Monday, June 1, 2015

Bally Twilight Zone pinball mods and repairs

Twilight Zone might be the most popular game collectors have in their collection, so it's no surprise I eventually ended up with one. There is no unsung praise to give it. It's the perfect combination of depth, innovation, crazy toys, and theme tied together with fantastic art and sound. It sure was a beast to shop out though. Much more laborious than Star Trek: The Next Generation if you ask me (both games being commonly considered among the "hardest" to shop). The whole table is a jigsaw puzzle. The mini-playfield, accompanying wireform, right ramp, metal lock assembly, and even the clock are all packed in there tightly. If one piece is out of place, the whole game won't go back together perfectly. It's once fancy game though, and surely worth the effort. Here's my experience so far with Twilight Zone.





Buying it


Twilight Zone was never something I actively sought out. It's a relatively expensive pin and I figured I would one day decide between a fancy NIB pin or TZ. I was so ambivalent that I let a really nice one for $4400 sit just an hour away from me for some reason. That was silly of me. Pins never show up at good times or places for me, but browsing Pinside one day a nice looking, working TZ popped up 10 hours away in Pennsylvania for $4700. That's a good price, a far distance, but I was one of the first people to see the post so I had grab the deal before I regretted considering it too long. The unfaded cabinet sold it for me. If I didn't get this, I knew down the road I would settle for a faded cabinet and wouldn't be as happy.




I picked it up from Keeg, a super nice guy who had owned it since 1998. The only "serious" problem was that the rocket ship switch was missing (he was intending to replace it but I purchased it too quickly). It's one of the few games I've purchased where the condition was just as advertised. I love deals like that.



Mods


TZ is by far the most modded pinball machine. It's not even close and to argue it is crazy. Not only are there a dozen different obvious spots for mods, but there are multiple versions of them. You could probably spend as much on mods as you do on the game itself. I wanted a fancy game without going too overboard and becoming a mess of plastic toys and LCD screens. What I decided on is:

ModPrice Notes
Ingo Clock Board$147
A no brainer for most people since the clock is frequently broken. My Rottendog clock was working fine, but Ingo clearly put so much effort into making this the perfect solution that I had to have it. Using it causes the molex connectors to stick out from the bottom making piano mod installation more difficult.
Laretrotienda Piano Mod $100By far the best looking piano mod. A pain in the ass to install along with the Ingo board in my opinion. This spot just looks unfinished without a toy here.
Great Lakes Modular Door Insert Board$120Wow, this board is amazing! The flashers on the door panels improve the light show quite a bit. Very happy I sprung for the full panel rather than a mod that would only add the GUM and BALL flashers.
Great Lakes Modular Mini-playfield Switch Kit$85Removes the ugly gray protrusions from the mini-pf. No brainer mod if you're looking to have your game look better. Unfortunately the angle of the PCB makes it difficult to rivet the sign plastics back on. I ended up using tumbled 4-40 socket head screws to put them back on.
Comet Pinball LEDs ~$100
Pop bumper LEDs
Optix Maximus bulbs for GI
4 SMD Supreme Brightness bulbs for inserts
Twin SMD Frosted Intense Brightness bulbs for GI
8 SMD flashers
as well as some others.

The different colored pop caps didn't fit the pop bumper LEDs exactly the same for some reason. I used small #4 nylon spacers to space the light evenly from the cap. 
LED OCD$150More of a requirement than a mod when using LEDs.
Pinbits Gumball Lamp Kit $50Was already installed
Pinball Decals Spiral Sign$65The price of this mod is just stupid, but the naked lamp is worse.
Pinball Life Polished Glass Gumballs $10Removed an inferior gumball mod for these.
Slot Machine Scoop LED$30
Pinball Pimp Diverter Decal$10
Pinball Pimp Mini-Playfield Lamp Decal$14
Pinball Pimp Spiral Vortex Back Board Decal$23
Standup target decals$33Were already installed
Diverter Magnet$14Was already installed
ColorDMD$400
Pinsnob Shooter Rod$55Dark blue/green/black jasper stone with gold stripes. One of a kind.
Rock Speaker Lighting Kit $50Video of it in action. Ping Rock914 on Pinside to order one. Looks better than the other speaker light mods in my opinion.
Under cabinet and backbox lighting$20DIY from cheap Ebay LEDs.
Translight door flashing LEDs$11DIY from cheap Ebay LEDs. Tutorial here.


