The tear down begins.

I have thought a lot of how to resolve this need to swap the play field. I don't want to be digging in my parts stash to looks for the parts I need and will need to repair/rebuild. For the sake of time I am pulling all of the parts for a direct transfer. I will use these on play field #2. Some switches I will move over, too.

Since I am going to have to eventually strip the top of the play field to touch up the missing green and then do a re-clear so I am going to strip it now and move all post screws over.

With the way I built the wire harness, removing and swapping it would not be difficult but it would eat up some time. Since I have the play field harness in stock for QS #2, I will leave my harness attached and use the new 3rd Coast play field harness on the replacement play field.

I am also going to leave all controlled LED lamps in their sockets and just buy another set from Comet.

The way I built the GI circuit took some time so I will be transferring my GI harness to the replacement play field.

Tomorrow I am going to place the replacement play field outside in the summer heat and sun to work on baking the clear to a cured stage.

After a couple of hours of sunshine, the replacement play field with be loaded on the rotisserie tomorrow.
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My original thought was to ship the damaged play field back to Mirco so he can sand all of the clear and ink off and do a new ink and clear job and then I would just buy it back for my 2nd play field. Mirco does not want it back, but the play field does have value. I will be repairing the missing green ink and touch up the clear. Then the entire play field will be sanded down and some new clear added.

I figure the cost in my time to make this fix is going to be around $300.00 for time and materials. I am not trying to play the "get rich" game where I get a free play field. I have made Mirco a discounted offer for the damaged play field. Now I wait to see if he accepts.

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When I built my harness in its unconventional way, with the possibility for easy disassembly, I had no idea I would be putting it to the test.

30 minutes later I have my entire GI harness removed and ready to transfer. It will take my around an hour to get it installed on the replacement play field.

This is all of the GI. You are looking at it.

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I have one of those "pancake" solder heating irons. It does work quite well for flattening out the grooves cause by the posts.

Yes. I do consider myself lucky. Mirco tried to deflect blame by saying I over torqued the posts. I pointed out there was an adhesion problem as a post that broke like mine did should not be be scraping up paint. Scratch the paint. Yes. But dig it up? No.

Do you have any pics of your issues with yours, please?

Yeah. Those are ugly. I have one of these flat, pancake soldering iron heaters. I first saw this on the Jersey Jack hosed up play fields thread. And then I stumbled onto this one in a box of stuff of my girlfriend's ex-father-in-law. I don't know where you can but one, but I tried it one a couple of the grooves made by the posts. It did flatten them out quickly.

I would suggest locating one of these ( I cannot help you locate one, though) and work those areas over and then use the washers that play_pinball is recommending.

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I appreciate the offer. I went with the nylon because all I could find around here were cad plated washers. If I could have found stainless washers I would have went that way. The nylon washers are in shipping; I'll know now after they arrive. Over long term, cadmium can corrode and I don't want to risk that with the play field.

I have the replacement play field mounted on the rotisserie, the rails are installed, the GI is installed, and most of my copper foil feature light tape is completed.

I am using the steel angle support angles for the rails support. Only one hole on each side of the plat field matched up, so I had to do hole repairs to the holes drilled in by Mirco and move the holes to match the holes in the rails.

I have other things in life going on so it will be a little while until completed. I am going to have to order another Cliffy.

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I did get my Wall of Lights lamp board finished this afternoon. It took me burning the midnight oil to figure out how to finish what I had started. Of course, the LED strip providing the light was easy. The trick was to figure out how I was going to light up the callouts on the back glass such as TILT, Shoot Again, Game Over, etc. I put some Comet LED Matrix light strips to use.

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My nylon washers arrived. I consider them a bust. The diameter is too small for my liking; I did not catch that when I was ordering from Amazon. The other problem is that there are inconsistencies with the posts. With some posts, the washer set in with room to keep the post off the play field while on other posts a #6 steel washer had to be added as well.

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I went shopping locally so I can actually see what I am buying. I found these.

