# How To Install A Hardtop For Black Knight Pinball Machine: Finale **Source:** Cary Hardy **Type:** video **Published:** 2018-11-23 **Duration:** 13m 35s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVUca51dtBA --- ## Analysis Cary Hardy completes his Black Knight pinball hardtop installation series, detailing final assembly, critical adjustments needed for smooth playfield transitions, switch testing procedures, and modifications required for ramp compatibility. He highlights manufacturing issues with missing screw holes on CPR plastics and discusses the pros/cons of hardtops, previewing future restoration projects including Swords of Fury. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Missing screw holes on the upper playfield hardtop required manual drilling to locate original holes; manufacturer indicated future production batches will have this corrected — _Cary and Jason identify missing screw holes behind drop targets and verify correction with hardtop manufacturer_ - [HIGH] Hardtops significantly reduce ball friction/increase slickness, causing magna-save issues where ball wobbles excessively even when saved — _Cary directly states hardtop is 'much more slippery' and discusses considering increased magnetic current as solution_ - [HIGH] Ramp entry/exit points require shims and X-Acto trimming adjustments to function smoothly with hardtop installation — _Multiple examples shown of shim placement for height transition and 45-degree angle cuts needed on out-hole ejects_ - [MEDIUM] Hardtop manufacturer (implied CPR or similar) plans to release hardtops for additional classic games within 12-14 months, including Swords of Fury — _Cary states 'Hard tops has already announced that they have so many more games in the line that should be released within the next 12 to 14 months'_ - [HIGH] Switch testing during hardtop installation must be done with power off and using a physical ball rather than finger to avoid shorting ICs — _Cary provides explicit safety instruction based on installation experience_ ### Notable Quotes > "The hardtop is actually officially completely installed on the lower playfield as well as the upper playfield... basically the smoothest transition of any black knight that I've seen or played." > — **Cary Hardy**, early in video > _Establishes quality bar for hardtop installation; implies superior craftsmanship compared to typical installations_ > "Make sure that these two screw holes are there when applying your hard top... they're essentially like maybe one inch directly behind those posts right there behind the drop targets." > — **Cary Hardy**, mid-video > _Critical installation guidance for future users; addresses manufacturing defect in current hardtop batches_ > "Do not do this with the power on chances are if you're down there with a flathead screwdriver and you're altering your switches and messing around you're going to short something out and on this machine you're probably going to knock out both of the ics for your switch matrix" > — **Cary Hardy**, mid-video > _Safety warning based on hands-on experience; practical troubleshooting guidance_ > "The hardtop in general is much more slippery... the ball never comes to a complete stop it always just wobbling around and even with the magna save sometimes it's wobbling around so much that it'll still throw it to the outlaying" > — **Cary Hardy**, late in video > _Identifies significant drawback of hardtop technology affecting gameplay mechanics; suggests potential design limitation_ > "His Black Knight's never played and looked this good. When it hits that ramp, that momentum just like builds up... smooth." > — **Jason (collaborator, paraphrased by Cary)**, late in video > _Owner satisfaction testimonial; highlights positive gameplay improvements despite technical adjustments needed_ > "Once they release the Swords of Fury I'm telling you you will see another series of me doing a complete restore on this not just plate filled I plan to do a complete clear coat restore cabinet and everything" > — **Cary Hardy**, end of video > _Signals future content plan and excitement about hardtop expansion to additional classic games_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Cary Hardy | person | Content creator specializing in pinball restoration and modification; host of this installation series | | Jason | person | Collaborator on Black Knight hardtop installation; owner of the Black Knight machine; expressed satisfaction with results | | Black Knight | game | Classic pinball machine receiving hardtop installation; the primary subject of this video series | | Swords of Fury | game | Classic pinball machine owned by Cary Hardy; announced candidate for future hardtop installation and full restoration series | | CPR Plastics | company | Manufacturer of replacement plastics for Black Knight; provided new plastic kit for restoration but shipped incomplete (missing one piece) | | Hardtops (manufacturer) | company | Hardtop manufacturer/designer; announced pipeline of hardtop releases for additional classic games within 12-14 months; acknowledged manufacturing issue with missing screw holes | | Titan | company | Rubber kit manufacturer; provided yellow rubber kit for Black Knight installation | | Eric | person | Representative at Titan rubber company who provided yellow rubber kit to Cary Hardy | ### Topics - **Primary:** Hardtop installation techniques and best practices, Playfield restoration and modification, Switch adjustment and testing procedures, Hardtop manufacturing quality issues and solutions - **Secondary:** Magna-save performance with hardtop surfaces, Aftermarket replacement parts (plastics, rubbers, caps), Upcoming hardtop releases for classic games ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.82) — Cary is enthusiastic about the hardtop installation results and the improved playability/aesthetics despite identifying technical issues. Collaborative tone with Jason. Minor frustration with manufacturing defects quickly resolved. Ends on optimistic note about future projects. ### Signals - **[community_signal]** Content creator Cary Hardy providing detailed installation documentation and troubleshooting guidance for hardtop