Hi! A bit new to pinball maintenance... basically, I have a Williams Space Odyssey (2-player version of Space Mission) that used to work perfectly for almost a year, but recently, the 10pt unit would sometimes fail to score (tested on all 3 10pt standups and 50pt targets).

The frequency of this failure kept increasing and my friends and I could not figure out exactly what's wrong. Eventually, we learned the 10pt relay was not releasing, indicating that the EOS switch on the player 1 10pt score reel might be the problem (mysterious because player 2 also had problems sometimes...). While looking at the 10pt score reel, we noticed that the solenoid would try to fire sometimes but not actually pull in the rod fully. So, we took the score reel apart and took out the plunger, cleaned off all parts using soapy water and soft cloth and put it back together, adjusting the EOS switch to be a tad further apart.

While this may have solved the problem with the 10pt relay not releasing, the 10pt score reel now only moves 15% of the time or so the other times, it tries but is unable to move. It's odd - you'd think cleaning off the gunk (there was lots of black) would help, not hurt...

Does anyone have any advice?

Thanks!

(pictures are from before we took it apart to clean)

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IMG_5961 (resized).JPG

Possibly, but I am not sure what the solution would be. The EOS switch on the 10pt relay is the one in series with the hold switch on the relay

Thank you all for your comments and posts. I finally solved the problem today (a good night's sleep always helps!) Originally, there were problems with both players not scoring 10pts sometimes.

This led me to believe it was a problem with either the in-hold switch on the 10pt relay or the one that connects to the player relay to actually move the score reel. So, I simply cleaned both switches as recommended, and adjusted them slightly to match the neighboring N.C. or N.O. switch's gap widths.

And somehow - this worked!! Space Odyssey is back up and running like normal! Both 50pt and 10pt targets score exactly as intended!

Thank you all for your wisdom. Now, to play a few games!

-lloprete