Embarassing mistakes you've made

Silverunicorn

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Okay people, fess up!

Another thread got me to thinking. What mistakes have you made with your pinball machines?

I will start. Once, while shopping out a Xenon, I test played the game........with the glass off.

Well, normally this is not so much of an issue, but I somehow hot the ramp shot with the force of a grenade. The ball jumped the ramp and hit (and subsequentally shattered) the outer backglass on the machine.

Whoops. Not only did the glass break, but the pieces scratched the playfield.

Double Bonus!

Chris
 
Ok I will fess up. I was moving my Wipeout pin to the basement by myself at about 2 in the morning. I measured the pin with the backbox down thinking it would fit and didnt take in to account the dolly. I got it down to the landing and couldn't stand it up, so I took the backbox off. I thought I put the playfield glass back in but I didn't, and I finished rolling it down the second set of stairs. I got to the bottom and stood the game up and heard a giant crash! The playfield swung down and was just hanging there! Luckily I got it all put back together and everything still worked, all that was damaged was 2 plastics. If you don't know they are broken most people wouldn't ever notice.
 
I needed to replace a bad IC chip on a sound board. I ordered a new one and settled down in front of the tv to do the replacement. I guess the TV distracted me or I had a brain fart or something as I removed the chip to replace it. Ended up removing the wrong chip and replacing it with a new one. Didn't notice I replaced the wrong chip until it was in. Than instead of cutting the chip out and desoldering the legs as I should have, I decided to try and desoldered the chip from the board as I only ordered 1 and wanted to save it. Before I knew it I had lifted over 6 traces from the board and messed the board up good. Of course this was all done to a board that apparently is impossible to find a replacement for, hence why I have my current signature. I now triple check what I am desoldering before I even begin working on it and I cut things off instead of trying to heat it up enough to get it to pull off the board. Long story short, I now have a Bad Girls that plays great but makes no noise, and that detracts from the enjoyment of the game. If I kicked myself in the ass any harder I wouldn't be able to ever sit again.
 
F-up

I hooked a flip coil up wrong without a double check thinking I "knew what I was doing and didnt need to look at the book" and blew a fliptronic board transistor, thing looked like the 4th of july melting and shooting sparks everywhere, FAIL
 
I went to haul my black hole pin in the house up a couple steps by myself.
I had a set of ramps so I thought it would be easy. Well it was a bit icy out
and pulling the BH up the ramp I slipped and down it went on its side.
Playfield glass exploded everywhere. Thankfully no obvious damage was done
to the game itself. A new sheet of tempered glass cost 50-60 bucks.
 
One week after a RFM playfield glass broke in my hands ($230), I was plugging in a power board for a party zone. Normally the secondary power plug is keyed so you can't plug it in wrong, but that connection had gotten overheated, and someone replaced the molex plug. They didn't put a blocker in the key position. So I plugged it in, one pin off. Turn the machine on, turn around to do something else. Look back and the machine is smoking. Totally fried and melted the wiring involved, all the way back to the transformer, which needed to be replaced. It was only my second month on the job, too. I have since rewired and fixed it, but I still hate that party zone.
 
I plugged a System 11 harness together incorrectly... The connectors are color keyed, but I was trying to hurry and thought I had them right.

Burned the special solenoid section out on my MPU and the gameroom smelled like someone baked a turd at 400 degree's for an hour. LOL
 
Resoldered coil backwards on Pinbot, fuse went POOF and saved me a PCB repair. :)

Took out a string of GI on Space Shuttle in the head by shorting it with my multimeter. Saved by the fuse also.

The recent issue with STTNG is the winner though. That was just pure dumbassery. The motor plastic actuator shattered because I didn't screw down the lane guides all the way and the cannon got stuck on them during self test. And I have no proven source for replacement, but have an order on the way supposedly.
 
Well sometimes we just have to learn the hard way I guess. Something I can guarantee though is that we will make sure not to make the same mistakes again. Hopefully some people will read this thread and save themselves the trouble.
 
Not to damaging but... Stupid . I recently bought a high speed project and got everything working great . Had to rewire the plug for the GI because it was hacked up and the left side didn't work , anyway fixed the plug all lights work yea!! Work on the pop bumpers and notice the right side GI s were out . I tested everything , lights are getting power , power at the board , put the dmm on the fuses all test ok. For about an hour I'm going crazy and. Any figure what the hell I did. So as a last effort I pulled the fuses and tested and sure enough 1 was shot. One of the first rules and I didn't think of it? Anyway remember to pull your fuses to test. Lesson learned.
 
