anybody made a decal for wear here?

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Watching the installation video it seems to be well designed, engineered, and crafted, all of which cost time and money to do, yet alone to produce. For what I see the price is reasonable.....

The wear you have just should not happen No part of Balrog should ever touch the playfield. I'd be interested in knowing what went wrong to cause this.

Usually it's the white spacer at the pivot, but his seems to be there. Mech coming loose from the bottom of the PF maybe?

Edit: looked at the mech it's probably the hex post came loose and the screw head is dragging

The screw came loose. Makes me think I should put some loctite on mine

ohh...I'm thinking the same thing...maybe even RED.

yup, on route, not maintained. screw came loose on bottom. actually I have seen several that did this.

Mine 's on the way

Ran into some frustration this morning where my LOTR was resetting. It would do it during attract or in the game. The lights all seemed to stay on but it would just kill the flippers and the display would start at the Stern Lord of the Rings again. I looked at it and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I re-seated J16 based on some other posts but it did happen again. After leaving it on for some time it seemed to be fine and I've had a bunch of games today since this morning without issue. Is there anything to look at? Do pinball machines warm up at all which may have helped the resets stop occurring? I have got a NVRAM chip instead of batteries but that was done over a year ago and has been working well.

It seems that this can be somewhat common. The only change is that is a bit cooler these days! Any advice is appreciated.

Re ring fire mod, just a thank you to Mezel Mods for their excellent service. Ordered last week and already received.
Every time I have ordered from them ( and screwed up at times) their communication has been second to none. Thank you MM.

Bummer, I read this could happen and used some lock-tight on the screw. Maybe someone with expertise can help you scan that portion into a waterslide then mylar over.

New to the club. I have wanted one of these for a VERY long time. I am so happy to of finally found one within my grasp! I look forward to reading this thread from the beginning. I know my game has many, many mods... I do not know what is original and what is a mod but I look forward to learning whats what. The one issue I have is the trim was painted so I need to get all the trim powder coated. Questions: Is the gold a brass powder coating or a metal coating? Is gold an LE finish and if it were not an LE it would be black? I have a "pro" or non-LE, whatever your calling that, but i have the LE rom in it. I believe that is so I can add a shaker motor to it and the code supports it. Is that correct?

I'll get some better images with the glass off when I get a chance.

Thanks
Jim

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Welcome. Your trim used to be black. You can add the shaker as I did after changing the ROMs in my LOTR. Gold is the LE finish. Your POTD figures are a mod. Pictures are not clear to see any other mods.

yeah that's what I was hoping for, I fixed the indention that it left, plays like new, nice and smooth...…… but a overlay of some sort would be nice.

Thanks. I figured that would be the easiest fix. I have them on my order list from Pinball Life. After I finish up this project, I will have to place an order to replenish my LEDs for my next project - EBD likely. Then I will get those plastic posts and put them in.

I also like the mod where the pads go on the side of the cabinet. Will have to see if I have those.

My fix works, but the ball comes out of the VUK so violently that it either bounces back into the VUK, or gets stuck against the VUK metal. That fix posted from Pinbits looks like it would be perfect. I am going to try to make my own as I do playfield plastics all the time.

http://www.pinbits.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=13_48&products_id=491

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Yikes. Yea I'd either buy the new set of stock black trim or for almost the same price have it powder coated something snazzy like Grecian gold vein. I have had a few games brass coated and pricing wise is no joke plus imho, doesn't look exactly in place on the LOTR.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-lord-of-the-rings-journey-begins-members-club/page/93#post-5144192

Man, before I would start drilling stuff, I’d just do the reversible mod suggested by DeeGor a few posts above.

Picked my LotR up on Saturday, really one of the pins I've been looking forward for quite some time. Finally found a decent machine in the area and not completely overpriced. Thankfully it is still all incandescent lights which I think the LotR is one of the few machines that go with that look, even when it looks a little dark compared to the ACDC next

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The pinbits part is aweeome. Not only does it keep the ball from getting stuck but on mine it also made the path more random. Without it, the ball would take the right path 95% of the time. Now it's a real 50/50.

My palantir mod arrived today and it awesome! Thanks Frank.

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Cool!! Glad you like it!

I couldn't agree more!

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I'm trying to figure out why your VUK sits so much higher than mine.
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I made my own plastic similar to pinbits. The ball comes out so violently from the VUK to Paths of the Dead, that it still bounces back over that plastic about half the time. This has only started since I put the larger rings on the posts and converted from black to silicon. I suspect it is a combo of the larger ring and the rebound property of the silicon that has increased the bounce back.

