Very nice! How did you make the stencil, vinyl?

Oracal 813 cut on a cameo silhouette.

I am no pinball repair wizard and learn new things everyday, or at least try to. So take this with a grain of salt and maybe someone will come in and correct me if I am wrong.

I think when doing the switch test that the solenoid coils are fired electronically with no switch action; The same occurs as your drop targets reset when the ball drains. Those drops reset from an electronic action. For example, a 3- place drop target with two targets down will reset for a new ball by electronic signals when the ball drains. There is nothing in the pin that is going to manually close that last switch.

However, when you are playing a game you need all 3 switches to close to send that needed signal. You have two drops down and when the ball drains, the outhouse switch takes over for the last open switch. Therefore, you need to check each switch manually.

I wish I had your knowledge and skills. Those look nice. Much better looking than the 3 I did manually with pinstripe tape and a degree wheel.

Thanks. Having finished the pop caps, the apron has moved up a notch on the project list.

More than happy to share the stencil with you or anyone else who wants to give airbrushing a try.

I have an air brush. A cheapie, but it gets the job done. I'll send you a PM.

Thanks in advance.

I’ll send you a PM for the stencil too. It should also work for Star Gazer caps.

So, I picked up a nice Seawitch last week. Has been HUO for 40 years! Clean playfield, 8/10 cabinet, some broken plastics, rubbers, etc. Super excited to just get it cleaned up, replace the rubbers, and use some elbow grease on it!

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Wow!!!

I have sent unweeded stencils or art files (both free of charge) for pop bumper caps to everyone who reached out via pm. If I missed anyone, feel free to shoot me a pm.

I ran into something odd.
Just finished cleaning my old wall-hanger Seawitch and cleaned all the posts by hand.
I just realized the posts are totally different than the ones on my personal game, and even seawitches I see for sale.
Can anyone shed some light on the reason or origin of these strange posts?
They’re actually bright blue using white LED light but they show up red with incandescents! How neat.

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Mine has the ribbed posts like the ones in your photos.

Edit: they're not easy to clean, mine had wax caked in them from the previous owner.

Ack, I just saw that the ribbed posts I was thinking of are on a different recently acquired machine, a Williams Phoenix. My Seawitch has the same faceted posts.

The ribbed posts are Williams. They are wax magnets.

UV light over the years has changed the chemical make-up of the posts. they were originally a deep blue. steve young @ pinball resource was kind enough to re-run these a while back.

Had my own attempt at making a new gate. I used an off the shelf 1" hinge, a piece of good scrap steel, some rivets, and the original spring metal.

I used the spring metal to act as the spring for the gate by overlapping it past the hinge, I left a tab up top to add a real spring in case it fatigues and breaks one day . I also left it long so that it rests on the lower rubber. It seems like 9 times out of 10 it feeds the flipper well.

Here's the pics and a short video.

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Only thing I might point out for consideration... have the gate overlap the outer orbit guide (eliminate that step), to stop the clunky rattle and reject effect that happens on half your spinner shots.

Working on a project Seawitch. The dead has risen, i have a playing game now. Can someone share images of how their flippers are wired? Mine look wrong. I need to rebuild them and want to correct anything while i’m at it. Thanks

Please put up some pics of all 4 of your flippers. WE'll get you going.

Thanks Cotton

Should be showing in this order : main left, main right, upper left, upper right.

The upper left eos Switch is wired through a ceramic resistor, whereas the upper right is not (though it looks like there is a spot where a resistor was). I don’t feel that the EOS should be wired to the terminal on the banded side. Usually they go across the middle and the outer non banded side terminal. Neither upper flippers work but I noticed there is a wire Broke off on each one. Thats also When i noticed things just didnt look right to me.

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Let's do the lower left, first. ( Please study what I am saying below. It is not easy to describe wiring. Sorry. ). Get to know this lower LEFT flipper circuit cold. And then know that the lower RIGHT hand circuit is exactly the same except the the green wire has been replaced with an orange wire that travels to connector J-1 on the SDU board.

