up as soon as a game is started then this switch is either stuck closed or wired wrong. There is also a stacked switch next to that with an insulating separator. This is the low voltage 5v switch used for lane changes I mentioned and it is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL that no part of this switch touches any part of the main high voltage switch used to activate the flipper. Post a picture of those switches. Was that capacitor fried when you got it or when the short occurred?

Those are fast acting fuses, they will blow anyway but it's obvious that one failed because of that short. I'd say you shorted 2 coil lugs together, not a big deal. Looks like that capacitor is actually on the high voltage side of the switch, maybe it's used to smoothen out the rectified coil voltage I'm not sure, but you would've fried that too. Looks like your CPU board is fine. Do you have your playfield switches? You will need to get some assorted slo blo fuses from Radio Shack or a similar place. See the manual's fuse chart for details.

You are missing the diodes on both of those coils. Did the center wire on the lower left flipper just break off? Also, when you replaced the diode did you install it the correct way? Was the stripe facing the same side as the old diode? Turn the game off and do a resistance test using your meter across various pairs of lugs on both the lower right flipper and upper right flipper coils. I say that broadly because I haven't memorized what lugs are tied with what voltages. 3 or 4 ohms is normal, zero is a dead short. Something is shorted on that right side. Since the capacitor on the left flipper button switch disintegrated due to the short you shouldn't get anything on that side. It looks like the other cap has gotten hot as well... my point is you have several issues and I would look for some experienced help before you do more damage to the game. Send VolunteerPin a Pinside Mail message and see if he can pay a visit to your house and help you.

The batteries are used to maintain settings and scores, you need them and this is why you are getting the adjust failure message on startup. By the way I sent you a message, if you can make it down to that arcade in Nashville we can talk and play some games sometime.

I found this guide which does a great job explaining the flipper circuits on old (pre-solid state flipper) games:

http://stevekulpa.net/pinball/bally_flipper1.htm

Any luck on this? I hope you get this thing up and running. Sorry to hear you've had so much trouble.

Should read this repair guide. Lots of information as to what to look for and do before even powering up a game for the first time. One of those things is to pull ALL the fuses and check them, make sure they are the right values. If someone has overfused for instance, lots of damage can be had. There's a section on how to check all the coils etc.. good stuff.
http://techniek.flipperwinkel.nl/wms11/index1.html

Make sure you have the correct coils in the upper flippers. Too strong and you can damage your targets and plastics. Here is a Williams coil strength chart:

FL-11753 Yellow - Used with short flippers and close shots
FL-11722 Green - Used for close shots near drop targets
FL-11630 Red - The standard, most commonly used coil
FL-15411 Orange - Used for long playfield shots
FL-11629 Blue - Used for long shots and high ramps

Great to hear it. I want to play it sometime once you get all your bugs figured out

Looks like you need the same slingshot plastic I am looking for....

After rebuilding the flippers, could you tell a big difference?