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They have a small crown on the washer but a light whack with an 8 oz. ball-peen flattens them right out.

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They sit inside the post radius and are tall enough that all posts will benefit. When torquing them down the rubber compresses a little bit and I am getting a nice tight fit with the posts on the play field.

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One other benefit, to my mind, is that I can place one in "rubber up" position on the back sling post and sink the post screw to below the rubber washer. This will keep the screw head from digging in to the ink on the sling plastic.

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Part of the reason why my assembly has slowed down is that a couple of weeks ago, I went to the dog shelter and adopted a little 8 year old Chihuahua.

So I have been spending quite a bit of time chillin' with the dog. He is figuring out he landed into a sweet deal with a pushover for his new "dad". No dried shit for him. He gets boiled chicken legs

His name is Wilson. Since I am the one that is doing all of the talking, I named him after the soccer ball in Tom Hank's movie Castaway.

He is having some problems with his right eye. A trip to the vet has been scheduled.

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Today time was spent installing posts and then fitting the archway ball guide. Fitting the ball guide for a nice fit takes some work; This took me 3 hours to do.

All of the bracket holes except the one at the shooter rail one had to be moved to get the ball guide to sit under the arch plastics properly. The only guide bracket that was not moved was the one at the shooter rail. All other holes had to have a "hole repair" done using bamboo sticks.

It involves taping the guide to the arch plastic to get a good position to prevent light leaks from shining out from between the arch plastic and the guide.

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Here you can see how far the two holes on this bracket are off.
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And the next 2 holes.

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Here is setting the first hole. I only install one screw per bracket until the fitting is complete.

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Next, you can see how far off the 2 holes over by the shooter were off.

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2nd set of holes moved.

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Once I got the right arch of the guide fitted, I moved to the left side. There was quite a bit of overhang with the arch so more moving holes on the left side was needed.

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It took lots of masking tape to hold the guide into position. The holes on these 2 brackets had to be moved.

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Here is the completed job. The ball guide hugs closely to the edge of the arch plastic. I should, I hope, not have much in the way of light leaks when finished.

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I am done for the day. I have been invited to come and play the Iron Maiden Premium one of my friend's just got in.
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Where did you get your strap for the guide? The one I am using is original.

And how about pulling your arches so we can see some polished brackets

My first call to Steve at PBR to order parts for my Big Game, Steve (The Gottlieb man ) talked about the poor quality on the classic Sterns. I did not know what he was talking about a the time; I soon learned.

What gets me with Stern on the Quicksilver play field is that Stern took on the expense to ink a key line around the circumference of the green ink. And then it all gets hidden behind the ball guide.

I am slowly working on the build. We have had a run of some rain followed by some nice cool days so I took advantage and harnessed the little dog up and we hit the dog parks for some sniiff-n-smell time. He was out of shape when I adopted him but we have been walking and getting both of us in shape He is going to be a nice walking companion.

With exception of fitting a new inner shooter lane rail, the topside of the play field is complete.

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2 of the starter holes that Mirco drilled for the inlane guides are not lined up correctly which makes the 2 leftmost inlane guides sit a little cockeyed. So I will need to do 2 hole repairs and move the holes just a little.

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I still need to get the drop targets set into position and transfer the wiring over from the damaged play field.

I cannot speak for play action yet, obviously, but I am really liking these rubberized washers I found at the hardware store. I will be forever thankful for play_pinball talking up about placing washers underneath the posts as a protective measure for the play field.

I am really liking these washers.

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The part number did not photograph and is 290250 if anyone is interested.

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This is one post with the rubber washer removed. When I removed the washer, all that was there was a small black line left by the rubber. A little spit on my finger and the black rubber mark disappears, leaving absolutely no compression distortion in the clear coat.

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Here is a 2nd post.
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Thanks.

Parts you need that your Wild Fyre has.

Apron and the sheet metal underneath. All of your ball launch parts.

Possibly your side rails.

Sling shot levers.