I am trying to figure out how to make that VUK less powerful. Am thinking a stronger spring? Any other ideas?

Epic fail on a LED conversion. It is too bright. I figure I now have to splurge on an LCD OCD to make the transitions smoother, but many of the lights are still too bright. Problem areas include:

*The green lamps on the Paths of the Dead - switch back to green incandescents?
*The clear inserts in the semi-circle in front of the flippers - go to a yellow color?
*The yellow flashers up front - back to incandescent
*The wired flexible LED behind the acrylic globe - I will put a standard red LED in there.
*The one GI below the left wire ramp - that really should have a plastic covering it - remove it altogether? - Make a plastic for it? - would have to fit the plastic around the screw / wire holder to that ramp.
*I put in white LEDs on the ring in the back panel. They are slightly annoying. Might have to change them to orange?

What have others seen?
The LEDs are single SMDs from Pinball Life. I think they have changed LEDs recently, maybe gone from 3528 to 5050?

I believe you can change the brightness of individual lights with the led ocd board as well as making all the transitions smooth

I had good luck on my LOTR just using colored incandescent bulbs. I used a few LED's in key inserts like the KEEP letters. I used some amber incandescents in some of the GI. The effect is very subdued and IMHO looks great.

Im also trying colored incandescent bulbs. Ordered green and reds today for the back board. Will do 2 or 3 greens for the path of the dead, others will be red highlighting mount doom and Mordor. Can share some pics hopefully on the weekend.
If it looks nice might think of some more spots.

Love to see some pics!

At the risk of sounding like a broken record here, this is a game where many prefer the stock incandescents, me among them. Buy a set of Pinstadiums, connect them to the GI only, ignore the flasher connection, adjust them to a warm white, and BOOM. You have to see it to believe how awesome the game looks. IMO, Pinstadiums are the single best mod you can do to about any game. If you want to build them yourself then go for it.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to photograph bulbs and inserts and get the real life effect. Sorry.

Some of it is brightness. Others might be a bit of strobing with the dimming / playfield effects. The OCD board should take care of that.

Broken record is OK. There is information spread all over the place. Tough to find and collect it all.

I have had good to great luck with LED conversion in WPC pins. And LOTR looks dull next to my converted FH. So I am shocked that this is an issue.

We have a LOTR LE installed at the Roanoke Pinball Museum, where I volunteer. Next time I am in, I am going to take a closer look. In passing, it does not stand out as terrible.

Is it true that the OCD board can be used to individually dim bulbs?

I am going to have to see some Pinstadium installations before I jump for that. It is not the playfield that I need to be lit up. It is the inserts mostly. Plus I like the lower current draw of LEDs.

And another LOTR issue since I overhauled it: As someone else recently posted, I am now suddenly having problems with a single ball clearing the Sword Lock. I swear the balls are not magnetized, and they are new.

What appears to happen is that as the solenoid lock pulls down, the ball moves back just a little. The solenoid then quickly pops back up and holds the ball. I do not recall it happening that quickly before.

I am wondering if the ball moves back a little when the lock drops, the ball moves off the switch, and then the lock pops quickly back up thinking the ball cleared? I do not see anything wrong with the lock alignment - I did not remove or clean it during the overhaul. I did remove the ramp.

Anyone have this issue where it is not magnetized pinballs?

I thought it was an issue with the switch matrix. I seem to have an awful lot of cold solder connections to switches on the playfield. A wire was off several switches, including the right slingshot lower switch - no solder at all on the switch tab. I had the problem with the sword lock. I re-soldered the disconnected wires and the sword lock seemed to work fine. But last night it was back.

Agreed. I can't think of any other pins where I haven't done at least some sort of LED conversion to. LOTR was my first pin and obviously I have had more of an opportunity that any other pin I have ever owned to convert it over. I just think it looks like the perfect mood, ambiance, and atmosphere with incandescents.

The balls get magnetized within just a few seconds if they are the wrong type of balls.

I have checked them to see if they are magnetized and they are not. I have also degaussed other pinballs to be certain.

They move backwards when the solenoid goes down. Also not a sign of being magnetized.

Out of curiosity, what causes them to become magnetized? And what are 'wrong type of balls'.

Not sure where I got these, but I got them in bulk from either Marco, Pinball Life, or PBR.

