Quoted from Mocean:Lighting the Romulan ship scared me, too. I just took a circular saw to my Hallmark ship, swapped it for the one that was there, and called that good enough. It looks much better.
The Hallmark ship is only scary because there is so much unknown about the mod, but once you know whats going on its fairly simple.
Myth: There is a circuit board in the ship that's needed for it to operate.
Fact: All the circuit board does is convert 120V AC to DC for the two zener diodes to "regulate" the voltage to around 6.5 volts. Since we already have a 6 volt GI circuit we dont need any of this for it to work as the ship contains 4 incandescent bulbs and they could care less if the voltage is AC or DC for them to glow, as long as its around 6V.
Well heck, I guess that's all there is to it. Of course I've been known to back up what I say with pictures so I won't disappoint.
I was once in the dark with this board as well so I cracked open a Romulan Ship to see what I was dealing with...that's when I found the spider! Okay, not a real spider but this little board with its 8 yellow wires just looks like a spider.
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Each one of the Zeners in the picture above control one side of the lights and are wired in series in order to reduce the overall current draw.
I would like to strongly discourage taking one apart like this as it is absolutely the hardest way to mod this AND you will chip paint around the warp nacelles which light will shine through and make it look bad.
The best way to do this is to just pull out your drill with a 1-1/4"/32mm hole saw and cut all the way through the bottom layer of plastic, then STOP! The reason you stop when you are through is to minimize damage to the wires, if you go too deep you will start damaging insulation, making more work for yourself. If you drill this perfectly, ALL of the wires will still be connected to the board and you can just cut them off, or desolder them if you prefer.
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After the board is out of the way, tuck all of the wires inside the ship then get your drill back out and cut through the top layer of plastic; since you already have 2 guide holes this is a simple cut, you only have to worry about going too deep and scratching the underside of the top portion of the ship in a place no one can see.
Just take all of the wires, solder them into a single 4 lamp series circuit and call it done. I used heat shrink over every connection and installed a 2 pin molex connector in place of the original tree lighting socket and called it done!
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All thats left is to wire it to any GI socket you see fit, if you made it this far no explanation is necessary. I hot glued mine down to the flasher cover, but realistically the ship never moved while I was game testing it, so its up to you what you want to do here. I cannot fall off as there is no room for it clear the flasher with the glass on, but it may fall if you raise the playfield and don't have it glued down.
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Engage!
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Austin, TX
The translite is nice too!
Newbury
Grimmenstein
Melbourne, ON