Your play field wiring may come in handy.

Your tilt board should probably transfer over OK.

Your coin door, although you will need to add a wire and a switch.

(The pinball maxim: Throw nothing away).

I'm waiting for some parts to come in and I'm still chilling with the dog ( actually, I have been sitting on my butt and just acting like the retired guy that I am. ). So, vacation over, its back to work on transferring parts from the damaged play field to the replacement play field.

I was not planning on something like this happening when I did my different style of wire harness but it is working out just super to transferring the harness over to the replacement play field. It took about 30 minutes of cutting tie wraps and removing screws and the switch harness and the solenoids harness are removed.

( Short answer: I am very satisfied with my harness set up that uses the copper foil tape. Since this is my 3rd trip to the harness rodeo, I know from building pin #1 and pin #2 that copper tape performs quite well ).

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To help keep the harness in some sort of order I tie wrapped some dowel rod in several places to keep everything lined up.

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And just the nature of the harness itself helps keep all the switches loosely lined up.

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And now I am left with unscrewing all of the lamp sockets and the lamps harness will be ready to transfer. I do not anticipate any problems.

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The replacement play field is prepared and ready to accept the harness transfer.

I also have set the drop targets into position and I am getting good action from the targets dropping them manually. I do not think I will have a bricking problem but that cannot be known until I am actually playing it and shaking it down.

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There is that factory/business term called the "experience curve" where unit #1 works but with some minor mods, unit #2 will be better.

This is the right sling shot on my Big Game, the first pin I used the copper tape on. I had to do all sorts of dancing around the sling coil bracket. It worked at the time---and it still works, but I can only look at this and shake my head that I did this so stupidly.

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I will correct this abortion of tape application after I finish the QS build. It will take about 10 minutes to reroute the copper tape for a much cleaner looking installation. The correction will follow along the blue tape and completely bypass the sling bracket.

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Life has really had a way of slowing down my schedule on getting this pin together.

I am thinking of changing my name to Black Cloud.

1) Last December, I got Covid. That held me up for 3-4 months.

2) Two months ago I had to have my transmission rebuilt. That was expensive.

3) 2 or 3 days after I got my car back from the tranny shop, my refrigerator went out. My mom bought it new in 1986 so it had served me well. But the timing sure sucked. Decent fridges are not cheap.

4) Then I had that problem with the Mirco play field. I have been busy building up the replacement.

5) Then I got the little dog and I am giving him a lot of my time as he acclimates to his new surroundings. He's my baby and I want him comfortable and happy. He has been getting a lot of my time.

6) Then early one morning last Tuesday, as I was getting ready for the dog park run, I backed out of the driveway only to discover my right rear tire was flat. I ran over something that damaged it to the point it could not be repaired. This set of tires had a good two years of life left but in the end, I decided replacing all 4 tires would be the better long term option, even though it cost more money today. Good tires are not cheap.

It took me 2 days of shopping around for the right tire, but I finally went with Discount Tires. I had the tires replaced on Thursday of last week.

7) On Saturday evening, as I was watching TV, I was interrupted by a loud crashing sound.

My ceiling caved in. Fortunately, I have a friend who used to do drywall for a living. He came over and we spent the next 6 hours fixing my ceiling. It was a mess with insulation everywhere. I am paying him but even having a friend do this is not cheap.

The new 4 x 8 sheetrock is up but I still need to mud and tape and paint it.

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8 ) And then....On Sunday morning when the pooch and I were returning to the car from our morning walk I saw that one of my brand spanking new tires was flat! I could not believe it. Turns out that I ran over a nail. Right at the edge of the tread where a tire cannot be repaired. Fortunately, the road hazard warranty replaced my destroyed tire with a replacement. The tire only had 170 miles on.

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Needless, to say, I am just a little bit bummed out and a little bit burned out at the moment.

To get back into some sort of groove, this afternoon I tried my hand at making a rollover lane wire with the wire bender I made with a nut and bolt.