Once you have the two lower flippers figure out, realize that the two upper flippers are wired just the same except for resistors. Once you have understanding of the lower flippers, then we can work the resistors on the uppers.

If you have any questions, then ask them. Don't be shy.
===========================================================================================

Is the lower left flipper working? If not, then let's fix it.

Before I get started, the lower left flipper has 2 switches; 1 switch is the EOS switch that opens when you press the flipper button. The other switch is the power supply to the upper flipper; This switch closes when you press the flipper button. Keep this in your thought processor.

From your pic:

1 A) The blue white wire is correct. It comes from the hot side of the fuse holder and lives above the diode band on the coil lugs.

There is a 2nd blue/white wire at the fuse holder. It will feed power to the other 3 flippers; Each of those other 3 flippers should have two Blu/W wires soldered to the lug above the diode band to complete the Blu/W flipper wire daisy chain.

1 B) Along with the Blu/W wire, there is also one black wire that leads to the EOS switch (This black wire would be better if it was a Blu/W jumper wire.). On the center lug is another black wire that leads to a different lug on the EOS switch---this completes the circuit on the EOS switch. The EOS switch contains one Blu/W wire above the diode band; one black (again, better if this wire was Blu-W) wire above the diode band; and one black wire (center lug) that installs below the diode band.

2) This next explanation is a little tricky as yours is wired different than mine. The third lug on the coil is below the diode band. This is the green wire that comes from connector J-1 on the SDU board. This is the wire that completes left hand flipper circuit This lug also has a black jumper wire wire that leads to the the non-EOS switch of the switch pair (If you look carefully, you will see that my black wire has broken and is sitting next to a 2nd green wire. This 2nd green wire, leading from the closing switch, travels up to the left upper flipper switch and also completes the lower left flipper circuit.

NOTE: Instead of a black wire being paired with a green wire at the coil lug, it could (and should be, IMO) be a green wire that leads from the coil lug to the closing switch.

I'll try to condense the above to make it easier to understand.

A) Blu/W power wire feeds the coil lug above the diode band. It also feeds power to the EOS switch. The other side of the EOS switch is a black wire that travels back to the center coil lug, which is below the diode band.

B) The green wire that completes the flipper circuit attaches to the coil lug below the diode band. The black ( should be green ) wire travels from the coil lug down to the closing switch. The other side of the closing switch has a green wire that travels to the UPPER left flipper.

Here is the blueprint for the left lower and upper flipper coils ( I also just noticed that the EOS switch is drawn incorrectly. The EOS switch is associated with the the B/W wire, not the green wire as presented in this drawing. ( It is not the first instance of Stern screwing up the drawings).

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Here it is corrected.

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You can click on this pic to make it larger.

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Cotton - this is fantastic. Thanks for taking the time to explain all this.

Both the main flippers are working, neither of the upper ones do but its because of a loose wire on each. Heading back down to the shop soon to get tidy everything up. Will post my progress later this aft. The upper left is a mess with the coil stop hanging half off too.

Thanks again

IMO the resistor for the upper left is important to prevent breaking the nearby drop targets. The upper right is better without it for better orbit shots. I hooked my resistors up with molex plugs so that it’s easy to switch back and forth (in case a future owner or my future self feels differently).

So fixed up some wiring, even being correct did not mean is wasnt ugly. Just gobs of solder. Some wires were short so ran new EOS wires, one from the pf had to be extended but i stole a blue/white wire from a spare f2k pf i have.

Replaced all the coil stops and sleeves. Plungers and links were ok so just cleaned them.

The upper left is going through the resistor. It tests ok compared to its rating assuming its supposed to be 1 ohm. The upper right i left bypassed but that resistor is showing no resistance at all anyway.

Played 3 games. First two i lost both left flippers mid game. I check the under playfield fuse which is fine. Considering the two right still worked it couldnt be. All fuses on the rectifier are fine also. Third game nothing cut out. So maybe i have something heating up and making a poor connection?