If you consider them mods I also installed the following

Mod?Price Notes
Mantis Amusements Redesigned Slot Scoop$30
Mantis Amusements Main Ramp$75
Pinbits Plastic Protectors$20Did not use the clock plastic due to difficulty reinstalling the clock.
Cliffy Slot Machine Protector$25
Cliffy Colored Post Sleeves$10Dark blue and yellow
Custom instruction cards$0


Mods I intentionally didn't install

There are plenty of mods I intentionally didn't install. I think the Slot Machine is excessive. Most of the cameras look cheap and I'm not thrilled with them, same with many town square lamp posts. Most of the Power mods look cheap or weird, as do most of the plastic toys in general that people spread around the playfield (robots, mannequins, invaders, UFOs, doors, gumball machines, TVs, cannons, skulls, airplanes, cars, little girls, rockets...). Any kind of LCD screen really ruins the Bally/Williams feel, same with the electroluminescent wire. I think some of the Pinball Decals and Laretrotienda stuff is nice, but some of it is just crazy expensive, even as someone who spent around $1500 on TZ mods. Much of it just looks tacky. I prefer the mods that fill a gap or improve an existing feature rather than just add a plastic figurine for the sake of filling air.

If there's anything I still have my eye on it's the Laretrotienda lamp (much more reasonable than the Pinball Decals one). I like my Pinball Pimp decals though and don't want to break up the set. There's also the sweet brass Clock Millions clock that looks great, but at ~$200 it's a little stupid.



Some thoughts on lighting

I was never 100% happy with the color temperature of the lighting on my TZ between all the mods, but I'm as happy as I can now. The LEDs on the lower playfield have slightly different color temperature in spots despite using the same Sunlight bulbs (I assume AC vs DC voltage). The gumball light mod has a very cool white to it. Ingo's clock board has LEDs that are either too cool or too warm to match up with the sunlight bulbs. Both looked awful, so I ended up using the color changing LEDs, something I'm not a fan of, just because it wouldn't match otherwise. The color changers match with the color changing door on the translite though so I'm happy with that. I used warm whites in the backbox which I think makes the translite look better than cooler colors.

The gumball light kit and clock board are very common mods, I think the color temperature of them is something to keep in mind when LEDing your game.


Problems/Fixes


Thankfully I bought this machine working and haven't had a ton of issues with it yet.

Ingo Clock Board flickering LEDs / Clock Motor doesn't work

This was the first issue I hit after powering on my game for the first time since I purchased it, more than 2 months later. The Ingo board test LEDs would flicker and work, although none of them would register according to the game. When powering the game on the Ingo board would have the power LED and #3 LED lit. The motor didn't work either during any test.

Both issues were simply due to a poorly seated connector under the playfield. The black and grey/yellow wire.



Tight fit between Ingo Boarded clock, Laretrotienda Piano Mod, Mantis Main Ramp, and habitrail

I don't really have a solution for this, but after installing all of these, my game didn't fit back together quite how it used to. It could be an offending mod or it could be my incompetence, but even after tearing it down again and putting it back together I felt the fit was tight. You really have to wedge things together. The connectors stick out of the bottom of the clock when you use an Ingo board making the piano mod install difficult. Additionally, there was no way the clock plastic protector was going to fit in this mess, so that had to be removed.


Fuse F116 blown

This was no real mystery, between the clock, speaker lights, ColorDMD, door light, and undercabinet lights I have too many mods running on 12V. I fixed this by adding a service port into the cabinet and running a separate 12V power supply for my cabinet lighting.


Mantis Amusements redesigned slot scoop shoots ball to the very tip of right flipper or STDM

It doesn't look like I'm the first one with this problem. My original, broken weld scoop shoots the ball nicely to the middle of the right flipper. The Mantis one shoots it to the very tip of the right flipper, sometimes STDM. I've adjusted it as far as possible, loosening the slot target and twisting it as far as it will go. It still isn't great. I drilled entirely new holes for both the scoop and coil to fix the angle, there was no other fix.


Ball gets wedged and stuck during lock kickout

After reassembling the game, the lock kickout would sometimes get the ball wedged in between the bracket that holds the lock optos and the rail on the other side. This was because I tired adding ~1/8" plastic spacers to the front feet of that opto bracket as I saw recommended to prevent rejections from the lock shot. They weren't very big, but still caused this issue. I took them out and have no problems now. I don't have lock reject problems so hopefully this won't become an issue.


Diverter knocks ball off habitrail (when ball headed towards mini pf)

This was due to the diverter not fully opening, so the bottom of the diverter would knock fast moving balls off the habitrail. I fixed this by putting washers under the below playfield assembly. I'm sure there are washers above the playfield I missed to cause this. I also put a washer between the habitrail and the playfield post. If I really nail the shot, this still happens occasionally, but it's much better.




Magnet mod falls off diverter

Don't use regular old 3M foam tape to put your magnet on I guess. I'm using Scotch Extreme Mounting Tape now.

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