Hi Folks.
Thought I'd share my Fish Tales mini shop log. It's fairly short as I didn't take may pics along the way. I meant to but, well, just didn't.
So I bought this Fish Tales from the forum about 2 months ago and have been slowly tinkering ever since. There were a couple of minor issues I noticed when she was delivered and I powered her up for the first time.
Firstly I tackled the GI problem. Didn't take long to find the culprit:

Swapped that bad boy out for a new connector:

Then for the moment of truth:

Yay! Happy days.
Next I dismantled the right sling to see what was going on. I noticed that the plunger seemed too long to go all the way into the sleeve. I could be wrong but I think it had been replaced at some point with a Stern/Sega one. Here is the old one next to the new one I fitted:

Much shorter and when fitted seems to have sorted the issue.
Next I replace the broken switches. Here is the left inlane switch. As you see it was actually snapped:

Put a new one in (and another elsewhere) and all was good.
Next I decided to strip the playfield topside to give it a good clean and a new rubber kit. I also decided to replace all the star posts and plastic posts with new ones as I think it makes a huge difference for very little cost. Nothing more satisfying than removing old, cracked star posts and installing nice shiny new ones!
Here are a few strip down pics. Sorry, I didn't take many but you get the idea.
Boat removed:


Pretty dirty under the plastics:

At this point I decided to do a full LED conversion. I have never done this before and only ever messed out with LEDs in backboxs etc. I've never really made my mind up whether I like machines pimped out with LEDs or not. I think it suits some games and not others. But I wanted to give it a go and see how she looked.
I bought all of my LEDs from David at pinball-led.co.uk who was super helpful. - Thank you David.
Anyway, after cleaning everything and installing the new LEDs, posts and rubbers I put her all back together.
Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Finished:

Big bag of horrible old stuff that was removed:

So it's all done now and plays really well. I actually really like the LEDs on this game. I installed the Premium 2's in the inserts and they look really good. Especially the purple ones. They really pop.
I replaced every single incandescent bulb and flasher with LEDs. But in the end I went back to regular flashers for the backbox as I thought they looked better there. Other than that, it's all LED. I think it cost me about £130 to deck the whole machine out in them.
Annoyingly, I realised I had forgot to replace the incorrect standup target whilst I had the machine in bits! I managed to score the correct one from Paul (Thanks Paul) but just completely forgot about it. So I'll have to do that soon.
So that is my mini - mini shop log!
I'm going to be selling this machine very soon as I have a new game coming so I'll chuck a for sale ad up soon.
Thought I'd share my Fish Tales mini shop log. It's fairly short as I didn't take may pics along the way. I meant to but, well, just didn't.

So I bought this Fish Tales from the forum about 2 months ago and have been slowly tinkering ever since. There were a couple of minor issues I noticed when she was delivered and I powered her up for the first time.
- Bottom backbox GI all out.
- Right slingshot pretty pathetic.
- 2 rollover switches not working. (One with a snapped rollover wire)
- 1 incorrect standup target.
- Few rubbers at death's door.
- Few bulbs out here and there.
Firstly I tackled the GI problem. Didn't take long to find the culprit:

Swapped that bad boy out for a new connector:

Then for the moment of truth:

Yay! Happy days.
Next I dismantled the right sling to see what was going on. I noticed that the plunger seemed too long to go all the way into the sleeve. I could be wrong but I think it had been replaced at some point with a Stern/Sega one. Here is the old one next to the new one I fitted:

Much shorter and when fitted seems to have sorted the issue.
Next I replace the broken switches. Here is the left inlane switch. As you see it was actually snapped:

Put a new one in (and another elsewhere) and all was good.
Next I decided to strip the playfield topside to give it a good clean and a new rubber kit. I also decided to replace all the star posts and plastic posts with new ones as I think it makes a huge difference for very little cost. Nothing more satisfying than removing old, cracked star posts and installing nice shiny new ones!
Here are a few strip down pics. Sorry, I didn't take many but you get the idea.
Boat removed:


Pretty dirty under the plastics:

At this point I decided to do a full LED conversion. I have never done this before and only ever messed out with LEDs in backboxs etc. I've never really made my mind up whether I like machines pimped out with LEDs or not. I think it suits some games and not others. But I wanted to give it a go and see how she looked.
I bought all of my LEDs from David at pinball-led.co.uk who was super helpful. - Thank you David.
Anyway, after cleaning everything and installing the new LEDs, posts and rubbers I put her all back together.
Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Finished:

Big bag of horrible old stuff that was removed:

So it's all done now and plays really well. I actually really like the LEDs on this game. I installed the Premium 2's in the inserts and they look really good. Especially the purple ones. They really pop.
I replaced every single incandescent bulb and flasher with LEDs. But in the end I went back to regular flashers for the backbox as I thought they looked better there. Other than that, it's all LED. I think it cost me about £130 to deck the whole machine out in them.
Annoyingly, I realised I had forgot to replace the incorrect standup target whilst I had the machine in bits! I managed to score the correct one from Paul (Thanks Paul) but just completely forgot about it. So I'll have to do that soon.
So that is my mini - mini shop log!
I'm going to be selling this machine very soon as I have a new game coming so I'll chuck a for sale ad up soon.
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