Topic: changing generic (amf) table with tornado rods men and bearings

[2c22]

i have a amf table i bought off a fraternity brother of mine, can i change rods bearings and men with tornado ones as well as buying a tornado ball to improve the performance of the table?   i dont want to spend a lot of money and then it go to waste and the table was considerable cheap.    will this conversion work?

[jagiar]

Unless you have a set of Tornado rods, players, pins (to set the players on the rods) and bearings at hand (ie you don't have to buy them) then I would not recommend switching the parts.  To buy the parts seperately is going to cost you alot of money and it would be more practical to wait for a used Tornado to come along and buy it. 

But if you are set on swtiching the rods, then you have to make sure that the holes in the side walls of the AMF table will accomodate the Tornado bearings.  If they do, then you shouldn't have any other problems except for the possibility that the width of the AMF playing field is not the same size of a Tornado field.  In which case you might get situations where the goalie will not cover the ends of the goals or overshoot in its coverage of the goal.

[SilentSam]

Start with the Tornado ball.
I'm pretty sure the bearings won't work. The rods are probably different sizes, and the men will only work with the proper rods.
For the rods to work properly, they would definitely need to be the same diameter. If the rods are not the same length, or if the roll pin holes don't line up, then the table dimensions need to be the same as a Tornado for the fit to work.

Pictures might help.