The Pinball Diaries (what did you do today?)
- Thread starter brewmanager
- Start date
Spent an hour last night before bed undoing this LED disaster on my newly acquired WH20. I can't believe people spend $150 (and up) plus their time thinking it actually looks good. You know it is bad when the room lights are on the game is still harsh on the eyes and an even bigger joke with the lights off.
I put back incandescent bulbs in most of the GI except for behind the RIVER stand up targets. I kind of like how the CT blue super brights make them glow but I have to a shield to address the light bleeding through on the left side.
I removed two GI bulbs in the top right corner behind big foot for now because I didn't like how it only illuminated the right side of the mountains. I will be adding a few extra bulb sockets to the left side to light it all up evenly. I'm still not done with the lighting as I plan to do the same additional lighting as I have for my other games seen in this thread here:
http://pinballrevolution.com/threads/comet-pinball-additional-game-led-lighting.3133/
Tonight I will continue with the lighting and swap in a brand new coin door.
I put back incandescent bulbs in most of the GI except for behind the RIVER stand up targets. I kind of like how the CT blue super brights make them glow but I have to a shield to address the light bleeding through on the left side.
I removed two GI bulbs in the top right corner behind big foot for now because I didn't like how it only illuminated the right side of the mountains. I will be adding a few extra bulb sockets to the left side to light it all up evenly. I'm still not done with the lighting as I plan to do the same additional lighting as I have for my other games seen in this thread here:
http://pinballrevolution.com/threads/comet-pinball-additional-game-led-lighting.3133/
Tonight I will continue with the lighting and swap in a brand new coin door.
Vengeance
Well-Known Member
I would have left the Blue in the whirlpool, since it makes sense that a whirlpool be swirling blue lights
I agree and plan on putting blue LEDs in there because right now there are all the colors of the rainbow in there! Need to drop the under playfield subway a bit to pull the light PCB out.
I added some LED strips I had lying around to light up the rear mountains last night. I had a few of these left over from my Comet LED strips so I extended the wires.
These strips could probably be a bit brighter as they are meant to take 12v but the GI is only 6.3v. I am going to try and make a bracket to bring the strips forward and aim them up for better and more even light distribution.
I cut a small piece of foam board to block off most of the blue bleeding on the left too.
These strips could probably be a bit brighter as they are meant to take 12v but the GI is only 6.3v. I am going to try and make a bracket to bring the strips forward and aim them up for better and more even light distribution.
I cut a small piece of foam board to block off most of the blue bleeding on the left too.
Nope and I was just being lazy by using an existing GI socket near by. I know where to pull 12v from the power driver board if I need to.
My mother-in-law has a place in Myrtle Beach. Found Sea Mist last summer, too. The pins are in atrocious shape. The Earthshaker had two giant Robertson screws in the playfield in front of one of the scoops. Lovely. The machines reflect the overall feel of Myrtle Beach as a vacation destination: sad, filthy, past-their-prime and a complete waste of money.
mitch_a
Active Member
meegis
Well-Known Member
Anytime buddy. Can't wait until the arcade is up and running and I can GC all of your machines!
Chris Bardon
Well-Known Member
Finally got around to getting keyed alike locks for all my games and it was well worth it. I picked up a dozen locks from PBL (so I have a couple of spares), and it's great not to have to manage 9 sets of keys anymore. It means that it's much faster to open up a machine to check something while I'm playing, since I have the master key on my keychain now, and don't have to go find the right keys for a particular game. It also means that I now have 23 spare keys in case I lose one (or one of the kids loses it). I can see how it'd be more expensive with a whole bunch of games, but even at a few bucks each, it's cheaper than a lot of single game mods out there, and really nice to have. It also means you don't have to leave keys in the machines all the time, which I've seen cause problems more than once by getting pushed in all the way, turning due to gravity, coin door opens, and kills the flippers (usually at the worst possible time). Anyway, highly recommended mod-I should have done this ages ago.
I moved into a new house a couple weeks ago so this long weekend was installing some more circuits for my new game room. I added 2 more 15 amp circuits and have plans to add a 3rd once I do some renovation in a connecting room. That'll bring the total up to 4x15 amp breakers which is much better than the 1x15 it had when I first moved in. It should be sufficient for everything I have and plan to add in the near future. I went with 15 amp circuits instead of 20s for a few reasons. The first and most important being that the walls in my game room are already finished so going with 15 amp allowed me to use all the existing wiring and outlets in the room that I couldn't get to from behind and not have to tear all the walls apart. The second reason is that the 12-2 wiring was more than double what the 14-2 wiring was. More than twice the cost for a less than 25% usable gain. I had lots of available space in my panel so I opted for 15s.
Chugging along on the Pin*Bot playfield swap. For those I haven't complained to about the repro PPS Vortex ramp, here we go: the new ramp fits like crap, and requires a ton of Dremel-ing and cursing to install with any sort of proper fit. A nightmare given that the ramp entrance is finicky to adjust so that it accepts the ball off the plunge with any sort of regularity. The ramp is in now, however I'm dreading actually getting the game flipping and seeing how many major/minor adjustments will have to be made. Other than that, re-assembly has went swimmingly with no mis-drilled holes or screw pop-throughs. Drano's clear on the CPR virgin playfield is like glass...can't wait to get the game back up and running.
Over the last week or so I fixed a score reel on my Jacks Open. Incorrect switch gaps caused the thousands reel to not reset at startup. I also replaced one of the Jacks Open pop bumper coils since it was not the correct strength and too weak. Rebuilt one of the flippers so it's very quiet now. Need to do the other one as well. Also high-tapped the game, but didn't like the results. The game lost some character/charm so I put it back to normal.
Chris Bardon
Well-Known Member
Hosted TOPL again last night, and the "what broke" list was actually pretty short:
- The tilt on spider-man was a little too tight-it had loosened off, and I went a little overboard "fixing" it.
- A couple of stuck balls-pretty much to be expected over a long enough timeline.
- LOTR coils (even with the PBL upgrade) STILL had a hard time finishing DTR by the end of the night. Nothing I can think of that can be done here-it works fine when it hasn't been running for 5 hours straight.
- CV probably had the most issues through the night. People were complaining that the insert lights weren't working properly, and by the end of the night when I went to check it, NONE of the CPU controlled lamps were working. There were also a couple of other strange things throughout the night, like an extra ball finishing but then sipping over the next player? In any case, turned out that re-seating all of the ribbon cables (I'd missed one on the first pass through) fixed it, but it's something to keep an eye on. At least it wasn't something expensive?