I got this re-import STTNG a few years ago really cheap. But, like that new Picard show, it has serious problems. The canons didn’t work, the trough optos were shot, the cabinet amp was blown and so was the speaker, there were cut wires under the playfield, etc. The MPU, fliptronics, and 8 driver board are Rottendog. The other boards are decent originals.

Well I fixed all the broken stuff and it’s been playable ever since, but the game is still loaded with hacks, it’s dirty, and it looks tired. Had a problem this week with diverter coils... think it’s time for a full restore.

The plan is to first straighten out all the wiring hacks. Then I’ll do a complete tear down, refinish cabinet, new decals, all new ramps, new subway, new plastics, new toys, restore the original playfield, so on so forth. The original playfield has full mylar and will clean up really nice!

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So here’s what I’m dealing with.

The wiring harness is hacked to hell. Most of the cable ties were cut off. The wiring is a mess! There are tons of heat-shrinked splices.

I can’t tear the machine apart until I sort all this out, or I’ll never get it back together correctly.

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Big ball of loose wire and hacks. I think this is for the right ramp flasher but haven’t found where it goes yet.

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The harness for the subway optos is on the opposite side of the machine compared to other machines I’ve seen. I can’t tell if this was factory or not yet, hopefully someone here can help me figure this out.

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The back box is just as bad as the playfield.

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Somebody loves heat shrink.

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Thank you, these are very helpful! Working on backbox tomorrow.

I’m trying to decide what to do about this. The subway wiring for the diverter coils and optos is on the wrong side of my playfield. I can’t imagine why.

It sort of looks like it left the factory this way. There’s not enough extra wire to re-route the optos, and there’s too much wire for the coil power. I don’t think the person working on this machine could have managed this.

It bothers me, but I might have to leave these here and just clean it all up. Or I could move just the coil power wiring... there’s not enough wire to route the optos though.

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This is someone else’s machine for reference...
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I’m cutting them but starting in the backbox first and working down. I probably couldn’t handle pulling everything out all at once. Maybe if I knew the order the factory worked in? Like switches and lamps first, then coils, etc.

What really confuses me is the coil power harness is much much longer than it would be if it were in the usual spot. I highly doubt this person sought out the correct color wire and built a new one that reaches all the way over.

I’ll double check the optos and see if they would reach, but it looked short. So weird.

If I could find the correct color wire, I would rebuild all these harnesses. No luck on that so far. And I hate using the wrong color wire, can’t do it.

Thanks that helps. I cut out a lot of ties as you suggested, and pulled out the bad opto/vuk harness. This at least made everything else easier to work on. The lamp and switch harnesses are in good shape (on the playfield at least) and I can clean those up. The power harness needs work.

The opto/vuk harness does seem to be about 30” too short on the subway opto connector.

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I’ll probably leave this out for now and worry about it last. If I could get colored wire I would just rebuild.

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Its tough to get a helpful picture but here’s a few tries.

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Here’s the crimp job inside the subway opto molex.

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Hard to see, but in that second image above, those six wires (3 orange, 3 gray) go directly from the subway opto connector to the opto board. The problem is they are only about 24” long total. They are stretched straight as the crow flies in the picture. There is no configuration where this section could reach from the opto board to the right VUK like other machines.

It makes no sense!!!

I appreciate your help troubleshooting, I made a lot of progress today because of it.

Here’s progress on the playfield. I actually got a lot done. I’m confident I have documented all the hacks I need to fix.

My biggest problem is I need colored wire!! I looked around for an old harness to buy but no dice.

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Backbox... removed all the playfield harnesses and isolated the light board harnesses. Lots of fixes to do on these. Started routing a few harnesses already.

Bridge heat sink is not screwed down. Several connectors need rebuilt. I’m missing the black flex hose. Also the cabinet ground is all jacked up but I’ll replace during restore.

Anything with green tape is something that needs fixed.

