Dealer's Choice
Williams, 1974I was just gifted a 1974 Williams Dealer's Choice. The guy who have to me had it for many years and never had an issue. He went to clean some parts and now something is wrong. The game will seems to start, ball comes out, but no bumpers or flippers work. He thought the game was stuck on tilt or something. I checked and the pendulum is centered and not making contact.
Any suggestions?
So, are you saying the score reels will all reset to zero properly and the ball then kicks into the shooter lane, but the flippers don't work and the playfield (PF) won't score?
Boot up a game, remove the lockdown bar and the glass, remove the ball, and raise the PF and locate the tilt relay. I don't have a Dealer's Choice, but in most Williams multi-player machines, it will probably be located along the Left side column of the bottom board. Observe the Tilt relay. If it is energized and the metal plate is pulled in against the coil, then you have a tilt switch somewhere that is accidentally conducting and energizing the relay. Could be the ball-roll tilt switch, or another one.
If it is not energized and you still have no PF power, there is one normally closed (NC) switch on the tilt relay (closed when tile relay is not energized) that needs to be clean and conducting for the PF to receive power. You can consult the Owners Manual (see the ipdb) and find the Tilt relay and note that the proper NC switch will be the 2nd one from the metal crossbar. It will have a red wire and a red/yellow/white wire soldered to the tab ends of the switch. Make sure that switch is firmly closed and the contact faces are clean.
Please report back.
So my friend came over and I was showing him my issue. We powered up the table and we noticed that it didn't light up "tilt". We opened the coin door and moved the pendulum to make contact to produce a tilt. When we did, the "tilt" lit up and we reset the ball. Now the bumpers and flippers work! Everything seems operational now. The only issue I have now is that there doesn't seem to be enough power going to the flippers. It will barely send the ball up the table. What would be the fix for this? Clean the contacts?
Look at the end-of-stroke (EOS) switches on the flipper assembly. These are the switches that open when the flippers are activated. Examine the contact points on the switches. If they are pitted, they'll need to be replaced, and you can get replacement switches. Sometimes the contact points will have a build up of carbon on them and they just need to be cleaned...
I would second Fred's advice. Clean and adjust the EOS switches first and see if that makes a difference. While you are in there, clean the contacts on the flipper button switches attached to the cabinet sides behind the buttons. Next in line would be to replace the coil sleeve on the flipper coils. They can often steal a lot of the energy from the flipper motion.
If those steps don't improve the flips enough, may want to consider a rebuild like Balz recommends.
Some good tutorial on flippers here:
http://www.pinrepair.com/em/index3.htm#flips
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