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Terminator 2 Judgment Day


Playfield

Terminator 2 was the first pinball machine I purchased that had several known problems.  Not surprisingly, several additional problems were discovered while working on the machine. 

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Ball's Point of View

 

   
PROBLEM: The game would not start when the start button was pressed.
SOLUTION: See next problem.
   
PROBLEM: Vertical Up Kicker (VUK) was not working.
SOLUTION: This problem and the previous turned out to be the same.  One of the wires to the coil that drives to up kicker had broken off.  A little solder (and a lot of body contortions) resolved this problem.

The game apparently would not start because there was a ball inside the VUK and it would not come out (since the coil was not getting power).  T2 did not perform the "ball hunt" that it typically does in this case.  I imagine this is because a switch was telling the machine the ball was in the VUK and the machine kept trying to kick it out.  However, it didn't know the kicking mechanism was not operational.
   
PROBLEM: Test report indicated that the cannon could not find home.
SOLUTION: This was an adjustment to the microswitch at the bottom center of the image.  The activator had become bent and did not depress completely when the extruding rod on the wheel pressed against it.  This was an easy fix.
   
PROBLEM: Cannon speed went from fast to almost no movement at all.
SOLUTION: I wish I had taken a picture of this before it was fixed!  The big ceramic resistor (on the left of the picture just to the right of the two wrapped coils) was missing.  It its place, however, was a #44 bulb!  This bulb would get very bright right around the same time the cannon would basically stop moving.  After discussing this with a very knowledgeable ASIC guy I know (thanks Charles!), I learned that light bulbs are very peculiar resistors.   Specifically, the resistance will change as the bulb heats up.  The bulb was very quickly heating up and the resistance was becoming very high.  The end result was that the motor was turning very slowly because the resistance was so high.

With the help of rec.games.pinball I was able to determine the appropriate resistor.  Strangely enough this information is not included in the T2 service manual.  In case you are wondering, the board with the ceramic resistor and the two coils is called the EMI board.  It should have an 11 Ohm, 5 watt, 10% sandohm (power) resistor installed at R2.  Also, R1 and W1 are not populated.

I was unable to find a 11 Ohm resistor quickly, so I replaced it with a 10 Ohm resistor.  Given the 10% tolerance, I doubt there is any noticeable difference.
   
PROBLEM: Skull drop target was not registering.
SOLUTION: This turned out to be two problems with the microswitch.  First, the actuator was missing so there was no way the switch would ever be activated.  Secondly, the diode was missing.  After getting the appropriate actuator and replacing the diode, it was nice to hear Arnold tell me the target was hit.

I could not get the camera behind the drop target mechanism to take a good picture.  However, you can see the diode on the bottom right as well as the three leads for the microswitch.  The big screw on the left adjusts how far down the drop target goes.  This allows you to make it level with the playfield when it is down.
   
PROBLEM: Right flipper was extremely week.
SOLUTION: The coil was wearing out and the rods were quite dirty with black goop.  See the image below.

The flippers were also sparking most of the time they were activated.  I realized that neither of them had a capacitor installed!

I rebuilt both flippers.  I ordered the parts of Macro and received two different coils both claiming to be FL11630.  As the image below shows, one is red and the other is light blue.  After my initial repair, the left flipper worked worse than it originally did!  This wasn't something I was happy with at 11:45PM at night on a Sunday.  Luckily, the following Monday I realized one of my solder connections was quite poor.  After resoldering, it worked like a charm.  As for the two different looking coils?  Luckily they seem to behave about the same.  The finished product is shown below.

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PROBLEM: Mylar in front of cannon targets was torn and sticking up.
SOLUTION: When I went to purchase this T2, I was initially very disappointed because it appeared that the playfield in front of the 5 cannon targets was in bad shape.  Luckily I found out it was only the Mylar that was pealing up.  The Mylar was removed using the "freeze" method and followed up with Goo Gone to remove the remaining stickiness.
   
PROBLEM: Plastic around rivets holding red eyes to skill Skull was broken.
SOLUTION: Using some higher gauge but reasonably strange wire, I rigged up a support mechanism that is screwed into the same base as the skull.  This picture does not show the rig I created, but does show the end result.
   
PROBLEM: Segment of wire lane on chase loop was missing.
SOLUTION: I do not have a picture of this, but I ended up using the metal from a coat hanger.  This should be replaced with a lower gauge metal, but it's good enough for now.
   
PROBLEM: Coin door missing inserts and coin mechanism.
SOLUTION: I have not replaced/repaired the coin door.  Here is what it looks like from the inside.  I've been told I may need to purchase a new coin door because the missing parts are not easily available.

I ended up getting a new coin door.  Below is a picture of the outside of the coin door and below that is a picture of the inside.

The position of the "white coin door switch" appears to have moved from the time T2 was built.  The new coin door did not have the switch on the outside frame.  I ended up using the original coin door frame with the new coin door.
   
PROBLEM: Hunter Killer ship missing.
SOLUTION: I purchased a reproduction.  It's not amazing, but it's better than nothing!
   
PROBLEM: General playfield disarray.
SOLUTION: I took apart about 50% of the playfield in order to replace star posts and rubbers.  I used Novus #2 and Novus #1.  It cleaned up and looks amazing!

 

Any comments?

Have any comments, questions, or just want to say "Hi"?  Drop me a note using pinball@aaarpinball.com.  I look forward to hearing from you!  If you drop me a note, I would appreciate it if you let me know how you ran across my web site.