Cut off a piece of this (Drop dead ball foam). Straighten out a paper clip and put the piece at the end of the paper clip and shove it back against the wood part behind the all spark so its perpendicular to the playfield. 99.9% no ball bounce outs. wish i had a picture but my TFLE is long gone.

http://www.pinbits.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=131

I'm actually shocked and pleased by the lack of wear on my pf in general. Five years later and it still looks like new.
I'm in for the cliffy's nonetheless. This is a go to game for me when I want to play a fast game or three.

I finally managed to get a Transformer figure to go in the empty space above the pops.

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I think the original owner had done this but good reminder for me to double check.

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For all you Pro owners I thoroughly recommend LEDs in this game. I'm not a lover of LEDs but thought this game looked dark and washed out with incandescents.
It really does look great with LEDs in.

Was tfle the first led game?

I know Tron LE had Insert LED's before TFLE did.

Here is a photo of the LEDs in my Pro. Look at the purple insert lights in the Decepticon inserts. Look miles better than the wishy, washy original bulbs.

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Protectors look great cliffy. I wounder if they would be considered the most painful to install as those areas are a PITA to get to

Was thinking that myself, will have to tear down to install.

Ohhhh I love the thought of a tear down...... Gets me excited!!!!!!!!!

I do have a NOS HSA cleared PF waiting for me that I picked up a couple years ago. Maybe this will give me the push to do the swap. This game looks like a real pain to do a PF swap on but the clear on the HSA PF is amazing, unlike the factory job. I bought the PF before really looking at it and seeing if I REALLY wanted to do that kind of work on it. Don't want that $$$ to go to waste either though.

Just got an LE last night and it as code version 1.2 I tried downloading the 1.8 code from Stern's site but it's only 32.2 MB which seems really small. Anyone know if that is correct?

Just checked my download, that is the right file size for 1.8.

Hi all, I just got a tfle and I have a question about the upper playfield. When I get a ball up there and the gate closed I flip the flippers and the upper playfield rocks back and forth but the ball just kinda falls to the bottom and sits on the gate and never gets up the playfield to score points. Is there something I am doing wrong or could not be working right?

There is a setting in the menus to bump up the coil power on the iron hide playfield. I had to do that on mine to get some good ball action.

But before you do that make sure that the playfield rocks back and forth freely. Make sure ironhide isnt dragging on the back wall of the playfield.

Had an interesting thing happen on my TFLE today. Shots to the bumblebee captive ball started sounding horrible dead thump. And the ball behind the matchbox car wasnt touching the captive ball anymore. Mid game i jiggled and jiggled. Nothing. So i stopped playing and looked. It looked like there was a bandaid stuck under the free bumblebee ball keeping it from rolling back...

How the hell would that get in there....

Grabbed a screwdriver loosened the plastics and the bandaid turned out to be the square metal roof of bumblebee himself. The roof of the matchbox car split off at all four corners i guess and lodged itself in between the captive and free ball.

Dab of gorilla super glue under the roof and i waited on it to dry.

Fun fact the game works just fine without bumblebee in there.

Going hard on the old bumblebee shot huh

Happened to my Bumblebee too. I just found some matchbox cars to put in there.

Mine too a couple years or so ago. Roof snapped right off. Put a replacement car in there and back to playing.

Bumblebee roof happened also on mine. I grabbed a couple spares.

My roof also came off. When I ordered around 8 months ago they were out of stock. When they came in, the price doubled.

What does it cost now?

http://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/880-6141-00

Plenty of die cast Bumblebee cars available from eBay.

Anyone ever have problems upgrading there TFLE? I've tried 3 sticks of different sizes ranging from 250MB to 16GB and always the same problem I get the insert USB stick message and then nothing?

No issues and it sounds like you have tried the fix I would suggest (different USB stick). May be time to call Stern to see if they have any suggestions. I'm wondering if the USB port on your game has gone bad as it sounds like it's not even recognizing that a USB has been installed. Silly question but does one of your sticks light up when it's hooked up to a computer? If so, does it light up when in the game? If not, then that would be a sign the power to the USB port is bad.

Rick has you pretty much covered here already but one other thing to check is that the rubbers on the upper PF are correct. I've seen people wrap them wrong which will impact the ability of the ball to walk up the PF correctly (I'm guilty myself). I've seen where people stretch the rubber past the post it should be at (front, rear or both). Should look like the attached. Also, you can replace the star post (pointed out in orange) with a standard post. That will open the lower section up just a little which will help to get the ball started. It also has the added benefit of opening up the opening just a little bit which speeds the entrance and exit of ramps shots up a bit.

