TWD I'll take for your pennies on the dollar options, ACDC you can fucking burn though, just wait for Halloween so it seems festive.

#4. Find a new tech. What's wrong with them? These are not oddball rare machines. I would think any decent tech could get you straightened out.

Have you posted any troubleshooting threads on the forums about these games?

Burn ACDC for sure...eXpecially Luci

Take them to an extreme professional wrestling match and put them in the ring

Keep emailing and calling Stern until you are made whole. I would demand reimbursement for original price paid if they can't figure out the problem.

I'm just curious what's wrong with them, as I have both of them in my lineup and they've been pretty much trouble free (knock on wood). The AC/DC Luci has an odd lighting issue where when everything goes dark and the cannon is rotating, I'll occasionally have an insert here or there flicker when they're supposed to be off. I tried swapping some boards to eliminate that issue, but I haven't been able to resolve it yet, so obviously I must have swapped boards that weren't the cause of the issue. Other than that, everything seems fine. These machines are also both on the SAM board system, which seemed like a pretty stable and reliable system to me.

Did you check your power on the outlets lol that’s crazy to get 2 lemons wow

Toss them off a roof TNT style.

I guess I am curious what the price would be for these "project" machines, assuming they are for sale.

Id buy them both from you if you were closer. I love a good challenge when it comes to fixing machines, its more fun then playing some of them.

Whats wrong with them?

What a Shame

OK, STOP!

Change the title of this thread to be "Need help debugging Stern Games that Stern cannot fix!". That is just inflammatory enough without going over the top.

Next, please describe the problems you are having with the games. Stunningly, the people here probably know Stern games as well as Stern does. Just pick one of the games (not both, too confusing). Probably pick the worst one. Then let's start debugging what is going on.

As said above, let's also look external at things like power. Because both of them are SAM games. No node boards, no garbage, just awesome. Let's get your games fixed.

This would be great information to have; I really think the "hive mind" here could offer help if we knew exactly what was going on.

Sure, pins are somewhat complicated, but far from "rocket science", and given that the SAM system has been around for over a decade, it's hard to understand why several techs AND Stern are still flummoxed.

I voted fire, but only if you make a good video of it. I'm selfish.

I guess I am just curious what these Stern technicians do on their day job, assuming that they cannot repair one of their own machines. That seems rather difficult to believe. Seems to me, that if my only job was to repair a particular type or brand of machines, I would know every detail of the machines and how to fix anything that went wrong with it by heart. Just my thoughts...

Look under the playfield to see if any of the light sockets are touching one another or touching any metal.

Problem in the main wiring harness? IDC connector pinned incorrectly? Someone used a crossover cable instead of regular CAT-5 for board interconnect?

If the problem survived the SAM and light boards being swapped, it likely is in cabling somewhere.

I've had two games where lights were stuck on or off/acting weird and both times one of the sockets was grounding out on other sockets or metal under the playfield. See my post #21.

Not sure of all the troubleshooting steps you have done yet, but my process would be to start from square one.

For me that would involve:

1) Disconnecting any third party lighted mods just to get them out of the equation. Also the most likely place where the installation could've shorted something.
2) Double and triple check anywhere it looks like something may be shorting against something else if mods don't solve it (sockets, etc. like manadams said).
3) Unplug all of the LED control boards and start from the CPU down, plugging them in in order, seeing of you can spot where things start going wrong.

This happened to my TWD once, my pinball tech literally came over, pounded the top of the playfield very hard with his fist a few times, and it has worked ever since.

Is your tech the Fonz?

I mean he didnt just smack it, he pounded it hard, I was scared he was going to break it, but nope all LEDs working now.

Ohhhhh, did your tech turn green?

Did he have a smoke after .

Clearly you’ve done all you want to do with these lemons. Let someone who knows they have issues buy them and deal with it. Maybe Project Pinball has a use for them?

Step 1-

Disconnect any dumb mods / alligator clips you have installed (judging by the giant tacky plastic Winnebego I see in that pic you probably have plenty)

Step 2 - report back!

No but I had some left over chicken McNuggets I gave him for the ride home.

