Super clean '72 Fireball - my only EM. You can see just a piece of its back box.
HS - kinda easy to tell
Congo - no way to tell on that one.

I've gotten some PM's about how I hold the Forstner bit in place when recessing the bolts. Answer: I place it within a hole saw bit and hold the hole saw bit up to the cabinet. The hole saw bit doesn't spin, just the Forstner bit within it. This way, the bit doesn't "walk" when drilling at a location with a pre-existing hole.

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Some details.

I like lighting up the Pincups on my machines. Awhile ago I had these glasses made to go in each one - includes an actual pinball and my avatar.

I plug these into the empty 12V pins on the coin door board.

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Spiral ramp installed. Thanks Davi !
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Even the hitchhiker gives it a thumbs up!

It's moving day!

Time to try out the new wide-body version of my pin-mover panel (or plank, or platform... I don't know what to call it). Maybe cabinet cradle?

Anyway, I use a couple straps to lift it up to the bottom of my machine before I slide the cart underneath. On my standard body version I have eye hooks bolted onto the panel for this and I use bungees instead of the straps.
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I use a foam block to extend the height, since my truck bed is higher than the lift will reach.
IMG_2759 (resized).jpgThe panel clears the tailgate. The runners under the panel (not visible here) let the whole thing slide in like a drawer. The runners also fit into the truck bed ridges and prevent side-to-side movement.
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Plenty of room around the boarders to keep the pin from being able to hit anything. I still strap the whole thing down though.
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Finally out of the shop and set up at home! Time for a long 4-day weekend of play. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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Arguably the best part about a PinSound system is the ability to load multiple sound packages onto a machine and be able to cycle through them on the fly. For Getaway I've made many versions and I've found it helpful to have them listed on an apron card so I can keep track of the order. Here's my favorite 8 that I made for that one.

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Others who have come before me have done an awesome job developing very creative sound packages for Twilight Zone. No need to come up with my own - I just installed my 4 favorites that I downloaded from the PinSound site and made up an apron card to keep track of them:

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Now that I have the machine home I'm able to really spend some time working out the final details while seeing it under different lighting conditions now that it's not under the glare of the shop lights. Here's what I came up with: I added a spiral decal for the back playfield panel, then I used a UV light strip to give it a little "glow" - and just a touch of pink light give it a little flair. Certainly not stock, but this game was never intended to look like a stock machine.

I'm so glad I decided to go with the clear ramp!

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Bouncing around to the other TZ for a moment: Today I received all the wire harnesses I'll need to complete that machine! Thank you Dimitri for your awesome work! (@JIMAKOST). It looks like a mess, but since everything is labeled it shouldn't be too much of a problem... just time consuming (famous last words... ha).
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If your recall earlier in this thread I inherited an empty cabinet and a playfield with no wire harness terminations. Half of the new wire harnesses in the above photo will be spliced onto these cut wires. The rest will be used for all the cabinet wiring.

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Lots of work ahead on this one!

Ok this is the LAST mod I'm going to add to the first Twilight Zone. With so much chrome on the game I had to go with mirror blades inside to maintain the look.

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So THAT'S IT on this one. They don't really make that many mods for TZ anyway, right?

I got a little sidetracked working on a Fish Tales and ordering parts for it while waiting for circuit boards for Indy. (Almost) all of the playfield and cabinet wiring is in. Also most of the top of the playfield has been mounted - especially the "path of adventure" mini playfield which was a royal PITA to get right. I swear I installed/uninstalled/reinstalled that thing 6 times yesterday. The clearances on the bottom side are so tight... and it had a finicky switch, and it needed to have the insert lights adjusted, and it was making contact with the ball guide beneath it. AND to make matters a little worse it doesn't come out easily: The "rope bridge ramp" has to come out first, which gives access to the bypass ramp, which when removed allows access to the exit ramp for removal. THEN the mini playfield POA bracket can be unscrewed and removed, and the allen set screw is loosened which allows the mini playfield to slide off its shaft - once the 3 wire harnesses are disconnected and removed up from the bottom of the playfield. *whew* that's a lot of "and"s.

All that being said I was able to fire it up today in its current state. I'm going to have to track down a troublesome opto in the subway trough, add the rest of the playfield pieces, connect the airplane "machine gun" flashers and host of smaller issues.

But... I just played a game on it! Woo Hoo!

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So now all the little things on IJ have been fixed / adjusted:

Finicky opto in the trough (ball position 5). fixed
Opto in the subway trough that was intermittent - causing the game to think that a ball was being locked when it wasn't. Optos replaced. Fixed
Flashers on the backbox panel not firing - my fault, I mistaking ordered 5V flashers instead of 13V flashers. Duh. Fixed.
Outlane rollover switch not registering - adjusted.
LIOR ruins were distorted / warped - fixed with a heat gun.
Added led and socket for the path of adventure
Added strip light under the idol.
Shaker installed
Headphone adaptor installed.
Pinsound board new firmware loaded.
CPR mirrored backglass switched in for the translight.
German BF109 guns now working
The cabinet "Buy in button" below the start button has strange wiring. It actually hooks into the backbox panel harness with a single molex connector... which was missing on my game. After reviewing the WPC driver board schematic I figured out what Williams was doing (the lamp for the button is actually on a flasher circuit). Fixed.

