u/bobmccouch

It seems that’s where all the parts end up! What started as tracking down an unlit pop bumper light on my “new” F-14 Tomcat has turned into a substantial Teardown so at this point I’m rebuilding the flippers, replacing some incorrect coils, touching up playfield paint, doing some mods, doing some bulletproofing, installing a full playfield protector, finishing the LED conversion the previous owner half-did…

Just picked this up tonight from a seller a couple hours away. A very nice Williams F-14 Tomcat in excellent condition for its age. All new playfield inserts, LED lights throughout, fresh rubbers, new flipper bats, boards refurb’d. I immediately put some fresh balls and a piece of HD glass in it. It looks a plays fantastic. I’m really happy to get a classic like this to go with my more modern games. Relatively simple rules, fast, challenging, and full of Steve Ritchie goodness.

About a year ago I picked up a semi-working Sega Outrun (converted to Turbo Outrun). It had some issues. No monitor, plastics were a mess, blowing fuses, and it was pretty beat down. One of the pieces down by the floor mat had a blow out, and an edge of the back “bubble” of the side had been broken off (luckily recovered and saved by previous owner).

I have spent the last 8 months or so slowly working on it. Along the way, I disassembled and cleaned almost every component. I eventually bought an *extra* Outrun (for $100!) from a junk shop as a parts machine — the cabinet literally fell apart as we were loading it in my truck, but it was complete so I was able to recover some slightly better plastics, along with the monitor glass, some pedal bits, the course map, and extras of steering and shifter pieces that I ended up using.

I bought an original Outrun PCB with the Enhanced ROMs, although sound failed on that as soon as I got it. Luckily that ended up just being a swap of a few chips to repair.

I had to replace the DC rectifier for the shaker motor to get it to stop blowing the fuse.

Here’s a breakdown of everything I did:

- Complete tear down, cleaning, lube, and installation of brass gears on steering assembly

- Teardown and cleaning of gear shifter assembly

- Replace cabinet fan

- Teardown and cleaning of pedal assembly, including replacement of worn gas pedal shaft

- Polishing of all metal trim and pedals, 80 grit up to 3000

- Replacement of floor mat

- Rebuild of front cabinet corner to repair damage

- Reinstallation and reinforcement of a blown out section from the rear edge of the left side

- Fill lock bar holes near coin door and other misc gouges and holes

- Removed a “Turbo” sticker from front panel

- Cleaned side art and front panel art (all original)

- Paint touchup

- Complete Teardown and cleaning of coin door

- Replacement of several chips on Outrun PCB to repair missing sound

- Install of Resurrection (De-Suicide) kit on Turbo board

- Replacement of shaker motor DC rectifier to fix fuse shorts

- Replacement of non-functioning marquee fixture

- Replacement of blown out speakers

- New power cord

- New T-Molding (Baby Blue from T-Molding.com)

- Repair, reinforce, paint, clear coat, sand, buff and polish dashboard and monitor bezel

- Construct a new K7000 monitor from parts including donor tube

- Install reproduction Outrun marquee (both this cabinet and the parts donor had Turbo marquees)

The only outstanding issue I will need to look into at some point is that one of the DIP switches on the Outrun PCB seems to be stuck on, resulting in the right coin slot giving 5 credits when a quarter is dropped. The diagnostic screen shows the DIP being on, but it appears to be off and I’ve cycled it several times. I did buy a new DIP switch bank, but haven’t swapped it yet. This is in my home collection, and I do run all my games on quarters for fun, but excessive credits isn’t a huge problem. I’ll get to that someday.

This was a long project with lots of work but I’m really happy with the result. The game plays really well with all the freshly cleaned and calibrated controls.