High Speed or F-14 Tomcat?

[DarthVonDoom]

I am since last saturday the proud owner of a gorgeous f-14 tomcat. Damn it's fast. It's been a humbling experience

 

[Fungi]

Congratulations. First thing I learned... NEVER aim for the center spots.

 

[Kevlar]

I am since last saturday the proud owner of a gorgeous f-14 tomcat. Damn it's fast. It's been a humbling experience

Excellent and well done. Are you going to keep us upto date as you work on/mod it? anything planned? plenty of photos and/or videos go down well.

 

[karl]

Congrats and very well done indeed! Lots of quality time ahead for you. It is very masculine machine so buy your girl a nice gift to ease her pain Let us know what you think of the game. It seems like a real challenge to score high on but also a lot of fun and a big adrenaline boost with pounding music and fast game play.

 

[SKILL_SHOT]

He's got the need.....THE NEED FOR SPEEED! congrats PIN-HEAD!

 

[DarthVonDoom]

There were some tiny scratch on the cabinet, very minor. All black areas are done but i didn't have any white nor the right shade of yellow so I still have a couple of spots to do. I had to do more work on the playfield. There were some raised inserts, I've work on those and while they are still not perfect they don't disrupt the game anymore. There are bubbles on the mylar, but I can live with those for now, they don't affect the game too much and as it's my first machine I don't see myself dismantling everything to remove the mylar. There are some inserts decals to replace that I will do in time. The playfield needs a good clean-up. I've made dozens of call and Novus is not available anywhere in Quebec it seems so I've ordered some. The rubbers are sad to see, I've ordered them too. I've adjused the left flipper that was clearly at the wrong angle I can't believe the previous owner was playing like this. While doing it I realized the part of the flipper assembly with bolt needed to be change too. And the kickback plunger had almost no rubber on it anymore so it's ordered too, and new balls too they looked like they once were on a bagatelle table. The guy had seven machine in his garage and I swear I think I know more about maintening pinball machines than he does. He did have a crazy gorgeous Medusa with the prototype backglass, I don't know where he found it but I hope he will take better care of it.

 

[SKILL_SHOT]

Check for a plastic store thats where I found my novus. How did you deal with the raised playfield inserts?

 

[DarthVonDoom]

I tried the hair dryer trick. I did not like the idea of heating the top so I tried from under the playfield but I did not know how much I could heat with all the parts and wire there so I probably did not heat enough but by pushing hard enough with my thumbs I was able to push them down. Some are still a bit raised. I will try again but they don't bother me no more.

 

[SKILL_SHOT]

Thats what Im going to try except from the top with a block of wood and tap it with a rubber mallet.

 

[DarthVonDoom]

I was kind of afraid of hitting the playfield with a hammer. Tell me how it went. I realized yesterday my spinner only registers one spin and the gate behind does not register at all. That sure did not help me with my scores. I am going to have to adjust those switch which is something I hoped not to have to do so soon.

 

[Metalzoic]

I was kind of afraid of hitting the playfield with a hammer. Tell me how it went. I realized yesterday my spinner only registers one spin and the gate behind does not register at all. That sure did not help me with my scores. I am going to have to adjust those switch which is something I hoped not to have to do so soon.

Bummer. You should probably just throw it away and get a new one.

 

[Sumez]

A gate and a spinner seems like two pretty simple things to fix, or cheap to replace. Once you get into how it all works, it's almost as fun as playing the game itself!

 

[DarthVonDoom]

While doing a switch edges test identifier I realized that both switch are working fine, they're just switched. Top right loop says spinner and spinner says top right loop. That explains why it registers only one spin, it thinks it is a gate, and why the gate doesn't registers at all it does not do a whole spin. I don't know how that happened.

 

[Sumez]

Someone just soldered it drunk or something. I've heard of similar issues several times.
On my White Water, someone wired the left bumper to the right bumper and vice versa. Or replaced the entire solenoids, or something. Either way, the switches activating the bumpers weren't switched, so you can imagine them acting really odd...

 

[DarthVonDoom]

Can I do the de-soldering and soldering with the parts still afixed to the playfield or I risk damaging something?

 

[Sumez]

As long as you don't heat the soldering iron more than you need to, and don't hold the iron to the solder longer than you need to, you shouldn't risk damaging anything.
And either way, you're not likely to damage anything that isn't close to the iron, so as long as you aren't soldering directly to a PCB, I wouldn't worry. In a worst case scenario, you could damage the microswitch, which hasn't ever happened to me, and I've been soldering tons of arcade buttons over the years.

Also, before you take out your solder iron, maybe all you need to do is really just unscrewing the switches and switching them, if they are the same type?