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http://www.robertwinter.com/pinball/restorations/sttng/teardown/index6.html

This site is a goldmine!

Making lots of progress. I got the original subway harness straightened out. I need to cut out the weird unnecessary splices on the lower two optos. The original harness has plenty of wire... no clue why this was ever done.

I have $100 of wire coming from planetary to fix the rest of the harness hacks. I’m going to build a new harness for the opto board to subway so it can be routed like the original. I wish I had another machine to look at so I could build it the same as the original.

Building new diverter coil power harness as well.

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I’ll have to go through all the lamp boards. The soldering is shot, tons of cold joints.

Some boards are missing sockets, I never even noticed.

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Stuck waiting on parts orders. I didn’t realize GPE would take over a week just to ship. I do love Ed but I need to find somewhere new to get stuff so I’m not sitting around for a week idle.

I have harnesses routed pretty clean now. I will fix all the splices, wrong wire colors, hacks when wire and connector orders arrive.

The coil soldering is really bad but I’ll clean all that up at end of restore when I put the harness back on.

Before...
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After...
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Parts just arrived. This weekend I’ll start to build harnesses, replace incorrect color wire everywhere, and remove all splices. Then once it’s all working I’ll tear the whole machine apart!

I need to put together an order for cabinet parts next. New legs, decals, etc.

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Here’s some pics of amazing soldering skills...

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Spent the weekend cleaning up more hacks. I ran all new wire for column 9, built new ground cables for 8DB, pulled out the original tie back and moved it to J108, etc.

I already need another big parts order to fix more stuff I’ve found. I’m going to run new wire for GI harness and coil/flasher power since these were previously cut. This guy loved to cut wire in random places and heat shrink it back together.

Let’s cut all these!!
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Cut these too? Sure why not
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All the subway optos had a bunch of extra wire spliced in. No idea why since there was plenty of wire left...

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I cut all that out and put it back original...

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Subway opto harness before, with the extra mis-colored wire...

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After cleaning it up...

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https://www.moll.no/pinball/jsparts/STTNG.php

BOM for STTNG in tree format. Not sure who put this together but it is pure gold.

I was able to find the correct subway opto screws are 4106-01004-06

Raw BOM:
https://moll.no/pinball/parts/raw/Williams_1993_Star_Trek_The_Next_Generation_Parts_List.txt

Ran new speaker wires to cabinet. Been replacing harness splices with correct connectors or running new wire. Under playfield almost done, then backbox.

These came from Mantis today... the supports are super nice

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Got my order from Planetary. They screwed up a bunch of items. Wrong wire colors. So now I have another week of waiting for parts.

I did get the GI rewired in the lamp harness though, and fixed a half dozen other mic things.

So many splices...
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Pulled all that out, ran all new GI wire from playfield to backbox.
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New subway. Won’t replace till I do tear down.

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Lots more work done fixing harnesses. Sucks I have to wait on a Planetary order cause I’m almost to where I could turn the game back on.

Cleaned up right canon wiring:

Before... sloppy, wrong wire colors, terrible soldering...
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After...
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FINALLY!! I found a picture of the opto harness out of the game. HEP has one in a restore he did 2006.

http://christopherhutchins.com/gallery/album72/49_G?full=1

Now I can see how this is supposed to be routed and tied. Should be able to get it close enough to correct with this.

Still waiting on parts orders though. I might go pull Flash Gordon out of storage and start working on that. Rather have two projects going than sit idle waiting on parts.

Nevermind, I’m an idiot. That picture is only the solenoid harness.

I think no picture of the STTNG opto harness outside of the game exists! Guess I will just make it up.

It is interesting though the game Chris restored also has different opto harness routing, so that harness design was revised at some point at the factory.

Still at a standstill.

I had several problems with my last Planetary order and still waiting to hear back on the ticket I opened Monday. Feels bad since I spent $400 with them.

I pulled my Flash Gordon project out of storage to keep me busy while I wait.

