My first playfield swap experience

[pinball god]

Did my first playfield swap on a funhouse and thought I'd share some of the high's and low's with you. Also I might mention things that are obvious to many but was very new to me.

After the buzz of thinking the swap will be fun and planned the thing to the nth degree I came to a crashing halt when I found the majority of holes were well under sized. Whether it was made poorly or the recent clear was put on way too think, I dunno but there was no way in hell those screws and posts were going to fit. Add holes there were missing and in one case a hole in the wrong place and too close to where the correct hole should be I thought I need to re think this.

So for the first timer with a dremmel, their jigsaw attachment makes a great drill press for doing small holes and dimples. You can govern the depth and hole postion/straightness to a Tee.

For the larger holes say 4mm and above you got to go the hand drill. I was concerned but don't be as I could pretty much start the drill on the hole and drill down with no damage. Drill from the playing side of course.

I took lots of photos and did a major video production.

I took off everything from the playing side before removing the playfield from the cabinet. This made it lighter and easier. Point on pf removal and the backbox plugs, I removed all the power driver plugs to find half could stay put. So if interested I can list those plugs. So be aware of this and that some cpu and plugs also need to be removed.

I found out what a TWIST SCREW was and looked like as opposed to the Fin type I purchased for the pop bumpers. I have a picture of the twist screw. What I didn't know was that you actually turn the screw clockwise or tighten in normal screws to remove them. First off I tried to undo and it just spun and so I belted it out before I could see how it worked. Then they came out real easy once you know the trick.

Note the reverse thread on the top of the screw

[pinball god]

Talking about pop bumpers, the main large hole was 2-3mm under sized and I had to use a piece of dowell and sand paper to bore them out. From the wrong angle a person might have thought I was having a good time with myself 

I then proceeded to remove most of the mechanisms/assemblies from underneath and reassembled them on the new playfield. I also put all the topside playfield posts on the new pf as I took them off. This wasn't a good idea for the wood screw type ones and the pre-dimples can be off. I got caught out with a couple when it came to assembling the plastics.

I tried to leave as much connected to the cabling as possible so I could avoid heaps of soldering and trying to remember what wires went where. So I decided to label each globe, switch etc simply by a number or S1 for a switch on the cable loom and on the new playfield dimple location. Masking tape did the trick. Some components were obvious on where they would go but hey what another 2 or 3 labels in the scheme of things. I then moved the larger cable clips and posts to the new pf to help with cable orientation.

What this did was I just unscrewed everything without a care and dumped the cable and all on the new pf. It was like join the dots and took me bugger all time to have the underside down. I thought this would be the hardest task but turned out the easiest.

The fun part I thought would be putting the plastics back but again there were holes missing and mods to be be made. All in all a pain in the arse but the reward was seeing the pf coming together.

I think I needed to look at a couple of photos but the rest just fell into place as I bagged and numbered each section I removed. I forgot to mention, I also took notes as well as photos and video. There was no way of mistakes here.

So the final step prior to putting the new pf into the cabinet was I checked every globe, switch and mech to make sure I have bent any lugs etc that could short the thing out.

[pinball god]

Put the pf in, re-connected the plugs in the backbox, did a check of this and switched on. 

Nah, no errors, no locked on coils, no nothing except for 2 globes out as I have leds so they needed adjusting and 2 x rollover switches that needed fine tuning. oh and refinements/adjustments to the STEP ramp that was a problem prior to the swap

I was playing within 20 minutes of installing. I did the nose trick of smelling for fire. I thought the wife would get pissed with me if I burnt down our new house 

I put down the hassle free testing stage to putting in a little time in prepping and labelling. I will do the cabinet stuff once I buy the decals and gear.

Hope this helps anyone considering a swap for the first time and I hope it saves you time and maybe some frustration. If I think of anything I have left out I'll post it.

Thanks

[pinnies4me]

Congratulations on completing your first swap. My first was was a Funhouse as well, and in hindsight there are probably a lot easier games to do a swap on!

I take this was one of the recently released Mirco repros? The issues with the holes certainly didn't occur on the AFM fields he did, wonder if it's affecting all of them, or just some?

If you find that the shot to the main ramp causes the ball to sometimes come back at you, here's a fix http://aussiepinball.com/index.php?topic=103.0

[pinball god]

thanks mate for the fix but haven't had a problem yet. It wasn't a mirco one I think just a poor one. Just wanted to get a good playing surface as FH is one of my favourite players. I'll restore the old one which will take a lot of time and then maybe do a re-swap. I just couldn't handle not playing for such a long time hence the repro

[ajlaird]

Good work there, a certain amount of bravery required by the sound of it!!

[swinks]

Great work and thanks for sharing, some helpful tips.

[goodolddays]

Thnaks for posting and glad to hear it all worked out . I have my 1st PF swap coming up sometime soon on my Firepower.

[Strangeways]

Good stuff Rob. Not an easy job "first time", so you have done very well. Looks great 

[Flynnyfalcon]

Hey PG,

Nice work with the swapover.  I have just purchased and have had delivered a Mirco FH Repro.  Really looking forward to doing my first swap over, so your thread came up at a very convenient time 

Would you have any videos which you think may help my swap?  I've never done a swap before, only replaced the old part, so the job is a little daunting.

[pinball god]

Hey PG,

Nice work with the swapover.  I have just purchased and have had delivered a Mirco FH Repro.  Really looking forward to doing my first swap over, so your thread came up at a very convenient time 

Would you have any videos which you think may help my swap?  I've never done a swap before, only replaced the old part, so the job is a little daunting.

I do have videos and photos and notes. All probably way too big to download etc. But if you have the gear document everything you do. If you get stuck on something though when either removing or putting back together, let me know and I'll review my stuff and either try to download that snippet or explain it to.

[Flynnyfalcon]

Thanks PG