First Space Shuttle Pinball Power Up After Playfield Swap!

Posted on May 25, 2014 by abpinball

Last weekend, I hit another milestone in my Space Shuttle pinball restoration – turning the power on for the first time since the restoration began. I was a bit worried about shorting the switch matrix out with the solenoids or lamps, but being careful during the playfield swap reassembly paid off. With the playfield still on the rotisserie but wired to the cabinet, I flipped the power switch and it came to life! No smoke, no blown fuses! 😀

There were issues, of course, but nothing major. The biggest problem was several lamps not lighting up. After looking at the switch matrix in the manual, though, it became pretty obvious most of the dark lamps were on the same row in the switch matrix. It was clearly a problem with the wire for that row – red with a purple stripe. I went under the playfield and checked all the lamps on that row (even the lit ones). I quickly found the offending wire broken off the solder joint! Notice the loose red/purple wire near the round orange insert in the picture below.

FirstPowerUp1

After re-soldering that wire back on, the lamps in that row all came to life! Here’s a pic after that repair.

FirstPowerUp2

Seeing it light up after the first repair was awesome. A great feeling of accomplishment for sure, and also a relief that the playfield swap is nearing the end!

With the game plugged in, I could now proceed to testing and adjusting all of the lamps, switches and solenoids. A few fixes were necessary:

  • Cleaning the pop bumper switches to get fast “snappy” action on the pop bumpers.
  • Cleaning several rollover switch contacts to get them to register in the game
  • Adjusting leaf switch blades behind rubbers for proper closing upon ball contact
  • Adjusting the ball through shooter lane feeder mechanism
  • Adjusting the ball through switches
  • Tweaking some lamp holders
  • Installing the shooter/plunger

With the adjustments made and without any further major needs to access the underside of the playfield, I couldn’t resist moving the playfield to the cabinet!

FirstPowerUp3

More testing and installing the plastics and apron are the only tasks left after this!

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Space Shuttle Defender Has Landed!

Posted on May 15, 2014 by abpinball

Tonight I finished fitting both the main ramp and Space Shuttle Defender toy on my Space Shuttle Pinball.

The ramp I’m using is the Pinball Inc reproduction, and man is it ever thicker than the flimsy original! It’s super stiff and strong – while it will probably never break and last the rest of the life of the game, it was also a bit challenging to fit. Going back several months, I had prepared to fit it by modifying my playfield. That wasn’t the only change needed to fit the ramp in my game though – some posts needed to be ever-so-slightly bent out of the way, too. With that, I was able to squeeze it in just enough to screw it down to all the attach points.

The Space Shuttle toy (also a new reproduction) also needed a small mod to fit correctly. When I first installed it, the nose of the shuttle was so low that the ball would just barely clear it, and even then not always – it would sometimes nick it a bit. That’s a sure recipe for a broken Space Shuttle, of course, which is unacceptable. My solution was to use some small foam insulation tape squares under the wings to ever-so-slightly raise the nose. It worked, is invisible and is totally reversible if needed!

Fitting this all was a bit tricky – definitely among the hairiest tasks in the playfield swap so far! But in the end, it’s done – the ramp seems to work, and it looks great, so I’m happy!

shuttle

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Progress on Space Shuttle Pinball Playfield Swap – 5/13/2014

Posted on May 13, 2014 by abpinball

Time for the fun stuff! The stuff you see when you play the game! The stuff you imagined you’d be doing when you bought that repro playfield!

In reality, of course, it’s a tiny percentage of the total work involved in doing a playfield swap. But still, it’s great to finally get to this part and see the top of the playfield start to come together!

toppf2

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Progress on Space Shuttle Pinball Playfield Swap – 5/10/2014

Posted on May 10, 2014 by abpinball

I started today with the few miscellaneous switches and lamps that still needed to be screwed in on the bottom side of the playfield, then before I knew it I had reached another milestone! The bottom side is pretty much done!!

Focusing on the top side now, I made some decent progress today, working on the ball through, the flat metal ball guides and the wire form ball guides. While the flat ones are screwed in (which is easy), the wire form ones have to be pounded in by hammer! It’s a bit scary but I managed to get them all in without any damage to the clear coat around them. 🙂 For reference, I found a #43 drill bit worked best for drilling their pilot hole.

toppfstart

 

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