Just joined this prestigious club. Picked up a barn find last night and it's pretty rough. But I'm looking forward to getting it back to it's glory days.

In my giddiness last night I forgot to take pics of the full game. But here it is in the back of the car, and some board shots. Cleaned up the boards with a little vinegar to neutralize the battery acid. Will need to repin and resolder all the cold solder joints. I won't even get started on what else it needs, I'm trying to take it one step at a time.

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If I want to LED my game, does it require any newer lamp driver boards, or anything like that? Or are these Williams ready to go as is? I know the older Bally's require a new Alltek board, so not sure about these.

Started tackling my Firepower project. As you can see, the playfield is not the greatest, but for a cheap barn find, I can touch it up. It will take a bit of work from me, but I'm not too worried about it.
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Last night I started from the bottom of the playfield working my way towards the top. I got right to the bottom of the pop bumpers and will pick up again soon on another day. I would like to tumble the smaller metal parts to make them nice and shiny, but again that will be for another day. I'm more worried about the main stuff right now and will work on the more intricate stuff later on. I am cleaning the plastics, playfield and post currently. Taking on the inserts will be a whole other project in itself.

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The black really looks dirty and nasty (and it really is), but with a little Novus 2 it's actually shining pretty nicely. I'm guessing a coat of wax at the end will shine it up even more.

I wouldn't be surprised if the rubbers on my game haven't ever been changed. Can agree that the flipper color is probably red.

How do you order from Mayfair? It looks like their website is down. Anyone know if they are still selling backglasses?

This is some kind of joke right? I typed in mayfairamusement.com and got this site:

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Then on mobile, click on "Backglass" and I get this:

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Yeah I emailed him earlier as I saw the email address in the screenshot and he got back to me pretty quickly. However the price of the BG, trim, and shipping is $400!! Seems a little too rich for my blood.

In the meantime, I was able to clean the rest of the playfield this evening. As you can see the playfield is a bit of a beater and needs some touch up work at the very least after a good cleaning.

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I used some gold ol' Novus 2, Bar Keepers Friend, and Simple Green on the playfield and various parts and it actually did a decent job. Or Vid's favorite, "I waxed it with Novus 2." More pics mid shop:

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Once I was satisfied with the work of the Novus and it was looking pretty good, I put a real coat of wax down which actually really made it pop. I assumed it would but it's actually shinier than I thought it would be. You can really see the shininess. (Some of the plastics are missing from the picture because they look like bacon. So I left them off to attempt to flatten them back out in the oven tomorrow, at a low heat of course. Oh, and no rubber yet as I still need to get the kit. I was waiting for my dad to get back in town to see if he needed anything before I ordered it.)

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Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I'll touch up the areas where the paint cracked but that's for another day. I also need to figure out what to do with the inserts...

I need to get to work on the boards next. Game won't boot so I'll need to figure out what's wrong with it.

Or instead of turning off and on again, just cycle to the end of the test mode and let it go through the boot up sequence.

Well to be honest I haven't been able to get to the test mode on my Firepower yet. The boards were so badly damaged that I still have work to do on it. But on all the old games of the same era that I've ever gone into test mode with, you can simply keep pressing the test or advance button to finish back to the boot sequence.

For example, when you go into test mode to get to the free play settings, you have to get to #18. So you have to keep pressing the advance button 18 times to get to #18 in the menu. Usually there are about 20+ settings or so to cycle through. When you've made your necessary adjustments, keep pressing advance. You should eventually get to where all the displays go out. This should signify you've reached the boot sequence and the game should start back up and be on free play. No more need to turn the game off and on again. (And again, this is on all the other games I've had experiences with, and perhaps Firepower is different. But I'm willing to bet with about 90% certainty it's the same.)

Can you add credits to it by manually pressing on the coin switch?

*Edit: after consulting the manual it says to "Turn game OFF and back ON to return to game over mode." Really I think either way should work just fine, either turning off and on, or cycling all the way through. Also the manual shows 35 settings to be precise, instead of my original statement of "about 20+".

And as far as batteries go, you could put in a NVRAM and never have to worry about batteries again. At least I think this game is compatible. No more messing with batteries and the settings are saved indefinitely until you change anything.

Could be a connector issue on the board. Or maybe an issue where the boards interlock. Have you rebuilt the interlocking connectors on both boards? If not, it might be good maintenance to do anyways as those connectors are always suspect if they haven't ever been redone.

