My good pin buddy Elliot down the street picked up this neat Iceman mod off a fellow pinside member named HemiOrange09 who made a few kits to sell. So he did not get home from teaching last night till 11:30pm last night which was perfect for me as my daughter usually goes to bed between 11-midnight anyways so the second I finished reading her book I packed my "tool kit" and made my way over.
Here is what was shipped to him from HemiOrange09 (pinside member) who did a great job on including everything required to install this mod except for one thing which I will point out later. Elliot gave us some fuel to start burning the midnight oil for what should have been a 10-15 minute job
So before you lift any Stern playfield make sure you remove the balls otherwise you will hear sh!t falling and freak out resulting in you derailing your playfield and dropping it into your cab. They don't click and lock when you pull all the way forward before lifting up like the later B/W games. Sterns also have that annoying "speed bump' and read stories where people forget they already went over it and not realize they are at the end of the track and do one more strong tug and guess what... your playfield is now on the bottom of your cab :lol:
Anyways part of this mod will be tying into the right yellow flasher on the Iceman ramp before you life the playfield all the way up have a quick look and try to identify the wire colors leading to under the playfield.
If you see above it is the orange+black wires which are tied into a Z-style connector and notice the "rookie" markings from the factory too. Remove this Z connector completely and replace with the one supplied in the kit. The Z connector by nature is designed to only accept plugs one way so if you find yourself having to force it or not going in easy you probably have the connector the wrong way. Easiest thing to do is match the same orientation as the original one so take note before you remove it.
Run this new harness up the same hole as the yellow flasher to above your playfield and hook up your Iceman figure to do a quick test. It is the FLASH RIGHT SIDE (x2) in the flasher diagnostics service menu. Make sure your coin door is closed or just hold the HV interlock switch in with your finger and make sure you see the bottom of the Iceman figure flashing.
The last tie in to the game would be the spot light that sits directly behind Iceman to the games GI keeping him glowing most of the time. I mounted the spotlight using the existing screw for the plastic riser and support for the ramp. In order to remove the nut from the top you will need to get a small philips screw driver underneath it or if you don't have one small enough the entire plastic comes off easily.
Here is where I think it would have been nice if the spot light wiring came modified with some gator clips so the user could just feed it through the same hole as the flasher and clip onto a bulb socket for the GI instead of having to solder. Granted it is one of the easier things to solder but some people don't have tools such a soldering or even a standard socket set to install pin legs (FFS Elliot I am buying you a socket set for X-mas!). I forgot to bring a set of gator clips and I was debating should I do a "ghetto" hack for now because it is late and just twist the wires to a socket to make my friend happy? Probably not when I only live 5 minutes down the road so we hopped into his SUV and made our way to my house through all this fog!
Back 15 minutes later I extended the spot light wires and ran them under the playfield and clipped onto a GI socket. Just a side note whenever you tie into GI try to pick a socket that is far away from say pop bumper coils which goes off quite frequently during a game to reduce the chance of the gator clips coming loose over time.
After making sure all the lighting worked properly, I went and tidied up all the new wires using zip ties. Final step was to mount the Iceman figure using the 3M adhesive provided on the bottom and here is the final result.
Video of it in action here towards the end of the video:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=0sW5CWvBJzc[/youtube]
Here is the thread for reference in case some of you with an X-men want to contact HemiOrange09 to find out if he is making any more otherwise if you want to make your own let me know and I can help you source out the parts and wire it up if you want to pick up your own Iceman off eBay or whatever figure you think looks good on the machine and tie into the game.
http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/ ... 00-by-hemi
Enjoy your mod Elliot and thanks for the Cliffys and will come back later on in the week to help you install some stuff on Tommy and glad we were still able to get some pinball in till 2am. Any questions feel free to ask.
-Mike
© Mike Wong, 2012
Here is what was shipped to him from HemiOrange09 (pinside member) who did a great job on including everything required to install this mod except for one thing which I will point out later. Elliot gave us some fuel to start burning the midnight oil for what should have been a 10-15 minute job
So before you lift any Stern playfield make sure you remove the balls otherwise you will hear sh!t falling and freak out resulting in you derailing your playfield and dropping it into your cab. They don't click and lock when you pull all the way forward before lifting up like the later B/W games. Sterns also have that annoying "speed bump' and read stories where people forget they already went over it and not realize they are at the end of the track and do one more strong tug and guess what... your playfield is now on the bottom of your cab :lol:
Anyways part of this mod will be tying into the right yellow flasher on the Iceman ramp before you life the playfield all the way up have a quick look and try to identify the wire colors leading to under the playfield.
If you see above it is the orange+black wires which are tied into a Z-style connector and notice the "rookie" markings from the factory too. Remove this Z connector completely and replace with the one supplied in the kit. The Z connector by nature is designed to only accept plugs one way so if you find yourself having to force it or not going in easy you probably have the connector the wrong way. Easiest thing to do is match the same orientation as the original one so take note before you remove it.
Run this new harness up the same hole as the yellow flasher to above your playfield and hook up your Iceman figure to do a quick test. It is the FLASH RIGHT SIDE (x2) in the flasher diagnostics service menu. Make sure your coin door is closed or just hold the HV interlock switch in with your finger and make sure you see the bottom of the Iceman figure flashing.
The last tie in to the game would be the spot light that sits directly behind Iceman to the games GI keeping him glowing most of the time. I mounted the spotlight using the existing screw for the plastic riser and support for the ramp. In order to remove the nut from the top you will need to get a small philips screw driver underneath it or if you don't have one small enough the entire plastic comes off easily.
Here is where I think it would have been nice if the spot light wiring came modified with some gator clips so the user could just feed it through the same hole as the flasher and clip onto a bulb socket for the GI instead of having to solder. Granted it is one of the easier things to solder but some people don't have tools such a soldering or even a standard socket set to install pin legs (FFS Elliot I am buying you a socket set for X-mas!). I forgot to bring a set of gator clips and I was debating should I do a "ghetto" hack for now because it is late and just twist the wires to a socket to make my friend happy? Probably not when I only live 5 minutes down the road so we hopped into his SUV and made our way to my house through all this fog!
Back 15 minutes later I extended the spot light wires and ran them under the playfield and clipped onto a GI socket. Just a side note whenever you tie into GI try to pick a socket that is far away from say pop bumper coils which goes off quite frequently during a game to reduce the chance of the gator clips coming loose over time.
After making sure all the lighting worked properly, I went and tidied up all the new wires using zip ties. Final step was to mount the Iceman figure using the 3M adhesive provided on the bottom and here is the final result.
Video of it in action here towards the end of the video:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=0sW5CWvBJzc[/youtube]
Here is the thread for reference in case some of you with an X-men want to contact HemiOrange09 to find out if he is making any more otherwise if you want to make your own let me know and I can help you source out the parts and wire it up if you want to pick up your own Iceman off eBay or whatever figure you think looks good on the machine and tie into the game.
http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/ ... 00-by-hemi
Enjoy your mod Elliot and thanks for the Cliffys and will come back later on in the week to help you install some stuff on Tommy and glad we were still able to get some pinball in till 2am. Any questions feel free to ask.
-Mike
© Mike Wong, 2012