One other thing i noticed. In attract mode the displays show last score, but when it switches to HSTD they go blank. I wonder if my scores arent being stored so it has nothing to show? I’m using a nvram in place of the two 5101’s.

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make sure your lower left flipper EOS switch is touching solidly, if there is a gap, flippers will not work. cleaning them with biz card/card board as well could help (same as high voltage leaf sw for flipper button)... No wires that has broken off?

When i rebuilt the flippers i cleaned the contacts and gapped them like i normally do, which is 1/16” at the end of the stroke and a slight bit of over-travel when closed to make sure the contact is solid. On Both the first two games the left cut out on the third ball. I checked everything, then powered down and started a new game where all flippers work again. I didnt do anything but thought maybe i’m losing connection when the game starts to heat up. So i replaced the J1 connector on the solenoid driver board and knock on wood it hasnt happened since.

I have a new problem. My pf GI is not lighting properly now. I know they were working the other day. I have a handyl lighting up in the back, then some dim and some with just a tiny glow. Ones towards the bottom are out. I’ve looked everywhere for an obvious short but can’t find it. So maybe i have a bad socket or lamp. After a period left on my 20A fuse blows so i dont think its a dead short but something must be creating a lot of resistance.

Had a similar problem on a Flash Gordon. Flipper would die half way into a game then come back on reboot. Turns out the connector on the solenoid board was loose. Not cold solder joints but the pins inside the housing were wore out and as the heated up a bit from play the pin soften and wiggle loose a bit cutting the connection. Take a look and see if that could be contributing

It’s probably time to rebuild or replace the rectifier board. My witch exhibited the same symptoms upon arrival. Replacing the rectifier board solved the flippers dying mid game and loss of gi.

Already replaced that, along with the line cord and repinned all the connectors going to the rectifier. I pulled the transformer and rectifier again and checked to make sure all the wires were connected nicely. I did repin a new connector onto J1 on the solenoid board where all the flipper power is coming from. It didn’t feel tight. i havent had any flipper issues since those first two games so hopefully thats behind me.

One thing i see is the bottom fuse clip For the 20A circuit is not As strong as i would like. So will throw a new high current clip in tonight.

Backbox GI is fine, i have some GI on pf but some lamps are very dim. When i first powered up the game i know my pops were lit fine. Now they are barely glowing.

i have good voltages coming off the rectifier so somewhere there must be too much resistance and causing too large of a voltage drop. I thinK i’ll alligator clip a 9v battery to each GI lamp and see if any don’t light up properly. Unless anyone has any other suggestions. GI is supposed to be simple!!

Oh, on a non-technical note. Seawitch is a FUN game. It still doesn’t make me want to play Beatles but i am really starting to appreciate this one!

To me Beatles drowned the beautiful basic rules that make the game so attractive and challenging. I would keep a good old Seawitch over a Beatles no contest, for a number of reasons.

Does it put your last games' scores back after the blank HSTD? You need to go into the audits and #04 is the current HSTD - reset it to 00. The nvram ram when installed probably had $ff stored in it which shows as a blank since the displays only display digits 0-9.

If it truly does lose the scores you'd have a really bad issue going on with your MPU board, and it just wouldn't work. The area of memory that holds the scores also holds the scores and status during the game ball to ball. I don't think that's what's happening at all, because right below the save area of memory in nvram is the 6800 processor's stack, which is used a LOT in stern mpu200 games, it would just crash. If U8/U13 addressed different regions of memory I'd say one was bad and the other wasn't, but u8 is the upper 1/2 of each byte and u13 is the lower 1/2.

Yes, last scores are displayed, but when it cycles to HSTD they just go blank for however long then go back to prev score. The mpu looks good, there is no evidence it ever had any alkaline damage. I will reset the high score and see if that does it.

Alternatively it is just being polite and not wanting to display how bad mu high score is haha.

I'd take a close look at the solder connections at each gi socket under the pf. There may be a weak/loose connection somewhere.

Love my Seawitch, but if someone wanted to trade a similar condition EBD I would not complain.......

Ok we are making progress!!