Anyone know what size the number 20 bonus insert is? I thought it was 1 1/4" but I can only seem to find the 1 3/16" size. Of course the difference is only 1/16 of an inch but figured I'd ask.

Also, since I'm not at my game currently, anyone know the part number for the coil on the outhole kickers?

Thanks everyone, I may put an order in through Pinball Resource since Steve seems to be one of the only places that carry all the inserts I need right now. I need all the bonus ones and a couple of the orange, red, and green arrows. Luckily the FIRE and POWER inserts, the multipliers, and inlane/outlane inserts are ok.

I don't have a before picture of these plastics, but they were bacon, really warped and wavy and just not good. Popped them in the oven and they came out nice and flat.

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Haha yeah mine was pretty bad too, probably about the same as yours described.

Put the plastics on a wax paper covered baking sheet. You want a flat baking sheet, don't just put them on the wire rack in the oven, or put them on a sheet where the plastic overlaps a lipped edge. Set the baking sheet in the oven, center rack. Now set the oven to 200°F. As the oven heats up, the plastics will also heat up and start to "melt" back down flat. You have to sit there and watch them, do not leave your oven. There isn't really a set time, you just have to watch them. Literally grab a chair and sit there and watch them the whole time. You will start to see the plastics flatten back down. The instant they are flattened, remove them and let them cool, keeping them on the flat baking sheet.

Now as a disclaimer, when you attempt the oven method, you are aware of the risks involved. There are other methods, such as the dashboard of a hot car in the summer, using two pieces of playfield glass on a hot summer day, etc. Not all plastics are created equal. We attempted to use the oven on a really warped plastic from a 1966 EM pitch and bat. It didn't work. The plastic didn't flatten back down, it just got all bubbly and had some burn marks on it. But the plastic was so far gone before the oven we weren't too distraught and eventually made our own plastic.

But those plastics from 1966 and 1980 were probably totally different. Perhaps someone with more technical knowledge would be able to break down the different chemical makeup of plastics from the 60s vs plastics from the 80s. But if you're careful and watch closely, you shouldn't have any issues.

I hope this helps, and good luck.

That playfield looks really good. Fix the sunken inserts and you got a really nice playing game.

I ordered new inserts and will be replacing them soon. On the Firepower website, there are decals you can print for free. So I'll print those decals, add them to the inserts, then replace my cupped inserts with the new ones. Simple and didn't const a whole lot of money.

Yesterday was a really nice day outside and was perfect for sealing some backglasses

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That's not necessarily true. Inserts of that era can cup on a NOS playfield that was never even used.

What do both glasses look like with light coming through the back of them? Only way to make a proper assessment is to see what they look like lit up.

Anyone know what happened to firepowerpinball.com? It used to be a good reference site with really good information and now it's just pictures of a game.

Couldn't find any decent instruction cards so I drafted up my own.

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This is fantastic news! My Firepower was a barn find and the playfield is pretty bad. Would be great to have one of these.

Just print them at work...

Hey everyone, I have an issue with my game. Whenever I turn it on it looks like everything is good, but for only a split second. Then it will go into a test mode and will auto cycle through all the different tests very rapidly. The game seems to just about boot up and play, but just goes into the test mode and I can't get out of it. It just continually cycles in test over and over.

Any thoughts?

Thanks La_Porta, I will try that out

I replaced those whenever I first got the game. It was working perfectly fine, then unfortunately I had to store it for a few months while I was looking for a new place. Now that I'm in the new house, I set it up and it started having issues.

I know it can't be anything major because one time a few days ago it actually booted up, but I couldn't start a game. So I started checking connectors and then the same issue started happening again.

Thanks for all the input, I will look at it again this evening.

Anyone who bought the new backglass looking to offload their old one? I have a backglass but it's sun faded (at least from my best guess.)

From Outside Edge (the hard top overlay people): "Firepower is CLOSE!"

Anyone else getting a hard top for their Firepower?

Anyone have any suggestions as to why my game would continue to play more than 5 balls? It used to stop after 3 balls, but it seems like the game will continue indefinitely and just keep spitting out balls after they drain. Even the display will show the number of balls going past 5, it's not like it's stuck at 5 balls and keeps popping them out. The display will show, 6, 7, 8, 9, etc.

Edit: Never mind, figured out how to reset to factory settings and that fixed it.