And that's about it! Maybe just some mirror blades... and a playfield spot light or two for the dark areas.

Now waiting on a driver board for the second TZ to finish that one up. I have a feeling I'm going to spend some time messing with the clock on that one once I get power to it. We'll see....

In the meantime, I'm finishing up a Fish Tales restoration. I guess I should take a couple photos of that one since it's happening at the same time and I'm planning on selling it very soon.

Mirror blades installed and I added some additional light under the idol. I also added the plexi rear playfeild panel and lit it up as well.

That's it for this one - while I wait for a driver board for TZ I'm working on a Fish Tales. There might be a bit of a lag before I make my next post.

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These shots were all taken with the playfield glass on BTW.

Fish Tales distraction.

Rebuilt coin door, Radcals installed, polished legs... Better than new?

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FT is done except for the installation of some art blades and a mylar reflector in the dome above the fish topper. Since there are few Fish Tales machine for sale right now in the area I'm going to wait to list it.

In the meantime, I'm back on TZ. Here's my first attempt at wiring a new custom built lamp panel.

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Not too bad considering I had to use 44 sockets instead of the factory 555 panel sockets (no longer available). This solution requires A LOT of wire cutting and soldering. However the 44 bulbs make a better connection to their socket than the 555 bulbs do IMO. The 555 can be finicky if "wiggled" a bit. This result of using the 44's is not so pretty, but it should be more robust. The factory uses white/orange, white/green and white/yellow wires paired with the orange, green and yellow wires, but for my purposes this isn't necessary so I used the same color pairs for power and ground on each of the three lamp sockets. To be honest, I could have just used a single pair of wires for ALL the sockets since I'm using LED's. If using incandescent bulbs the factory could only string 16 bulbs on a string due to power consumption (hence the 3 strings). However, I wanted to keep some of the factory look despite using low-power LED's that don't require the 16 bulb restriction. Also, there *might* be a time that only a single string is lit during the game for dramatic purposes. I'm usually concentrating on the playfield when playing the game, so I'm not sure if that ever happens (ha).

All this socket installation and wiring is the result of two night's work while sitting at the kitchen table after dinner. Thank God my wife doesn't give be grief about this.

I'm still waiting for a display board and a driver board to start the playfield wiring. That will be the last big step on this one.

Messing around with the lighting on IJ.

Some background: When working as a tech at the Museum of Pinball and looking at the long line of incandescent lit playfields in the W/B area it struck me... they all looked dim, washed out, and there was no individuality compared to the row of Sterns (brightly lit and vibrant). I'm sure the W/B designers would have preferred to have similarly well lit machines that highlighted their artwork if only the lighting technology existed at the time.

So I wanted to accomplish several goals:
1. Have more light on the playfield to show off the artwork (I chose Comet sunlight bulbs for this)
2. Make sure the inserts were lit so that the brighter playfield lights didn't diminish their on/off status.
3. Enhance the lighting since this machine was never intended to look stock. A stock machine wouldn't have been built this way with it's modern updates (sound, Lior ruins, LED lighting, mirror translight, RadCals, brass armor, etc). Although I have to admit that I'm liking the look of the inserts lit with white light (rather than the more commonly done) color matching lights.

So I selected a SINGLE blue spot to light up the center of the playfileld to make the columns in the artwork really glow nicely... (although it doesn't look that blue in person). The result is that the inserts really "pop" when active.

I've pulled the blue spot in and out a few times and I'm not sure if it will stay in the machine. We'll see...
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Anytime you want to come over Pete!

I see on the CCr thread you have your LE already! I can't wait for mine - it's only my second NIB pin.

Fish Tales is done and now I'm back on the second TZ. As a memory refresher, this is the TZ with the "used for parts" playfield along with the "garage find" original cabinet - which still looks great.

I installed the final missing boards (8-driver, display and main driver board). I had already installed the cabinet wires (the bundle on the right), so now I'm making connections to all those cut playfield wires. However the harnesses from JIMAKOST made it super easy thanks to all the pre-made wire coding and labeled headers. Thank you Dimitri!

So far I have the only the flasher and solenoid wires left to splice into. Then to fire it up and start the troubleshooting process!

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This is the last 1/3 of the cut wire bundles that need to be spliced back together. These are mostly the solenoid and flasher wires. The old ones (still wired to the playfield) are on the right.

I had to spend some time with my meter to determine where each wire is terminated because some wire colors are not unique. There are two Blue/Yellow and two Gray/Yellow wires for example - hence the white labels on these. Although those are all going to the Fliptronics board, I'd rather have them be connected to the correct flipper(s).

You can barely see the two other bundles already back in the cabinet - completed today.

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I kind of feel like Dr Frankenstein, working above the patient and re-connecting a rudimentary brain !

Flipping the power on. Fingers crossed!

