As much as I would love to rebuild my entire playfield wire harness and connectors, I will probably wuss out and not do it..
I'm planning on pulling the entire harness off with all mechs and sockets attached, then working my way across the playfield mech by mech, socket by socket, after I staple new ground wire. If I end up taking the time to do everything the way I want to, then it will be a lot more complicated...
In the event that you DO want/need to replace a bunch of sockets and mechs and stuff, some good suggestions I've seen from RGP:
1. Leave some wire cut off the harness attached to the mechs/sockets itself so you know which wires go to what...this might be kind of hard if there's not much leeway in that part of the harness to begin with.
2. Get like a Dymo label maker from OfficeMax or wherever, print up labels for the wires and the mechs, then put matching labels on each...wrap the label around the applicable piece of harness. I'm not a huge fan of this one, I think they might fall off and then you're screwed...
3. Make your own schematic. I'll probably be doing this because I don't have an original or repro manual already, and the PDF scanned ones look like dog turd for Pinbot and Shuttle.
And of course, the everpopular:
Take 80 million pictures from every angle.
*edit* Yes, the schematics need to be followed *exactly*, unless you like frying a lot of fuses and components...that doesn't mean that you have to have schematics available.
My Pinbot flippers don't match the schematics at ALL...in fact, I've got wires going to EOS switches that don't even exist in the online schematics! But it WORKS, and it doesn't FRY anything, so you know what...I'm not arguing with existing wiring!