Hey Guys

I have a RS that have been in my possession about three years now, and it's a great machine. Absolutely love it!

However, lately i have been noticing something i don't think have always been the case. But when playing, sometimes Ted's mouth wont close fully, until he speaks again,. Then everything seems ok. The words are synced ok to the mouth, and when a game is finished, he always closes it fully. But it's like sometimes his "jaw drops" and he sits for a while with the mouth partially or fully open. As if the last "command" to close it wasn't received or something. But then the next time he talks, everything looks ok again.

It's not a big issue, and doesn't affect gameplay. But it just looks annoying as it makes Ted look rather stupid!

Anybody have tha same issue? And would anybody happen to know a fix?

Awesome work Søren!!

A quick question for you: when doing these custom ROMs, would it be possible to add the hold/pause feature from the TZ home rom, that lets you pause the game and cradle the ball on a flipper for a period of time? For home use, that feature is just awesome!!

But if it was the cog that was worn, I would not think that everything would be ok again the next time Ted says something? When opening and closing his mouth fully, it seems to happen in a nice fluid motion.

Yeah that would be another way to do it. Just like how it works on TZ. And as long as it is only hold power in the coil, a!d there is a timeout after a couple of minutes, I don't think it is any worse than a standard ramp diverter or similar diverters that are powered for longer periods of time.

I bought a TL866CS burner via eBay (45 USD), and a couple of 4mbit eproms as well (4mbit works for most WPC game roms).
Really easy to work with, and following Soren's directions on how to patch in the read-me was easy.
So just dive right into it Each eprom is like 1 euro each, so even if you make a mistake it's no big deal.

Latest ROM version lets you adjust the shaker intensity. At the lowest setting I think its perfect for the game.

Please share more info if you can. What exactly did you do to fix it?

Mine is almost broken off as well, so i need to figure out what to do. But i have zero experience in that kind of repairs...

Yeah, i'm actually aware of that protector. But mine still has the wood, so i was thinking about repairing that if possible.

Cliffy writes: "The Blasting Zone repair kit is intended ONLY for use on games with wood loss"

But perhaps i should just remove the wood and buy the protector

Thanks for sharing! Excellent pictures

I thought you were going without the Cliffy protector. But your approach seems to be a really good solution.

I don't know if there are other solutions in this thread. But all i could find when i needed to remove Ted was people saying how extremely difficult it was removing him. Practically everything around his head above and below the playfield would need to come off due to the dozer blade. I was hoping for a video guide or something, as i am a real novice at taking machines apart.

What i ended up doing will surely make a lot of people roll their eyes. But it worked perfectly for me, and saved me a lot of hours...

I simply ended up bending (straightening out) the 4 angled mounting points below the playfield, just enough to be able to pull Ted up from above the playfield. After a full restore, i put him down again (from the top side), and bent the mounts back into place and fastened him.

I knew there was a slight risk the metal would break when bending it. But the mounts are super simple, so in case that happened, i just decided i would make some new ones.

Bending the mounts meant that i practically didn't have to remove anything else, and made it just as easy as removing Red.

Some times my Ted's mouth doesn't close fully after he says something. He is then left with a (semi) open mouth until the next time he talks, and everything is fine again for a while. The amount of gap to the top when it happens varies a lot. It happens occasionally, but not in every game.

Works fine in test mode.

Any ideas? Could it be something as simple as a loose connection or a cold soldering on the motor driver board?

Thank you for your reply. I will check the gears. I am guessing a visuel inspection will give a good idea about the state of the gears.

The gears looked fine.

So I decided to take out the motor control board, to reflow all of it. When I did that, the big square resistor on the Ted part of the board fell of when I heated up one of the solder joints. Turned out one of the legs on the resistor had snapped. That was why it fell out when heating up the solder on the other side of the component. So I guess the connection have been intermittent, causing the mouth to not always close fully.

I have fixed it now, and played 6-7 games on it. And so far I seems to work as intended.

So it seems Ted is fully up and running again

I think it simply wears off after some time. Some people repaint it, others leave it alone.

The original flyer shows both lower lips painted:
https://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=flyer&db=pinballdb&id=795&image=2

Another example from pinball.center. Notice how the greens are totally missing, and the yellow/browns are totally off. Just looks absolutely terrible.

When contacted, they just say that all pinball colors vary, because of age and fading...

58373939_330209724327703_3244725531588952064_n (resized).jpg

I did the same thing as Kjarkur did. Simple bent the brackets underneath the playfield. Then you can pull him straight up. It only takes a few minutes. I know it isn't the correct way to do it, buy i took the chance. If I were to break anything it seems pretty straight forward to make some new brackets.

I actually mentioned this about 6.months ago in this thread:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/road-show-club-hard-hats-required-on-site/page/40#post-5495094

I have only done it a couple of times. I believe it is actually mentioned in the manual?

I know it sounds crazy. And i just browsed through the online manual, and was unable to find any mention of it. But i could have sworn i saw it in my own manual at some point. If i remember correctly, there was a mention about it happening from time to time during gameplay. And if it happened, to give a small nudge to the right just as the ball was at the corner before the outlane.

I remember it, because i thought it was a funny thing to actually include in the manual.

But perhaps i was wrong. Old age could have something to say...