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What I have made is one of those round top rollover wires like Stern uses today; I am not sure if you can buy them.

I like this round design. The ball will push the wire down sooner, and keep it down longer, which should help with increasing the time the switch remains closed.

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I'm tired. And my bank account is sucking for breath.

And now, back to the regularly scheduled programing

I am hoping to get my groove back tomorrow and get the transferring of wire harness over to the replacement play field completed.

Well, before I could get back to the wiring I had to take a break and call Roto-Rooter to unclog an clogged up sink (sigh).

Next up is that I have a rock chip in my windshield that has turned into a crack in the glass that the cops will stop me for. So, I will grab my checkbook and head to the auto glass shop. ( another sigh).

About the only thing left to go bad is the hot water heater.
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I just finished transferring the lamps wiring over to the replacement play field. Actual elapsed time to make this transfer was about an hour and a half.

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Next up is to get the switch harness and solenoids harness strung up. This will take less time than the lamps harness.

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Thanks but I carry liability only. No extras

Actually, 2 rock chips and 2 cracks. The first rock chip happened a couple of years ago—-just 2 days after I had a new windshield installed. That chip turned into a horizontal crack that is working its way across the windshield. This crack is not an issue for the cops.

But the 2nd crack is on the vertical just to the right of center. This one will generate a traffic ticket. Plus it is annoying to look thru while driving.

Except for a couple of small detail items the wiring is now complete. For the 2nd time.

Reinstalling the switches harness took a little bit longer than the lamps harness. I needed to make a couple of corrections and I decided to reroute 3 or 4 wires this time around.

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I also stumbled onto these wire ladder trees on Pinball Life that made for an easier install for the stacked wiring.

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And now, 4 hole repairs are required. The holes Mirco drilled for the impact rods at the sling shots were too big for the factory supplied impact rods ( I don't know what these things are called).

So, I hard to enlarge the hole size, fill them with dowel rod and drill the correct size hole ( I would like to know how other builders are dealing with this).

What should my mantra be?

1) Why me, Lord, what have I ever done?

or

2) If it ain't one thing----it is another one on the way.

Both rollover inserts are clogged to the max with excess clear. Yes, I have the files and other tools needed to dig this stuff out but a rollover insert is a delicate piece of plastic.

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The next morning. It looks butt ugly.

Can I fix? Yeah. I think I can fix it. But to get rid of the "white" where the clear did not adhere properly, I will have to scrape the remaining clear off, then prep, apply the clear, and then do the requisite clean up.

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But I get to do this twice. Here is the other insert. And as I look this insert over carefully, I can see shades "light white" under the clear so I already know this one is going to chip out just like the first one chipped out.

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But to fix this crap, I will need to depopulate the entire back half of the play field to get room to work and make the paint/clear repair. So, all that you see in this pic will need to come off so I can have good access to do the clear repair. I can see me easily getting 10 hours of time get eaten up by this job.

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I should have done that. But my thinking was blinded by all of the factory originals I have in stock

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On a positive note, I was able to make a complete set of newer style rollover wires.

This is an outlane wire from my Ghosbusters.

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These are the rollover inlane wires at the back of the play field.

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This is the left hand inlane and outlane wires.

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My motivation for attempting to do this was this crappy little outlane wire Stern used in the smaller size outlane slots. I got tired of snagging my polishing cloth on these little bastards. Making the outlane slot longer to allow for the larger inlane wire was out of the question.

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The proof will "be in the pudding" so to speak. But I think they will perform well.

The first one took me about 2 hours to fabricate the first one. The last few took about 10 minutes each.

The cabinet is finished. With exception that I need to wire a fuse into the knocker circuit and wire up two speaker wires, the cab is complete.

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Using some 3M heavy duty double double back tape I installed the back box lighting dimmer switch to one side of a coin chute.
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On the other side I mounted the volume control potentiometer to the other side of the same coin chute; This will be much more handier than having to reach into the bowels of the cab trying to feel for the volume knob.

