Just joined the most prestigious club on Pinside. I picked up a nice unshopped game from a guy who bought in 1998 for $2000. Him getting a big profit for owning TZ for 17 years seems like a sweet deal.

Lots of work to do. Lots of parts, LEDs and mods to buy. $165 for that sweet laser cut mini playfield lamp, huh? Lots of $100+ toys with LEDs crammed in too. Looks like I'm in for a lot more in this game... and I'll be having to make some of my own mods.

Whew, this is sure turning into my most expensive shop job, especially of a fully working game. This game needs way more goodies than my others. For Breakshot I was able to order just a couple of plastic posts and flipper parts... I've got ordered:

$120 GLM door flasher board
$85 GLM mini playfield switch kit
$100 New lockdown bar
$90 Laretrotienda piano mod
$89 PBL slot scoop
$87 Mantis center ramp
$45 Pinbits plastic protectors and slot cliffy
$30 slot scoop LED (Ridiculous, was feeling lazy about DIY)
$27 PBL Powerball
~$150 in various common parts

Still "need":
$400 Color DMD
$150 LED OCD
~$100 Subwoofer
~$50-100 in plastics
~$?? TZ laser cut mini playfield lamp
$50 Dammit looking at Hwawonyu's picture above I need speaker lighting now...

I probably have enough stock of Comet sunlight LEDs to do that at least. I looked over most of the mods out there and think I'd rather spare the playfield clutter a bit. Maybe will get camera or town square lamp post if the fever rises... Maybe the translight door color changing thing... Am I missing anything you guys normally do to your games? Mine already has a gumball light board and new clock pcb.

Just a few dozen hours of work and sweet, sweet cleaning until I see what it looks like with it all fixed up...

This Ebay store, I just ordered the piano myself:
ebay.com link: PINBALL

Just tore down my playfield. Lots of things behind other things, I can't wait to screw up putting it back together. Feels more annoying than STTNG already.

Wow, replacing magnet cores is harder than I expected! Only through a combination of the rawest brute strength, a big new screwdriver, pliers, and my anvil happening to have a hole/edge perfectly shaped for the task was I able to break both free. This is after a couple hours of experimentation, I'm exhausted.

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My cores were worn, the right one had a huge divot in it where the ball rolled through it so I just decided to replace both cores.

I hope one day my life is so amazing that I can pick up a HUO TZ and decide I should get rid of it because there are better ways to allocate my resources.

Are ramp flaps available anywhere without having to make my own? Looks like pinbits is out. I ordered the pinrestore rivet press because I need to re-rivet my magna flip signs and figure I should try get some use out of it. Slowly piecing my game back together...

Just bought Ingo's second to last sale board. Figure if I'm going deep into Twilight Zone I might as well do it right.

Anyone looking for a used third party replacement board?

Edit: Life is short. Using screws. Want to play the game already. Just found out I'm out of 1-1/4" white rubbers. Life is pain.

Has anyone ever riveted the TZ signs back onto the Great Lakes Modular switch kit? I bought a Pinrestore press for the job only to learn that I had wasted $200 because the PCB is vertically in the way of the hole so there's very little clearance for a tool to press the back of the rivet. The website shows screws in the example picture so I guess he didn't do it properly either.

Will one of those squeeze type tools work? It looks like no, because I would need the faces reversed to fit.

These stupid rivets have been holding me up from finishing my mini playfield for weeks now

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No posts in 2 weeks in the best club, someone buy a CQ machine and post pics to drool over or something. I'm cleaning really dirty inserts, feels so good.

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Are the connectors supposed to stick way out of the Ingo board? I'm not sure if I have room to put in the PinballMod piano mod. Are there install instructions for that piano? I'm supposed to unscrew the bulb sockets, right?

New vs old:

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Haven't done it yet, was falling asleep yesterday. It seems like I can just wedge it between the clock and bracket. It won't be a graceful fit but it will probably fit like the above picture.

Alright I've reinstalled my clock and it's not working. This is the first time I've powered the machine on since I bought it two months ago so there's a chance I messed up something else. I checked and reseated the 3 connectors and the connection to the motor, I also reseated the 2 clock connectors. When the game boots up the clock power and 3 LED are lit. When I run clock test, the diagnostic LEDs are on but they're flickering, I'm not sure if that's normal. The optos do appear to work, although the game is reporting them all as closed.

I still need to mess with it, I'm about to swap my RottenDog board back in and see what happens, but I figured you guys have all gone through clock problems.

Fixed (the video anyway)

I tried my RD board, 6 of the 8 optos register in the game, the 15 and 45 optos are stuck on. The motor still doesn't work though. Bleh, troubleshooting time... after a nap.

