Ha! I was gonna say it looks like a scene from Alien or something.

Picked up a Viking on Sunday. Aside from fade and a few hacks it looks and plays nice.

Now the Hacks:
So thisAttached to right flipper

leads to thisbottom of cabinet on left side

and ultimately connects to this2017-02-21 15.41.33 (resized).jpg

So when the middle saucer doesn't fire just hold down the right flipper and press the button to fire the solenoid.

At least it's better that the hellmageddon in the backbox2017-02-19 19.03.18 (resized).jpg2017-02-19 19.03.25 (resized).jpg

I spliced in a display harness from a playboy so that's all cleaned up, still have to tackle the playfield wiring in the back box.

Nice! I did a similar thing using the credit button a previous owner installed hooked up to the upkicker on my black hole so that I didn't have to keep opening the whole game up to get a ball out while I was stress testing + diagnosing why the upkicker transistor kept failing

One of the worst hacks I've seen so far on my machines? was my own Bally -35 board! That was my first repair! I thought I knew how to repair! Nope!!! I thought I knew how to solder? NOPE!! I had jumpers all over the place!!!

Eventually ...I straightened it out the right way with a lot of help from a fellow pinsider. I had to start all over with it. Learned how not to do some things! Also learned how to repair traces the right way!!

Another....Is the High speed cabinet I have...I traded for the machine! Excited to get a pinball, I over looked way too many things! Learned a lesson on that one! The corner of the cabinet was sheet metal on the inside, I started digging at it to find out? The whole corner and part of the side was 3/4 or more thick of bondo! They wasted more money in bondo than if they would have actually repaired it right! Not to mention the time they took to make it smooth! It did look ok from the outside! I didn't even notice until..........I got it home!

Actually found this in a thread here

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My own hack. I was too lazy to completely replace the bottom of my cab that was busted. Could not run the shaker motor because it literally started to rip the particle board apart (serious water damage). Had to get the machine up and running for super bowl, so I simply put a piece of MDF under it and bolter the living cr@# out of it.
Full replacement will follow though.
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The owner of this tommy cabinet at some point tried to replace the air grates on the back of the cab. I'm replacing the bottom of the cab as well, so it made getting to this area easier.

I think the repair is going well so far.

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here is the magnet board I pulled out of a LAH that I picked up a few days ago...for some reason the magnets stay on all the time...

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I have to agree that that one looks slightly different from stock

They tacked other peices of scrap wood to keep the remaining bottom in. I replaced the entire bottom.

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Pinbot gutted...(say it in the pinbot voice )

A lot of Last Action Heroes had their magnet assembly pulled
from the game. It was badly programmed and never worked right.
I think they fixed the algorithm on Guns & Roses.

Works perfectly fine on mine.

No idea who did that to a Firepower, but amazingly this soldering art piece made by an evil genius works and kept the machine alive...

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5 glass caps, 1 radial , 1 resistor and a ratsnest of wire, it would be interesting to know there rhyme and reason behind it.

I just don't get it. If your smart enough to make this jerry rig. You sure the hell should be smart enough to buy a new part!

You should frame that and hang it on the wall. It is ..ah....interesting.

How is that not shorting out? WTF

It was probably on route and the tech used the parts that were available to get it back up and running, rather than waiting a couple weeks for a chip he didn't have.

Some clever hacks like this were born out of necessity in order to keep a game earning.

It doesn't short, because the wires are coated with some red lacquer...

That thing survived 30 years, several shippings through Europe, last one from Hungary to Austria. Everything else failed in the meantime, but this one holds up... genius!

You probably have an upgraded ROM revision. Back in the day
I had to fix Five LAH all had the magnet guts removed. The last
one I worked on back in 2001 the guy wanted the magnets and
board put back in. The magnet driver was no longer available
and it was hard to find the right magnets/brackets at the time.
Sega Godzilla stuff was somewhat available at the time. I do not
know if the operator gave up on the idea or not.

Agreed!! Unavailability of the part could have been a factor in the shoddy work and you gotta keep the quarter rolling down those shutes lol

I saw this last week at the Art Institute of Chicago ... that's Jackson Pollock's work... yes?
faz

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It's the exact length. She's not going to be happy!