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And my trademark copper prop stick. It is center mounted and does not have those leaning and twisting stresses that happen with the factory prop stick mounted to the side of the cab.

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And a piece of formed, clear, poly in use as a protector for the high voltage.

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The play field is finished, sort of. I still need to strip parts of the top for easy access to the 2 rollover inserts that have their problems.

I appreciate the offer but I have too much hiding under my window protector.

Breaking the play field down in order to repair the 2 rollover inserts.

The play field is complete.

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Now, the play field was complete. I need complete uninhibited access to those 2 rollovers. There will be no 2nd chances.

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Here are some views with how those neoprene washers have performed, so far.

#1) They are stuck to the play field surface and required some effort to peel off. The play field is sitting vertically in the rotisserie.

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After I peel them off the play field, there is a bit of "stain" left behind by the rubber. The stain wipes away easily as shown in the lower left hole in this pic. There is no depressions or deformation in the clear coat; Whether that is from the clear coat being from a superior application of clear by Mirco or just luck of the draw, or perhaps the washers are providing the magic I cannot say. It is what it is. But so far, I am happy with the results of using these washers.

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It will be a couple of days before I can start working on the rollovers.

And it is so unnecessary. All one has to do is stick a rollover star in the insert. It keeps the clear from clogging the slots. The stars cost about $1.00 retail; I consider them consumable tools. The time you save by not having to dig that crap out is worth way more than the dollar you wasted. After the clear has been shot on just cut the locking nub on the bottom and push the star out. I have done 3 play fields this way. Works like a charm.

This is a recreation. For illustrative purpose.

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Acutally, this is my sort of third 3rd Quicksilver play field.

Play field #1, one of the first run sold, the keylines had not been screened on. I told Mirco about this and since I was prepping to send Dragonfist over I sent the play field back. This play field had the nice clear, Stern style transparent inserts. Mirco ran it through his machines and sanded all the ink off and then re-inked and added the keylines. What he returned had his new method of using a courser grit of sandpaper that leave the inserts with a cloudy opaque look. You can see the sanding marks. Other than that, 2, or 3 play fields, depending on your point of view, all three had/have beautiful finishes, although, the clear on rollover inserts on this last play field was abysmal.

I wish I had not returned the first play field and left the missing keylines alone. They are way in the back and no one ever see the inserts.

With regards to the cloudy inserts and restoring a pin, It is what it is.

Here is the latest. Since I got my rescue dog, a morning walk in the park is an everyday happening. Today, we met a new friend. He had a nice looking master, too

After we finished our walk we returned to the car and I had to deal with this.

Another flat tire. This is my 3rd flat tire since July 7th. Can I say this shit is getting old?

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I ran over a 1/4" bolt. The tire mechanic said if the bolt was one size larger they would of had to replace the tire. Had I known that I might have drove a larger bolt into the tire and got it replaced. Now I have a 50,000 mile tire with less than 1000 miles on with a patch.

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But I am here to say that the play field is finished. I did not think it was ever going to happen.

I left you all with the mess that Mirco sent to me on the replacement play field. It is a beautiful play field but the inserts were hosed for some reason. The rollover insert slots were clogged with clear. During the process of cleaning the slots out some of the clear pulled away, as well.

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Yeah, they were butt ugly.

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To make the needed repairs I had to get out the mini-paint brush and start painting on slow-setting super glue. Then I had to work the super glue. After that, I had to get the air brush out and shoot some more clear on.

This one of the repaired inserts. It is not the prettiest but Mirco's crappy clear was superglued down and clear applied on top. While it looks crappy it is solid.

With some distance, they don't look too bad. Not perfect, but what can you do?

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They don't look bad from a distance. But I sure would like to have a good discussion with Mirco. This cost me a lot of hours.

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Oh yeah, I had to touch up some of the clear and buff that out as well. The entire job just sucked the wind.

And the play field is done. The spinners are on!

I will load it into the cabinet in the morning.

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