TAF Uncle Lester light up mod

[mwong168]

I recently picked up this "Uncle Lester" mod for my TAF from the Pinballpro.com website and it was super easy to install. First I removed both bulbs from the sides of the electric chair and carefully pulled it up from the metal mounting plate.

Uncle Lester sits pretty snug and tight in the chair and I believe there is also a magnet in his back too from what I read on pinside. Anyways, I used my soldering iron to tin the wires to make it easier to attach on the tabs of the yellow bulb socket on the chair.

Before I started soldering, I turned the game on and touched each wire to the socket tabs to make sure I got the correct polarity. Always be careful when testing things while the machine is on because you could blow a fuse or sometimes do lots of collateral damage.

You can see underneath the two sockets there is a hole where the existing wire is fed through so I pulled the excess wires from Uncle Lester through here and used a zip tie above an below the playfield to tidy things up.

Here is the final result after 10 minutes

-Mike

product link: http://pinballpro.net/shop/uncle-lester-af-1/

 

[DRANO]

Hmmm,
Now, it's been maybe 7 years or so since I installed mine... but I definitely don't remember having to solder mine into the game.
I'll have to take a peek under the hood later and see what's different.

I'm assuming the lightbulb in the mouth still lights up when the ramps are qualified?

 

[Grauwulf]

Just a friendly reminder to anyone who is installing this mod, make sure you solder those wires to the proper places under the playfield. I had to diagnose lamp issues on a TAF that I ended up tracing back to this exact mod being hooked up incorrectly. Make sure to double check your work if something is wonky afterwards.

 

[mwong168]

Here are Uncle Fester install directions from pinballpro.com

My game appears to behave fine and it does flash when the ramp qualifies it Drano. I can probably run the wires down and tap into the wiring somewhere else under the playfield. What was the issue on the game you were troubleshooting James?

 

[Grauwulf]

Oh, that hooks up differently now than the older versions did, doing it to the lamp socket makes a lot more sense. The one I worked on was wired to a lamp socket under the playfield and one wire had been soldered to the column wire of one socket and the row wire of another. It caused all kinds of wacky behaviour with the lamp matrix.