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She can wear a hat WHILE playing SG. Once she gets into Sandstorm... she won't care

I might try using sheet metal to bend something into a similar shape that was originally used. Maybe use one piece for the bottom and cut out some tabs, then use another piece for the wall, and bend & rivet the tabs (or weld them, if you have that available)

Or there is a thing called a "golf tube liner" that goes inside a golf club bag $2

Fill them with sand so they don't kink, warm them up, and bend them to your will.

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Too much work! But like the idea!

Can I borrow $2. Another good Idea!

Seriously, I tried contacting Steve Young but you know how the "WHAT'S THE PART #" thing went. I just need to find the part number. I'm sure they have one.

You did not say you needed part #'s

I'll look tonight.
faz

Well I happened to find a nice piece of sheet metal laying around. It's only temporary until I can find the right part or part number.

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Nice, now we need a your best hack thread. Then 20 yrs from now they'll end up back here.

Check your other thread... pics there.
faz

Here is some artistry from a MI pinsider..

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Seawitch screwed

Say it aint so...

Spend about $2 and replace the pins and connector on my Diner GI circuit? Heck no, i got dees-nuts to connect the wires.

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The zip ties make it right.
faz

Wow. Fixing it correctly takes LESS time than it took to make that mess.

Oh wow!! Brad nails would have sufficed for that, hell even thumb tacks lol

I've been there.......... I was able to repair it correctly by rebuilding that area and replaced the Molex, but decided to keep it as a back up because I found a stellar deal on a Great Lakes unit.

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GI repairs seem to be popular candidates. When Radical arrived at my house, half the GI on the machine didn't work. I winced when I opened the backbox and found this:

Couldn't see where the wires went to behind the board or how they'd jumpered some of the pins together:
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Flipping the board over:
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The weirdest thing about this was that they never connected pin 7 at all.

You can see the remnants of the awesome soldering in the background. I like it because it makes my soldering look less shit having that nearby.
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Looks like someone substituted a DIP chip for a failed SMD chip.

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Now that is awesome; If it works, it the best repair yet.

Is that from a pinball?

It's a LOTR ring LED board. It lights up all the rings just in front of the flippers in the center of the playfield.

Ok I can see it now. I saw all the LEDs but could not figure where it went.

Hack! I've got one!

Whilst I'm here I'm needing to replace this hack.

I'm needing to replace the flipper assembly bracket for a Williams system 3-6 part #01-600, coil stop #A-8143 and the retaining bracket #01-8-508-3. Not fussed if the coil stop is used. I'd prefer to locate through one source rather than many.

I'm also looking for a complete knocker assembly, part #B-8047, from the same era. Picture below of which knocker assembly is needed.

Part numbers for the purests

Please pm me if you can assist.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

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I just remembered another issue I had with my Pioneer and while probably not the worst hack, it was certainly dangerous.

At some stage while I was working on it, it was plugged in, but off at the cabinet switch (which in hindsight wasn't a grand idea, but we've probably all done it at some point). I bumped against the drop target reset coil. *Buzzt* It bit me with some 240v fun. Promptly unplugged it, reset the house breaker so the lights came back on and then went hunting with DMM to figure out what was wrong, testing everything I could find in the schematic around those drop target coils.
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So the culprit is in this picture, though I didn't know at the time I took it, so it's not the greatest shot.
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It all looks ok, doesn't it? That is until you remember that until sometime around 1980, AC wiring in Australia used red for active, black for neutral and green for earth. USA uses black for active, and there's a bunch of white and red wires on the neutral side of the transformer... I eventually tested everything in the schematic, including the pins on the end of the line cord. I found that the earth pin (green) was ok, but the neutral pin on the plug (black) went to the main fuse and the active pin (red) went to what's intended to be the neutral side of the transformer. As the cabinet switch is STSP, only the neutral pin of the plug was switched, leaving the rest of the 240v circuits' active connected and oh so much fun to touch.

Given the line cord was 30+ years old I replaced it entirely with something that has the current, colour blind friendly, standard Australian AC colours - brown for active, blue for neutral and green/yellow stripe for earth.20170327_094748 (resized).jpg

I can't say for sure when the plug was wired in reverse, but the main board says "Australia 18" on it so I assume it was manufactured for export to Australia and that it had always been that the neutral was switched. Certainly the old line cord looked original and it was probably a good idea to replace it anyway - the insulation inside the white outer was pretty degraded. 20170327_101502 (resized).jpg