The material used with the chrome balls seems to magnetize. I use the cheapest carbon steel balls from Marco, and the same balls have been fine for years in TZ, TAF, LotR and Metallica. Does your sword lock mech possibly have a loose screw or something and not secure and moving smooth? Is your playfield set to the 6.5deg slope?

I have LED’s with OCD and pinstadiums and it looks great, not a fan of pinstadium but this came with them fitted.
Having to move them when you lift the playfield really pisses me off as I forget!

Yeah, me too. I've reattached the swords on the right side figures a few times after forgetting about the Pinstadiums when raising the playfield. I have a set of the new Hover Mounts to install for this reason. Now to figure out where to place them...

My end of stroke switches (at least that's what I think they are) don't seem like full switches and nothing goes close enough to activate them anyway. What are they supposed to look like?

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You have a blade broken off and missing. The white plastic piece is what actuates it.

It turns out that the bottom switch was bent so far up that it was slowing the roll of the ball. Once I noticed it was bent up more than the other two, I bent it back down. Never heard of a roll over switch hanging up a pinball before. Problem solved.

When I got my LOTR, it must have been routed. Both EOS switches were missing a blade. If you see that, likely it is time to rebuild the flippers also.

Like WPC Fliptronics, the Whitestar computer controlled flippers will work just fine without the EOS switches. You will not lose any power. The switches are just there to note if the flipper is being pushed down by the weight of multiple balls being trapped during multiball. So it is a good idea to replace the switches.

I have had my LOTR for about 10 years. When I got it, I rebuilt the flippers, but they still seemed to be weak. So I put the special powerful LOTR flipper coils in. It always seemed to strong for me. And now that I have finally cleaned and waxed the playfield, it is worse, of course.

I think I have them set to the lowest settings. Is this correct?

53 Adj 1: 05
54 Adj 2: 40
55 Adj 3: 0

If they are the lowest, other than changing the coils again, is there anything else I can do to weaken the coils?

This is actually mostly true, but not entirely accurate as the EOS does a little more than that, when you press the flipper button the coil energizes at FULL power for EITHER the maximum time programmed (I believe this setting is user adjustable) OR until the EOS closes telling the CPU that the flipper reached its End-of-stroke.

With a broken EOS switch the CPU provides full power to the coil for the maximum duration every time...this will cause your flippers to heat up more rapidly and stay hot longer than a flipper with a working EOS switch. This effect you will see is the flippers will loose power when playing since coil resistance increases with heat causing the current passing through the coil to decrease.

The math:
P= V2 ÷ R where Power=(P), Voltage Squared=(V2), and Resistance=(R)

[P (watts) = V2 (volts squared) ÷ R (Ω)]

Since the Voltage is this equation is static, the resistance will have an inverse relationship with power; the higher the resistance, the lower the power.

I don't think white star games have much of a strength setting but I could be wrong. Are you using the PBL upgrade coils or the medium strength coils? I had Terry's coils in and they were way to strong. Swap them out for the medium coils available in the marketplace.

A good explanation and I believe it is entirely correct.

There is a bit of time where the EOS could shut down the power earlier than the max time - under flipper #54 setting. These settings were added (I think, check me on this) sometime after LOTR came out. If the setting of the 'maximum fire time for a flipper coil in milliseconds' was longer than the the EOS would be seen, then the coil would experience full power longer.

Conversely, there is another setting, #55, which sets the amount of time that the coil sees full power after the EOS is detected. If the EOS is missing, this time would not be added into the time the coil is energized.

In practice, not sure that the over heating effect of having the EOS vs. not having it is significant. Theoretically, it sure is possible. I can tell you that in my one case, adding back in the EOS switch and rebuilding the flippers - which I did at the same time - had no noticeable effect on flipper strength. Did adding back in the EOS switch have any effect on the temperature of the coil? Maybe it did. But I do agree that one should add those EOS switches back in.

It has been nearly a decade since I changed those coils out. Pretty sure they are not PBR.

I stuck my camera through the coin box and took these photos. It is the same part number that Pinball Life now sells.

Where do you get 'medium coils' from?

I am off to York. I hope to see all of you there!

https://www.pinballlife.com/lotr-special-flipper-coil-090-5020-2ot.html

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Those are the high power coils. The medium are available in the marketplace like I mentioned:

https://pinside.com/pinball/market/shops/1065-apb-enterprises/01414-new-stern-pinball-medium-power-coil-lord-of-the-rings-gnr

I made myself a ramp from the path of the dead to prevent plastic breaking:

Couple pics
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