I hate to sound cynical, but there is this thing called a multimeter that can be used to test wiring and such. Perhaps one of the techs can use one or other test equipment to find the actual problem, before a bunch of parts are changed out that "might" be the problem. You could also say that vision of past problems that are corrected is 20/20.

This is crazy your having these problems.
At this point I would request the following deal from Stern.
I would ask if I could ship both games to Stern via Navl/StI.
I would pay for the shipping TO Stern and see if they would be willing to fix at their cost and pay for the shipping back to you.
Also, I would definitely do both machines at one time because it is a major savings to ship 2 games at one time.
I’m guessing it would be a total 650 bucks out of your pocket but your machines would be running perfectly and to me it would be worth it. I’m guessing if Stern got these 2 machines in house at their factory with their techs on it, they could fix in a heartbeat.

If they were willing to repair and and not ship back to you, I’m guessing some fellow pinsiders would get involved and help ship back to you for free.
I would be happy to pick up your machines and deliver to the Indiana borderline and handle the “first leg”. This just stinks.

Or.......just blow those pigs up!

If they have been that big of a headache to you sell them on. Life is too short to fight something for years.

I don't mean to be a jerk, but you might be giving these techs/operators too much credit. There are only so many things it could be and as someone mentioned, it shouldn't be too difficult to chase down with a meter.

Reminiscent of the light board power supply connector problem that machine has for that cluster of lights. Although other lights on the pf are daisy chained through that board and appear to be working in your pic.

My guess would have been a localized power issue on that lightboard. Is this one of the boards that was swapped out?

And lighted barn mod, looks like lighted tower mod as well. I am assuming the game was working and playing fine before the mods were added (otherwise why add them?). Would be the very first place I would start. Would be really confusing why pinball techs wouldn't remove them just as a matter of course until the problem was solved.

sell them

if distributors are so great and needed this would be a great time for your distributor to shine.

I realize you are likely joking about the fire and this thread probably comes from a great place of frustration however selling a game to someone on here with full disclosure and getting anything out of them is better than creating a toxic mess in your backyard.

Now - removing all the mods and setting those on fire - I fully support that. Just because someone sticks a light bulb in something vaguely related to the pinball theme doesn't mean it belongs drawing power from your pinball machine via an alligator clip. Plus in this case it is a primary suspect for your problems.

I'm curious because your post wasn't clear - what was Stern's final conclusion? Did they say warranty expired? Did they just give up? Did they claim you voided it?

This makes me recall a situation from many years ago... I went to a distributor's location and asked if he had any bargain games for sale and he offered up a Mega Race video game that he said was beyond repair. The manual was in the game cabinet, so I ran a diagnostic from the manual and the diagnostic identified an 8 bit memory chip on the board that was bad. Subsequently, I found some computer boards outside my apartment in a dumpster and one of them, by pure chance, had the required memory chip on it. I extracted the chip from the garbage board and installed it in the game and everything was fixed. I went back and told him about that and there was no response except me giggling a lot...

TWD is awesome don’t burn it!!! If it’s that bad sell it!
I have a game like this, I’m still banging my head against the wall with. But until someone pays my reasonable price I’m fine with it just in storage. (Good luck finding literally any other DMD game for 1k)

AC/DC is garbage and I would enjoy breaking one but in my heart I couldn’t do it.

The only games I truly would burn are termite infestations. Screw that!

Blow them up. But do it in style, lots of flash bang. Start a gofundme page where people would make a donation to watch. Id throw you $20 just to see a crazy inferno of pinball.

Good luck!

Damaging a game like that is a whole lot of crazy if you asked me. Worst case scenario, all parts could be extracted, tested and sold one by one. The parts will have value even if the game does not work. All pinball machines require repair or maintenance from time to time. You can never expect a pinball machine to work perfectly forever with no problems.

Putting this thread on watch.. would love to see These issues solved?
N

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/twd-gi-and-insert-lighting-issue#post-2919217

hope this could help your light issue

I would sale them both. Ask for max $$. This is a easy fix for someone. Stand firm.
I can see you’re sick of the headache.