modifications, supporting DIY community adoption (confidence: high) — Entire video series dedicated to step-by-step hardtop installation with emphasis on guidance for future installers - **[product_strategy]** Hardtop installation reveals design issues requiring post-installation modifications (missing screw holes, ramp angle adjustments, out-hole trimming) that manufacturer is implementing in future batches (confidence: high) — Cary identifies missing screw holes and states 'the owner of the hard tops will be making this adjustment in future hard tops' - **[product_concern]** CPR plastics kit shipped incomplete (missing one piece); hardtop manufacturer shipping with manufacturing defects (missing screw holes on upper playfield piece) (confidence: high) — Cary states 'we have one plastic piece that was missing from our kit from cpr but it is in the mail' and describes missing screw holes requiring manual correction - **[product_strategy]** Hardtop manufacturer has announced expansion to multiple additional classic game titles with 12-14 month release window; Swords of Fury confirmed as planned title (confidence: medium) — Cary states 'hard tops has already announced that they have so many more games in the line that should be released within the next 12 to 14 months' and specifically names Swords of Fury - **[technology_signal]** Hardtop technology for classic pinball machines represents emerging playfield surface upgrade trend; affects gameplay physics (increased slickness) and mechanical function (magna-save performance) (confidence: high) — Detailed discussion of hardtop surface properties and their mechanical/gameplay implications; manufacturer expanding to multiple game titles --- ## Transcript I am still clearing out my kids Halloween candy and I have got a whole pile of almond joys that I'm gonna be eating throughout the video don't worry I'm gonna edit it all out but in case John Youssi me the coconut here we are guys we've made it the final video for black night hardtop installation and I'm releasing this video on Black Friday how's that Black Friday, Black Knight conclusion. Not only am I wrapping up Black Knight hardtop installation in this video, I will also give you a sneak teaser peek at the next project that Jason and I will be working on soon. That teaser will be at the end of this video, so if you want to see that, then stick around until the end. If you are new to this channel, I pretty much talk and do anything pinball, so if that sounds interesting to you, then hit that subscribe button down there. So So where we left off last time was that we just put down the hardtop for the upper playfield deck so now the hardtop is actually officially completely installed on the lower playfield as well as the upper playfield. Now comes the part where we put everything back onto the machine and see how it plays. But it's not as simple as just throwing everything back on the machine guys. As you saw in our previous video we had to do some alterations to the ramp entry points to make it a nice smooth transition, probably the smoothest transition of any black knot that I've seen or played. So a majority of this video is going to just show you us putting it back together, but there will be snippet points that you need to pay attention to, so that way whenever you do your hard top, that you may want to fix these issues as well. So to start off, the first thing that we need to do is ease the transition from the lower play field upon shooting your ball down the shooter lane to when the ball launches up to the upper playfield portion and by just snapping on it without putting in these shims in place it's not going to be basically the same as it should be. We are doing so by adding shims to the lower playfield and once again to the upper playfield portion right here. That increases the height of what it was to the height of the hardtop making it a nice even transition essentially like we never installed a hardtop. Once we figured out where we wanted to put the ramps on our previous video attaching the upper portion of the ramps to the upper plate build was a lot more smoother and easier to do. All we essentially did was line up the ramps to the artwork and make new screw holes and screw it down in place right there. Very smooth transition. That's right guys we are switching over to yellow rubbers. I brought over some Titan yellow rubbers just because in my head I was wondering about how it was going to look with the color scheme of this machine. Turns out it looked really good and so we put in another order to Titan Eric hooked us up and we got a whole yellow kit for this machine and we got it installed And you judge for yourself but I think yellow goes very well with this game Here comes the big point that needs to be made on this upper plate fill for your Black Knight hardtop. And I want to say that the owner of the hard tops will be making this adjustment in future hard tops. So it may be fixed pending on when you have purchased your hard top or not. So this is something that you need to verify before laying it down. Although we wish we would have seen this before we laid it down just to make it a little bit easier on us. We were able to fix this issue with a little bit of luck. You know, we're missing some screw holes. Right here. It makes sense on the damn post house. Missing. No screw holes there. Shit. What we did was reassemble the plastic portion around here that's supposed to screw down, put it all in place, and set it there where it needed to go, and just drilled straight down to where the screw should be, in our opinion. And it just so turns out that we were able to land exactly where the original screw holes were at. So we lucked out on that. It was one of those yes, yes, yes. So make sure that these two screw holes are there when applying your hard top. And here is that shot with the screw holes in place. They're essentially like maybe one inch directly behind those posts right there behind the drop targets. Maybe not even an inch. I mean, I'm just throwing metrics out there that may not even be completely correct at all. And now it's time to lower this playfield in its final resting position. But before Jason goes