I have a 1959 Williams Golden Bells that won't start a game. I've gone through and cleaned all the switches, steppers, and wipers, and now am going through the checklist of issues. This one is happening when you first plug the game in and turn it on/try to start a game. The 100k point reset coil locks on. The switch is clean, and giving 0.9 ohms when I measure it. That is in H6-K6 of the schematic. The green-white wire that is tied to the coil on the score motor is in A23. It is the outermost switch on the Index switch stack.

The way I see it, the index stack is supposed to sit in the notch of the cam and when that is happening the switch to the reset coil is closed. So that must mean that something else breaks the circuit to that coil correct? A helpful pinsider pointed to F3 where it says 100,000 S.U. DISC AT ZERO. That's where the wiper sits as far as I can tell because that's where it is when the switch is closed, which it is. That leads to the reset relay. If I trigger that manually the score motor spins a little and then whole game shuts off.

Any help here would be great. I can post pics as needed.

Golden Bells Schematic.pdf

When I just tested, the trip relay fires and then the 100k coil locks on. Sorry for the wonky angle. Hard to get in there and be able to have everything in frame.
BCC1E81D-4C11-44B9-9AFF-36FF71D3F399 (resized).jpeg

There are two plugs in the back of the cab and two in the head. I’ve reseated the cab ones a few times over this attempt and just pulled and reseated the ones in the head and get the same result.

I’m not very good at following startup sequences. Is the trip relay supposed to fire every time and then the latch does later in the sequence?

Would it be related to anything that if I manually trigger the reset relay everything just shuts off?

It’s blurry for sure as a preview through pinside, but is a PDF so it should be clearer if downloaded. If not let me know and I’ll try to get it posted in a better way.

Here are the two units that I think are at least a part of the equation. The first is the zero switch for the 100k unit. The next is the back side of the 100k unit. One of these wipers is tied to the blue-white wire that is shown at F4 and triggers the reset relay when the wiper says 100k is at zero. Not sure which wiper it is yet though. About to take it apart again so I can trace that wire and see what dot it goes to.

EC2B30E8-DCC0-4BFC-9C17-81DB8DFC47A5 (resized).jpeg552AB56A-734D-4101-B262-05AA02431EB9 (resized).jpeg

I found the issue. The bakelite portion of the wiper assy is held in with 4 screws near the center of the piece. The holes are probably twice as big as the screws are so there is a lot of slop. With those being near the center and the wipers being further out things can get really out of whack. I found the dot that ties to zero and made that be in the center of where the wiper would be and then tightened the screws. Fired right up.

So now I have a bunch of other issues like the lights all going out and only barely making a blip every time a coil fires. Then there’s the advance switch (not a pop bumper) that isn’t registering while the other one does. Then there is the pop that doesn’t register/fire and the other two do. But, at least it’s alive.

Thanks Nick

It’s ALL the lighting, controlled and GI. It all flickers on briefly with a coil pop. So it probably is an iffy contact on a switch somewhere.

The pop switch, along with all the others, were cleaned but I hit it with the emery board and now it’s working better. It’s probably gapped a little too far apart so I’ll adjust that a little. I’ll give the other switch (the non-pop bumper switch) the same treatment and see what happens.