I've been pretty lucky and I haven't messed up anything too badly (yet). I've done the usual wiring a flipper backwards and blown out the fuse and transistor. I raised a backbox and had the backglass come crashing down but not break. A few near misses with playfield glass. Probably my luckiest incident was when I dumped my Stargate off the dolly and onto its side in my yard and thankfully did no damage at all.

I did mess up an insert on my JP's original playfield when polishing it. I was pretty pissed about that. I also dropped a screwdriver on an insert on my AFM, but thankfully it was before I had the playfield restored.
 
I fitted a working ESB PCB and AR2 board into a SW cockpit, and plugged in the 2 x 6 pin plugs back to front. (Yes there are 2 plugs the same that both reach)

I blew up a working original ESB PCB, and maybe an AR2 by memory
 
I had just finished repairing and shopping a Black Hole pinball machine in my garage. It was one of those projects, where everything went wrong. Well I had finished it up one late one night, and was very excited to be done with it, and wrap things up for the night. Just to be sure everything was 100% I shot one ball on the playfield before buttoning everything back up. The playfield glass was off, as was the apron that has the score cards. Black Hole has a display mounted in the apron area to show credits, and ball in play. Well the first ball I shot hit a bumper and flew right under that display like it was a magnet! Blew the piss out of the CPU board...I'm sure I woke up half the neighborhood with my yelling and swearing!!
 
Hosting my first arcade party - and I was about a half a dozen rum and cokes in. The sound cut out on my Firepower - damn I really need to replace those IDC connectors.

I grab the key for the back box and twist, twist, twist, twist - WTF? The lock tumbler is kinda turning, but it's stuck!!? WTF???

Seriously, TWENTY minutes later, I was still trying to get into that back box. I nearly drilled it out. I had to give up.

The next day, I opened the coin door and found the 'other' key that was in the coin bucket. Back box opened up like butter with that key. I had accidentally tossed a spare key in there when I was working on replacing the lock tumbler on the coin door a few days ago.

*doh*
 
So far, the worst I have done was while working on my perpetual Blackout project, the lights went out. I went and grabbed my DMM, a cheap Hong Kong Fuey $3 special, set it for resistance and went to check the fuses. Put the leads across one of the fuses and ......(wait for it)......(bet you can guess what happed next)...... blew the effing thing up because I had forgotten to power the game down. :( :mad:

Another $3 that game has cost me....

ken
 
I needed to replace a bad IC chip on a sound board. I ordered a new one and settled down in front of the tv to do the replacement. I guess the TV distracted me or I had a brain fart or something as I removed the chip to replace it. Ended up removing the wrong chip and replacing it with a new one. Didn't notice I replaced the wrong chip until it was in. Than instead of cutting the chip out and desoldering the legs as I should have, I decided to try and desoldered the chip from the board as I only ordered 1 and wanted to save it. Before I knew it I had lifted over 6 traces from the board and messed the board up good. Of course this was all done to a board that apparently is impossible to find a replacement for, hence why I have my current signature. I now triple check what I am desoldering before I even begin working on it and I cut things off instead of trying to heat it up enough to get it to pull off the board. Long story short, I now have a Bad Girls that plays great but makes no noise, and that detracts from the enjoyment of the game. If I kicked myself in the ass any harder I wouldn't be able to ever sit again.
Why don't you just run a few jumper wires? Sounds like a very simple repair to me...
 
Why don't you just run a few jumper wires? Sounds like a very simple repair to me...

Well I sent it to someone who was supposed to look at it. They did and said it was not repairable. I was told by others that all broken missing traces can be repaired, its just a matter of taking a long time and the person probably didn't feel like messing with it. Over 6 traces are gone and the solder pads that the chip legs touch again are missing on several spots. I am in the process of trying to get the board back so I can have someone else look at it and hopefully fix it so I can take that out of order sign off the machine once and for all.
 
Well I sent it to someone who was supposed to look at it. They did and said it was not repairable. I was told by others that all broken missing traces can be repaired, its just a matter of taking a long time and the person probably didn't feel like messing with it. Over 6 traces are gone and the solder pads that the chip legs touch again are missing on several spots. I am in the process of trying to get the board back so I can have someone else look at it and hopefully fix it so I can take that out of order sign off the machine once and for all.

I know how you feel buddy

Done that :(
 
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