Planetary said they are shipping out my parts, although I don't have a shipping notice. Doubt I will order from PPS anymore, everything takes too long and the service is sketchy.

Meanwhile I finally_ got a good picture of the opto harness. I randomly messaged another Pinsider about his STTNG restore thread and he had this picture. This is the first time I've seen how the individual wires are routed and where the zip ties belong. So as soon as the PPS order gets here I can finish harness repairs and turn the game back on. And then tear it apart.

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I need to order STTNG cabinet decals soon. If anyone has suggestions for who makes nice ones I would love to hear it.

I'm going with original WMS art on the cab. I wonder how it would look in high gloss? Trying to find some pictures of that.

Did a couple random things. Cleaned up the drop target wiring in the harness...

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and replaced with a connector.
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Guess this needs powdercoated. Kind of has a cool worn look to it though. If the theme was Star Wars I would definitely just shoot some clear and leave it as is.

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Got smashed by Hurricane Ida. No power, water, internet. Phone service is spotty. The bayou behind my house raised a good 3 feet and my driveway was impassible. Today is first day I was able to leave home. Went on a road trip to find more gas for the generator and also food. Had to drive half an hour away and wait an hour in line for gas but got 20 gallons. Very very thankful. That will last about four days. Also found food and beer.

Worst part of all this, my parts order got delayed again.

I wonder how many pinball machines died in this storm.

Planetary screwed up my order again. Told me they would ship the items with another order 8/24. Picked it up today... items were not in the box. They said they will ship it again. If it’s not right this time it’s chargeback time.

I did get the wire I need to finish the opto harness. Working on that next and rebuilding the trough opto connectors (because they were done sloppy and also missing ramps).

Also ordering this stuff to get ready for cabinet refurb...

- new next gen cabinet decals
- new translite
- new speaker panel
- new WPC STICKERS
- mirror blades

Time to clean up this rats nest around the opto board

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Re-pinned all 40 pins for the optos. Cleaned up the wire lengths and routing.

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Took apart the wire harness, completely re-routed all the wiring, got everything tied back up tight.

Added all new wire for the subway optos so it will reach the right side of the playfield like most other STTNGs are wired.

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A blind person changed the trough opto connectors. The connectors were zip tied to the board because they were loose due to no ramps. Changed these, cleaned up wiring, replaced with connectors that have ramps.

Rats nest before...
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Snip snip...
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After...
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Building a new coil harness for subway coils...

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Done repairing all the subway harnesses!
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Waiting on Planetary to get my order straight and then I can finish up.

Under playfield repairs are complete. I’ll clean up the routing even more after the restore is complete. No point now since I’m tearing it apart soon.

Before...
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After...
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Playfield after every single splice removed from every harness and all connectors repaired.

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Now to wrap it up in the head. All that is left is to finish building the coil/flasher harness. I replaced all of that wire because there were heatshrinked splices.

Also went through PDB on the bench, cleaned up joints and replaced missing screws in double bridge heatsink.

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Left is when I started, right is cleaned up...

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Had an annoying problem where the game wouldn’t stage balls properly. Turns out when I built the new subway coil harness I did this....

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Easy fix. All the other complicated harnesses I did were fine so that’s good.

Also had a GI short on the violet circuit. Took a while to find this one. I found a bulb came out it’s socket and an old molex pin somehow got in the hole.

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Only issue left to fix is the left flipper switch doesn’t register in edge test. Flipper works but you can’t steer the shuttle in video mode. Probably a dirty opto or cold joint.

Backbox hacks cleaned up.

Before....
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After...
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Thanks, it’s coming along!

Today was fixing gremlins.

Guns on this game are shot...

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Built new assemblies from all new parts.. much better!!...

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The light on the left gun has never worked. Tested no voltage. Tested no continuity. Thought cannon loom was damaged but it turned out to be this...

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I think it left the factory this way. Replaced that and now the lamp works...

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Game is pretty solid now. Kids are giving it a workout.