I was certain my issue was isolated to the GI on the pf. Inspected everything closely, but couldn’t seem to get very far before the 20A fuse blew. Didn’t have very many of those so i had to wait for new ones to come in. Today was that day.

New approach - i went and desoldered every point where the 6.3V comes in to the GI strings. Leaving just the pop bumpers connected. Powered up and voila. All pop lights on and bright. Previous these were so dim you wouldnt know they were on through the caps.

Then i went through, reconnecting one string at a time and seeing how the lights looked. Bright is right lol. Left them on and felt for heat on J1 on the rectifier board which previously was getting hot, until the fuse blew of course.

I have isolated the issue to a bulb or a socket in one of 5 gi locations on the left side. These are the flush, stapled mounted ones. When i connected this point all the good lights went dim so i know one of these is causing too LITTLE resistance. I dont think its a dead short since it may take a few minutes for the fuse to blow.

So next i’ll start to isolate these last 5 lamps and see which one is the bastard lamp and replace it. Note the lamp that looks dim on the back side was just fading off at the time of the pic. It lights up fine.

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Found it.

I only have 3 controlled lamps that don’t wanna light. Will pull lamp driver board tomorrow and test those scr’s and if all goes well we will have a 100% seawitch ready for a proper shop job .

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My nine Ball has a serious burn mark on the lower side of the play field where one of those type of sockets went out. The burn was there when I bought it.

I had a super fine web of solder splash across a GI holder under playfield on my maverick when I bought it, instant fuse blower. Took me months of attempts and temporarily giving up half dozen times before I weeded that one out.

Good fault finding!

Think i have it all running the way its sposed to now. As for why my HSTD was not displaying, i changed a mpu dip switch to turn that feature back on. I also changed the first replay value to 10,000 to act as my “freeplay”. Other than that i replaced 3 SCR’s and all controlled lamps are lighting now. Pretty happy where i am today compared to where i started - which was a game that wasn’t booting lol.

Now its time to take apart all the mechs to clean and replace those broken switch capacitors that always seem to have a leg snapped off. New rubbers and a top side cleaning. Think its gonna come out nice. There is a bit of wear on the pf that i won’t touch up. Artistic work like color matching is def not my forté.

Drop targets. I have the 4 in the middle that are incorrect (not the Blue S). I can replace those but they’ll be so white compared to the other banks. So i can buy a kit to replace all of them - but is there a preferred source for these? Marco or PBR - are they both the selling the same? I thought i read something about the replacements somewhere..

PBR sells the targets for $4.00 each. Marco is a little bit higher priced.

Pbr makes almost all the drop targets and pop bumper caps. Marcos buys from PBR and adds a fat markup.

Never thought I would be joining this club given the availability of titles up here, but made a huge score today! Got it for 800. Will need some work and BG is flaking but still very happy. I imagine someone makes this BG? I will start searching to see.

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Wow nice! Greatwichjohn makes amazing backglasses for this title. Search for his playfield repro thread and send him a PM.

Your play field is super clean. I only see a wear area up by the left pop bumper. All of your key lines are still there. And in just looks super clean none of dirt in the inlanes.

Nice score !

I am super happy with the purchase! Will look nice next to F2K!

Well it is set up and tested. Boots and plays but a slight bit touchy. It was just lit up and nothing else. I was testing voltage on that rectifier board and when I got to the one TP, it made the game boot. One other time it did this again and when to check it, the movement made it boot again.

Once I start a game, I get 1 flip when I press the L button but then it wont flip again. Only the bottom flips the first time. Both R flippers work fine. Everything else seems to work fine.

Ordered what i needed from PBR. In the meantime i’ll take the banks off to disassemble then clean and polish them. Its not a restore but i hate putting dirty shit back on a game.

The polishing is not required but I understand. The cleaning of everything will pay off in some good acting drops.

I think polishing is important. The oxidized metal acts like sandpaper and can prevent smooth operation of the drops.

Anybody know of where I can get a coin door for a Seawitch? The one I have is kind of beat up (see pic) and I am looking for something a bit cleaner. Thanks in advance!

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