On a side note, once you get board with the mini PF, take the gate off. Makes that much more challenging (and fun) IMHO. I hated that feature until I did that and now I like it. Pretty cool that you can stack modes in to that mode as well without the gate. I played a game recently where I started Iron Hide scoring, lost the ball out of the mini PF which started my mode (don't recall which robot it was), shot the left ramp which started star scream with my next shot going into megatron for ball four. Wasn't planned as that is not an ideal stack but having a robot mode, star scream, Iron Hide and Megatron all running at the same time was pretty crazy/exciting.

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USB light turns on when connecting to the board so I know their is power to the port. I'll call stern tonight.

Thanks 85vett! The rubbers were hooked up wrong. The long rubber was hooked to the post just behind the correct post and no rubbers on the 2 posts on the back of the mini playfield. Works great now.

Shout out to Cliffy! I purchased his set of protectors for TFLE/TFpro. There are pics in this thread already.

Top notch packaging. Both cliffys are packed into a piece of foam to protect them. Clear plastic still on them to prevent scratching. Also in the package is a custom mylar that exactly fits into the all spark shots bottom slot. Also a alcohol swab to clean before applying the mylar.

TFLE playfield is crowded so allocate some time to take things apart as needed. Cliffy provided a very helpful pic via email of another users list of which screws and nuts you need to remove etc.

Thanks cliffy!

Curious to know if the cliffy helps with bounce outs from the all spark. I've got mine pretty much under control with the dead foam but when I really need that shot I'll still get the random bounce out.

I put dead foam in mine a while back and it got better. I didnt see and difference with the cliffy. There still is a bounce back every once in a while.

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How long does it take to install the cliffys on this game?

Does anyone have step by step instructions?

I spent about 3 or 4 hours, but i am very cautious and took pics of every screw and bolt i took off and the order i did it in. Plus i was unfamiliar with the megatron scoop cause id never messed with it before.

If i did it again it would only be a 1.5 hour job

Cliffy emailed me a pretty detailed set of pics in a pdf that helped too.

The all spark shouldn't be too bad but the megatron one would be less fun. Neither would I consider to be hard. Just a lot of little things to do. Great time to shop the game out and change the rubbers.

For the all spark - you should be able to do it by just removing the lower section of the left ramp.

I had to loosen the upper starscream part of the left ramp too but not remove it completely. But it might be possible without doing that.

I need some help with my LE game. One of my lights went out on the pop bumpers. Does anyone know which bulb that is?

I think it is this: http://www.pinballlife.com/index.php?p=product&id=1885 But I'm not 100% sure.

Speaking of pop bumpers...need opinions on my new pops to see if I should go forward.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/transformers-pop-bumper-mod-opinions

Yes, the pop lights are 555 bulbs.

With the concave lenses?

Pretty sure those are the exact bulbs that were factory. It's before stern switch to CT and prior to CT they used those ablaze type lights. Not 100% if it was flat top or concave though. I replaced mine with comet 2 smd bulbs.

Need all of your opinions

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/transformers-lockdown-bar-emblem-opinions#post-3544955

Next up pops.

Great news!

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/colordmd-calling-all-autobots

Any other TFLE owners out there have an annoying ball hang up on the left ramp? Frequently when starting starscream left ramp mode the ball goes up just as starscream turns and the ball somehow would go out the left and as starscream turned back the ball would come to rest against the end of the ramp and the left wall of the cab.

I found a easy fix.

There is a 1 inch post on the left rail already. I got some screws at hardware store and some spacers from PBL and made the post 2 inches. So it pokes up and keep the ball from coming out and getting stuck on the left ramp.

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Wow. I have owned my Decepticons game for 5 years. I just saw this picture and went and looked at mine more closely.

It was way off, and was even missing the 2 small rubbers up top. I verified it with the manual in the game. It even had one post upside down which created a weird angle for the rubber. I basically had gotten used to the way it played, and actually was pretty good at the mini playfield, but a lot of people who tried my game became frustrated with the mini playfield. I had never swapped out the rubbers up there, nor disassembled it, so it was installed that way.

So I fixed it and it plays way differently now. Thanks for posting that.

I guess my IH playfield is rubbered wrong too... im second owner, but ive never had it apart. I dunno if it came from factory this way or not.

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2 things fellow Autobots.

1 - My Megatron lock wasn't working too well lately. So I decided to take it apart and clean it...OMG, I can't believe how much crap built up in the locking mechanism. I was at it for a long while polishing it.

2 - I need help. Can any LE owners take a picture of the the left ramp, where the ball falls from the upper ramp down to the lower ramp. There's a piece of plastic to help guide the ball...does that go on the inner if the bottom ramp or the outer of the bottom ramp?

I took apart to put the cliffy on and forgot how it went back together.

Thanks!

If any of you Combo owners would like to put my Leg Light-Ups on your game I can make one red and one purple at no extra charge.