over some of the things that we had to do to make the adjustments for the hardtop, here is some footage of what the machine looks like in its entirety. Thank you. so after you lower your plate build into your machine now comes the part to where you need to test every switch every rollover everything you need to make sure that everything still works 100 by using the ball don't use your finger to roll over your rollovers because that's going to be not the same thing as the ball rolling over it. Your skin can fit in between the crevices of those switch sockets or cracks or switch areas You know what I talking about But your skin can go deeper than a ball can essentially so use the ball to test every switch if the ball can roll over a switch and it doesn't activate you're gonna have to make a micro adjustment on that switch to increase its height so that way that the ball can actually activate that switch and when you do your switch adjustments you will be doing these adjustments with the power off do not do this with the power on chances are if you're down there with a flathead screwdriver and you're altering your switches and messing around you're going to short something out and on this machine you're probably going to knock out both of the ics for your switch matrix if not both at least one so that's going to be a little tedious is to go through your entire game to make sure every switch works appropriately Throw the ball into every out hole to make sure that it ejects appropriately. We had issues with our shooter lane. Whenever the ball ejects into the shooter lane, we had to make adjustments on that. The adjustments, I'm going to let Jason talk you through those, what we had to do. It was a pretty easy thing. You just need to exact a knob and to cut off a little extra of the hard top to make sure it was an easy eject back onto the play field. And the only thing you had to adjust up here was just add that clear washer underneath it. Yeah, I had a clear washer underneath of it in order for it to eject the ball. Every out kick, though, we had to trim with the X-Acto. I think you got some footage of it earlier. So there's about a 45-degree cut on that out hole. There's a 45-degree roughly cut angle on that out hole. Did we have to do any cutting on that out here? Yeah, we did have to do a cutting on there because it didn't want to eject the ball out to the shooter line. So we trimmed that. It was actually you can see it overhanging just a little bit from where the edge of the wood was so We use an exacto and we trim that we trimmed it at an angle though. We didn't trim it straight up and down Yeah, give that 45 degree angle So the only major market like modifications was these two screw holes that were missing in the back of the clear plastic on the backside some other micro adjustments that will need to be made depending on how you put your machine together is whenever you take your left ramp and it goes to the upper play field and rolls down to your upper left flipper that needs to be a very smooth transition if it comes over and it does a bounce it shouldn't bounce so you're gonna have to adjust your post accordingly to make sure it's a smooth transition i have video right here showing you what it should look like yeah and that's it guys that's the black knight with a hard top installation now there's pros Pros and cons to hardtops, but I'm telling you from our experience so far, the pros outweigh the cons. One of the cons that we had to point out on this particular machine is the playfield the hardtop in general is much more slippery It basically very smooth and slick so whenever you use your magna save the ball never comes to a complete stop it always just wobbling around and even with the magna save sometimes it's wobbling around so much that it'll still throw it to the outlaying we're thinking that we're probably going to do some adjustments to the magna save on there increase the current so that way it gives a little more oomph to that magnet that's still all up in the air at this point. But Jason really enjoys this hardtop. He is so glad that he has done this. He said his Black Knights never played and looked this good. When it hits that ramp, that momentum just like builds up. Oh yeah, smooth. you've got to admit even though it's not a complete full cabinet and everything restoration this has got to be one of the best looking black knots that you have ever seen we've got all new cpr plastics on this and we have one plastic piece that was missing from our kit from cpr but it is in the mail and it's on its way you may or may not see it in the video if John Youssi a plastic missing that's the plastic that's in the mail got rid of the crummy wooden plastic looking acorns on top of all the plastics for all the posts and replaced those with chrome caps to add a little extra shininess to this game because it needed more obviously almost every portion of this play field shines and reflects it's beautiful now hard tops has already announced that they have so many more games in the line that should be released within the next 12 to 14 months one of those games is my Swords of Fury and I cannot wait for that. Once they release the Swords of Fury I'm telling you you will see another series of me doing a complete restore on this not just plate filled I plan to do a complete clear coat restore cabinet and everything on my Swords of Fury and I cannot wait to see what it looks like with a shiny beautiful hardtop. So that's going to wrap up this Black Knight hardtop installation series guys stick around to the very end for that one little teaser to give you an idea of what we're doing next. If you like what you've seen here, please give me that thumbs up down there. And if you haven't already hit that subscribe button, don't forget to click the little bell icon. That way you can be notified of whenever I upload new material for your viewing pleasure until next time. Peace out. Oh yeah, Black Knight looks damn sexy. Too bad your centaur looks like total shit though. Whoa. the only question is ma'am what are we gonna do _(Acquisition: youtube_groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: b9e3d71f-7208-4a61-98af-40aa76f7a317*