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The above phots was taken with the "all lamps" test. In person, all the lamps appear to blink on/off in unison, but in reality the lamp pulses are sequenced - not seen with the human eye - so the camera makes it look like some are not working.

Having said that, some lamps in attract mode looked like they were ghosting (fluttering) pretty bad. So I put the game in single-lamp test to see what was going on. Apparently I had a wiring issue somewhere. Turning almost any "single lamp" would trigger a second or (sometimes) third lamp to be partially on. I double checked my spices, and they looked good. Maybe I switched a header end-for-end. Nope.

Time to pull out the lamp chart and see if I could tell what was going on. Here's my rough "road map" of which lamp was affecting which other lamp (or lamps). I didn't mean to post this, so I was pretty sloppy when I was marking this thing up for my own use. But basically I only had about 20 lamps that were working correctly. Most everything in row 1 or 2 was turning on 2 additional lamps. Same with columns 1 and 2. Anything in column 5 or 4 turned on the corresponding lamp in column 8. Everything in row 7 or column 8 were working as expected (among a few others). As specific examples: lamp 11 (yellow) turned on lamp 17 and 81 as well, lamp 48 turned on lamp 47 as well, lamp 22 turned on lamp 82 and 27 as well.

After looking at this I found the problem that solved the whole enchilada. Any guesses?

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All the splices were checked (red and yellow wires). The colors are correct on the headers. The lamp boards are original, yet all of them are behaving irregularly.

The issue isn't with the PCB driver board header pins or their corresponding lamps. The issue is on the playfield side of things (only). If I use my DMM to check the continuity on the end of the wires at the connector pins, I would just re-create the same lamp matrix diagram - discovering lamp-lamp wire continuity where there should not be.

I know my colored lamp matrix mark-up is a bit messy - but the issue will show itself it you study it.

So here's the answer to that mess.

Notice that almost any lamp will also light up the corresponding lamp in row 7 or column 8. So these 14 lamps are getting voltage when they shouldn't be active. The common lamp here is the intersection of row 7 and column 8 - lamp #87 - the buy-in button. Quick guess is that I have a shorted diode here that is letting voltage through the lamp matrix and "backfeeding" its row and column.

Or another way to look at it is that all the lamps in row 7 and column 8 work without affecting anything else. A similar clue to a shorted diode at that intersection.

I pulled the power lead from the buy-in button lamp and "voila!" the ENTIRE lamp matrix worked perfectly.

But looking at the button, I noticed there wasn't a shorted diode - there was NO DIODE. Duh. This buy-in button isn't wired to the coin door circuit board, so it needs to have a diode in-line with the lamp wire itself. In my haste to install the new wiring, I hadn't thought about that. But in my defense, the new lamp wires for this button already had push-on connectors on their ends (for the lamp switch's spade lugs), without an in-line diode. The similar connection to the start button did have the diode in-line... but again, my mistake for not catching it.

In the end - an easy fix

Now to figure out why the clock isn't working...

A little lighting fun on Indy

The "Path of Adventure" mini playfield was very dark compared to the rest of the game. I decided to add some torchlight-like lighting to the ruins. I even added 4 small orange-yellowish lights within the trough so the ball can be seen briefly as it passes under the open portions of the ruins.

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I switched out the German plane with a nice BF-109 that reacts on a right ramp shot. I added a spotlight as well to light it up a little.

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BTW, you can see in this shot how the mirror side blades really open up the playfield. So much more added depth than art blades... but that's all personal preference.

Although I have just a few more things to tidy up on my second TZ, I decided that I had so much fun on my IJ build that I'd do a second full scratch build IJ machine with all the knowledge I gained on the first one (and a lot of duplicate parts as a head start). And just to make the project more challenging, I decided to throw in a full scratch build Medieval Madness project at the same time! Read about it here: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/indiana-jones-and-medieval-madness-scratch-builds#post-7435809.

Thanks for reading!

More fun with lighting.

This area of the playfield was fairly dark and it was hard to appreciate the artwork. I made a very non-traditional spot here because I didn't want the normal cone-reflector piece to block the view of the area. Can you spot my make-shift spotlight?

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I decided that I couldn't have a nice German BF109 chasing a cheap plastic biplane with pinball spacers for wing spars. Time to make a matching biplane!

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Like the German fighter, this one will be interactive with the game. Decals are next!

Decals in place

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Nope. Look to the right of the Power Payoff insert, just below the red target. It's wire tied to the hex post supporting the end of the ramp. You can *sort of* see it's reflection in the blue plastic below it.

It works great, and doesn't obscure the view of the piano.

Biplane installed!

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Just over a year, and the second TZ is DONE! I'm pretty proud of how this one turned out after such a long journey. Here's a few playfield "close ups".

As a point of interest if you're not following my other scratch build forum page, I've currently completed a MM playfiled (full scratch) and a second IJ playfield (full scratch). Cabinets for these are next! I wouldn't have attempted these last two if it weren't for what I leaned on the TZ and IJ semi-scratch builds documented here. I big THANK YOU to JackG and Dimitri for starting me down this path.

Cheers!

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