Probably easier to do it before.

Thank you! Yes I’m good With a multi meter, minor electrical things, and soldering. I did a little wiggling and got the scoring lights to turn on but the GI lights went out. Pretty sure I’ll be chasing down a short now.

I’ve replaced all fuses I could find and have spares on hand. Thanks!

Could it be one of the solenoids? I reset them and got everything on even the tube! Bounced the ball around by hand and they went out.

Could be old fuse clips, connectors needing re-pinning, another blown fuse.....

I’ll start there, thanks.

Sounds like something is a bit loose (likely what vid stated below).. but please do not wiggle connectors with the machine powered on. Check voltages up the chain from one way or the other. The manual for the game provides a schematic overview for how these boards work. Sorry, I don't have time ATM to help specifically. Since they are all going out, I presume it is something on the common line that is not making good contact.

Does anybody have a good picture of the bus wires for the bumper lamps? Or, a good picture of when they did their bumper buses for a new playfield? My original playfield's are in terrible shape.

Does this help?

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Wow.. that looks amazing.

Thanks so much! This will be a great help!

Is there a list of places y’all get game parts from? Also, what is the best fuse to put here?

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Pinball Resource

Pinball Life

Great Plains Electronics

Post a wanted ad here and see what comes up. Typically they come up in the set but someone may have a spare one alone out there.

I actually have a spare outer backglass for Xenon. Its in good shape, just a bit dirty right now. I'll try to get it out and get some pictures tonight/this weekend.

3 amp sloblo

Apologies if the pictures aren't that great, turns out taking pictures of see through objects isn't so simple... but this is my spare outer backglass.
Missing the bottom trim, but otherwise appears to be in good shape.
This is a spare from a lot of 2.5 games worth of Xenon parts I got a while back.
Finally down to the last few pieces of that lot beyond what I need for my own restoration. That I'll get to. Eventually...
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Nice.. it doesn't have the exposed farris signature part as well...

I'll check my other one that I was planning to keep for my own game and see if its any different.
Are there two different versions of the outer backglass?

Thanks. The one currently in the game has a spring with square of solder in it. I’ve not seen one like it and was wondering if it’s a special fuse.

Take a magnifying glass and read the barrel of the fuse. The spring is indicative of a slow blow fuse. If you find 3A on the barrel you should be good. If I remember correctly, the letters MDL also indicate that it's a slow blow. Actually you should verify all fuses since you never know what previous owners have used just to get by. Be careful messing around near the high voltage section of the rectifier and solenoid driver boards. Pull the ac plus when checking fuses.

Plug

Yes!.. One has a cut out for Paul's signature... The other does not.

Solid advice. I’m cleaning out the 40 years of grime now and won’t turn the machine on again until everything is correct.

Very well done!

Hello all.I have had a Xenon in my collection for a 2.5 years now, and it has only been in the last few months that it has been playable. I got the game from a friend close friend.The price-free, just had to retrieve it from San Fransisco and get it to Escondido.We flew up on a Friday night and picked up a U-haul van as soon as they opened Saturday morning. We then cleaned out the apartment and hit the road before noon. Got to my friends storage unit in Temecula about 1/2 hour before it closed at 10:00 pm and unloaded everything- except the game. I got home and put it in the garage. I offered to pay for 1/2 the cost of the rental of the van and the offer was cheerfully accepted.
The next day i was anxious to see if the game even played- so I put it together and to my amazement -there were lights , sound, score displays, and after replacing a 3 amp fuse on the playfield, the ball was served to the shooter lane.
The playfield was in poor shape- paint worn away and had been touched up in many places, over all really dark and filthy. I replaced the rings and the posts as these had faded from blue to a strange pinkish color.The improvements although needed just did not help with the overall appearance of the game. I began searching for a new playfield and found one for sale through Pinside-yeah!!
The game and the new playfield ,and a new set of plastics sat in the garage for a year before I summoned the courage to take on the task of a playfield swap. I must have read vid1900 tips on playfield restoration a dozen times before proceeding.I am extremely happy with how it turned out and with the experience. Of course one thing leads to another and after finishing the playfield jumped right into restoring the cabinet.Another first for me. Although I am happy with the finished product, I was not as thrilled with the process of messing with wood and paints.
I have been toying with the idea of chronicling my adventure with pictures and a narrative.I wanted to ask the group if it was best to open a new thread for this.

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Great story. AFAIK it's up to you where you post it. It certainly seems applicable here.

Glad you are enjoying the game. I picked mine up before I had played one. Read a lot of reviews about shallow play, but TBH, I find it to be quite a great player as well.. so looks, amazing sound and enjoyable game. She's a keepeR!

Replacing my Playfield with a hardtop. I got new extended rollovers and do the old ones just unscrew out? I see a nut but don’t want to force it. Tks Ron

Got them out, now how do I remove the clips to put in new one

Agreed, just marked it as a key post to hopefully help others (including me) in the future. Thank you Pinflip for taking the time to post that.