I took the front off of the clock for a better look. Does the hour hand actually do anything? The behavior is the same with the hands installed. I've been manually breaking the optos with a zip tie to test them out. It sounds like the motor should be working regardless of the clock board so I'll troubleshoot that this weekend.

After more testing and tracing wires than I'll admit to, the whole thing was just a small connector under the playfield (black, gray/yel) unseated that caused both the board and motor issue. For the record the Ingo board LEDs are not supposed to flicker like that. Pinball is hard.

Almost done now... Maybe today if I put my evening into this game. Anyone who says its more laborious to shop out STTNG is crazy.

Invader, I'm so close to being done with mine, yours looks great

Does anyone have their bulb attached to the Pinball Decals spiral when lit sign? I have the bulb kind of hanging out in there with friction, is there a good way to attach it?

Weren't powerballs crazy money at one point in time (like $60?). I'll take my $27 one happily.

Are the pop LEDs supposed to be right up against the caps like that? I think they look better flush with the body. My red cap was positioned just fine, but my orange and yellow caps were bigger or something because the LEDs went all the way up like yours. I ended up using small #4 nylon spacers between the LEDs and the caps.

I'm having issues with my undercab LEDs (those cheap solderless connectors are a nightmare... never again) and Mantis slot scoop. The scoop is shooting the ball to the tip of the right flipper rather than the middle, making it very dangerous. I can't adjust it any further, I have to drill new holes. Looks like I'm not the only one who's had this issue in the past.

I figured it was by choice. The left lane guide is red, the outlane posts were swapped with red ones, the slot target is blue, plus all the colored posts. Lots of changes!

I finally finished my TZ today after about 3 months of work into it! I don't have much unique about it to show off except this fancy jasper shooter rod I got from from Pinsnob. I'm sick of looking at it for now, so I'm off to play some location pinball tonight

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Also to add to the above discussion, putting an LED OCD in my games is the closest I have ever come to true happiness. Best mod on the planet.

Sweet that shooter Rod made it to pinballdecals, so it's probably only like $120 to get one.

The negative of this is that forcing you to play through modes would make it WAY more difficult to get to LITZ. As far as points go, it would only really make sense to go for the easier to achieve multiballs over and over. It would require rebalancing the whole game. I currently like going for LITZ as my main goal and starting the various other multiballs along the way.

My hole is stripped I originally put a #10-16 nut below the playfield but it was a hassle so I just leave the stripped screw in there now.

There should be spacers under the two rear legs of the metal lock piece. Try putting a washer or two under each leg. If you raise it too high in the back, it might cause stuck balls from the kickout saucer on the other end so don't go overboard.

My TZ extra ball button didn't work because the button itself wasn't hitting the microswitch. I normally always fix things right but since it's a button I never use, I just stuck a bit foam tape in the gap and now it works

I don't know if I have the wrong microswitch or what. The plastic part when you push the button in isn't long enough to actually actuate the microswitch. It's way off (Maybe 1/8") so I filled the gap with some foam tape.

When you get into the hobby, you should receive a welcome kit with flipper rebuild parts, vid's guides, Clay's guides, and a link to this article because you're going to need all of them eventually.

rec.games.pinball has been around since 1990. Find me some nerds who has a real life pinball mailing last and I'll call them old

Here are a few I've got if they're helpful at all. I'd have to dig for better ones.

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I feel like Pinsound would make a huge improvement to TZ's low quality audio, but I was so disappointed in my two sets of Flipper Fidelity speakers (BK2K and STTNG) that I'm hesitant to chase after high quality sound for so much money again...

It means it went overseas and back. No inherent effect on condition or value, just look at it like any other game. I have 2 reimports in excellent condition.

I can just see someone posting here in 5 years "I found this TZ with a pickle jar cap on the gumball machine! Those freaking ops!"

http://www.german-pinball-modular.de/final-tz-clock-pcb-english.html

The rainbow LEDs look better than I thought. The Rottendog board also has cool white LEDs built in, but they're not easily swappable like Ingo's board.

Has anyone said to use the plastic ones? I thought you're not supposed to use them except on painted cabinets. I have them on my TZ... f*** the police. I need to switch a bunch of my games over to the metal ones.

I leave this thread for a week and you guys are gluing coins above your flippers. You're out of control, reel the mods in.

If you can't get them NOS, I'll send you my old ones.

http://www.greatlakesmodular.com/products/pinball/wpc_ufb.html

Great Lakes sells a replacement one that uses a magnet instead of an opto. Adjustable tension too, they're fancy little buggers.

While I don't like going overboard on cheap toys peppered everywhere, it still annoys me more that the pop bumper caps are out of order. Also, all those mods and he couldn't get pop bumper skirts to match the caps? TZ pop bumpers: my pet peeve forever.