Adding Back the Two Factory Removed Flash Bulbs on the F-14 Tomcat Pinball Machine (Williams)
| Degree of difficulty: Moderate
Time: 2 hours Items needed: Soldering Iron |
|
Williams had these 2 flash bulbs in the F-14 Tomcat Pinball at the top of the playfield behind the Tomcat targets originally. But the sockets were too close to the targets so they were touching and shorting out the switch matrix. Williams sent a service bulletin out to Operators to remove the 2 offending flash bulbs and also to weaken the strength of the upper flipper coils. These changes were eventually put into production for the rest of the production run of F-14 Tomcat Pinball Machines. What you'll now see there are two red flasher domes with no sockets.
Like many people who are into Pinball Restoration and Collection, we like to have the games the way they were originally designed. Steve Ritchie originally intended this pinball machine to have 10 flash lamp circuits, but after this production change there were only 8 flash bulb circuits. I had a terrible time attempting to find information on how to reinstall these 2 flash bulbs. Most of what I found referred me to the original service bulletin put out by Williams Pinball. That was great - but - it's missing information about the wiring.
After a few nights of tinkering, I figured it out with the help of the service manual & bulletin found at IPDB.org and PinRepair.com. This video will help you to be able to add on these 2 flash bulbs to the F-14 Tomcat Pinball Machine.
If you have any questions or comments, please post them down below the video and I'll get back to you ASAP. - PinDude
If you have any questions or comments, please post them down below and I'll get back to you ASAP.
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Tagged with: f-14 tomcat • flash bulbs • pinball project • pinball restoration
Filed under: Pinball Projects
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I was trying to look at video on adding back two flash bulbs and getting very jerky playback….What is wrong with my computer?
Dad
That sometimes happens to me when I watch videos online.
Try first hitting play and then pause the video for a minute or two and then hit play again.
That should help
PinDude,
Thank you so much for your adding the 2 bulbs to the F-14 pin!! I installed the extra bulbs according to the Video and it worked great.
Thank you
I did that to my F14 when it first came out. I liked it!!! also missing in the top area
is the sling shot. you have to do a lot of modifying underneath to get it to work.
when don right, holly Toledo what a game. good luck.