Having an issue with the '2' rollover not dropping the 2nd target. all the others work fine. Any advice on what to look for, or what may be the most likely failure mode for this behavior?

I'd start with the Solenoid tests, if it doesn't drop during that (it's kinda fun to watch the game drop each one in order anyway) I would test the wiring by quickly grounding the tab for the drive transistor for that solenoid. If that works I'd suspect a bad driver or pre-driver on the board. If it still doesn't work it's a problem with the wiring, header / connector or an open solenoid. If the solenoid tests open make sure the small wire isn't just broken at the solder terminal.

Ok! thanks for the suggestions....I needed some pinball repair time after Christmas anyway...it's been a while LOL.

This falls under the category "Why didn't I think of this sooner?"

Before:
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After:
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That makes a lot more sense!

This post is not meant to be a tutorial on how to do a play field swap, rather just my experiences along the way. There are many great tutorials available. I only wish now that I would have delved further into the subject. There would have been far fewer mistakes on my part. I was able to learn from my mistakes, and maybe others might also.

As stated in my initial post - I was just not happy with how poor the game looked even though it would play. The first improvement to the game was to add new rings and posts and replaced all incandescent lamps with LED. Several of the lamps would just not light, and some would light up intermittently. I bought many new parts of this game including a new playfield and a new set of plastics, all of which sat in the garage for close to 2 years.
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I finally summoned the courage to make the attempt at swapping the playfield. Decided to start a journal and wrote down each step in the removal process - and putting the step# on the zip lock baggie that the parts went into. Already decided to replace all of the lamp holders - as I had no confidence in some of them. I left a small portion of the original wire on the old lamp base as well as recording the wire color in the journal, and giving it a letter designation on the tag for each wire. Blue painters' tape was what I used, and only had one wire tag come off the wire as I was laying the wire harness out in the sun to dry after the dishwasher treatment.
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Here is where I probably should have used some small cable ties to keep the leaf switches intact- I had left the screws and metal plate all together and these rusted.
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The first additions to the new playfield were all the T-nuts. Most of which were in great shape, I replaced maybe 4.This was performed on the carpeted floor and then set in the rotisserie.
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Next attached the lamp bases.
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Then the common conductor for the GI and insert lamps.
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Lots of cleaning ensued for the larger assemblies.Using water, soap, SOS pads- oh and rubber gloves. Doused in alcohol and air dried.
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Installing the wire harness was enjoyable. I had the old playfield nearby to use as a reference.
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After cleaning the flipper assemblies, I felt that there was sufficient wear on on the components to warrant a new flipper rebuild kit.There was plenty to do while waiting for these to arrive.
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I had ordered new pop bumper bodies- these were significantly smaller than the original. This became a challenge later when trying to install the pop bumper caps. I have never cared for the bayonet style of lamp holder for the pops and have always preferred the #555 wedge base with insulated wire leads.

The bumper bodies don't look correct to me, more like the later Bally such as used on EBD, Fathom, etc.

You may have done this intentionally so that you could use the 555 socket? I'm pretty sure that you can use the pre-wired 555 socket in the original style body as well, I think there are LED mods that can be used in them as well?

You are correct!
Those are Williams pop bodies.

I noticed they were smaller than the original. I did not give it to much thought and installed them anyway. Later I noticed that the bumper caps holes did not line up with the body holes. That is where I had to get a little creative and attached a piece of PETG along with the LED to the holes in the body and attached the cap to the PETG.In hindsight it would have been cleaner to re-order the correct bodies.

I would definitely say that working my way through the harness had to be the most rewarding portion of this project. Soldering each conductor and seeing the tags disappear was quite satisfying.
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One item i neglected to mention was the use of a small power supply- i think it was 6 volt dc. Used it to verify all the lamps were working.

To me the most satisfying part of the swap is when you throw the switch and don't get smoke. MY first swap was also Xenon. Somehow I tied in the 2 switched lamps by the side saucer to the GI circuit and fried some SCR's on the Aux lamp driver. I think I got mixed up with the orange jumper wires in that area.

Second swap was EBD. Upon start up, on of the memory coils locked and burned up, but the game was working fine prior to swap so I learned after that to only plug in J1 to the rectifier board which only supplies power to the GI lamps. If all is good, then complete the other connections and pay close attention for anything odd, burn smells especially.

I tried the dishwasher method on the EBD harness but wasn't thrilled with the results. Most of the switch contacts turned black. Now I just use a spray cleaner and scrub brush.

Ding ding.

I used the dishwasher on many a Xenon harness (including this one) and no switch contacts ever turned black.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/vids-guide-re-populating-playfields

The switch contacts come out coppery-golden, like this:

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My dishwasher came with 4 buckets of Cascade Platinum Plus pods, so that's what I've been using lately. My PH is 7.8 and 305 hardness

These work great!

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