Thanks for the info about the decal. I’m glad I’m putting the proper part on. Will be interested to see how it changes gameplay. Yes this is exactly what I did - line up notch on decal with seam on wheel. I tested it first with temporary attachment of new decal. In wheel test it is accurate. At least as much as it can be. Most of the time it lands spot on but a fair time it’s a little off. But usually not pointing to a wrong item. Working on a total shop out so it will be a while before I can play and see.

I frickin' love the slam ramp!

Almost have those gofers!

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That looks great. You sure got that fabricated quickly.

In very large part to you!

One of my friends that owns the local arcade builds cars for a living. Guy he builds them for has a large packing co. They have lots of SS steel

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All of this is work is amazing. Keep it coming. You both are doing great things here.

This thing has got to be the most punishing hunk of metal to clean in all of pinball.

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How much work was it to take that off? I dropped a screw or a nut down there once and I was dreading the thought of removing the subway. I used a ball of tape stuck to a flexible wire (this was before I attained the famous telescoping magnetic pickup tool) to retrieve said screw.

Your subway looks great!

Thanks. I’m working on a total bottom and top tear down and rehab. It’s not hard to remove. Disconnect 2 or 3 molex connectors for the coils and switches then unscrew all the hex screws. A hex driver makes that easy. Then it just pulls out.

The hard part was the cleaning. Balls enter that piece from like 6 different ways and there were so many surfaces with ball tracks, many hard to reach. I listened to music and rubbed with metal polish for about 2 hours!

Can someone take a look at the upper right side of the playfield and help me with how the posts holding up the RBW beacons are configured? I had a labeling/organization mishap and can't quite figure out how many long and short posts are stacked together where the white arrows are in the picture. Searched all of my pics, pics in this forum, and the manual. I'm going to take a billion pictures on my next tear down!

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Quick shot. (Mirror blade reflection) hope it helps.

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Hey all. I’d like to share my recent shop/restore of No Good Gofers. I bought this machine in early January as a family friendly theme that not only I could enjoy, but my 11 year old and wife, too (and it has proven to hit the mark – they love it! Especially the kid). I bought it at a reasonable price, by current standards, and it had good bones. A nice playfield with little slam ramp wear, clean boards, nice cabinet (some dings but with bright, vivid colors). The glass was in poor shape, but easy fix. The topside was pretty good, but major TLC was needed under the playfield. I doubt anyone had thoroughly gone through it in many years, if ever. (I’m not complaining, mind you, I was looking for a project). It turned into a rather big effort, and I did the bulk of the work over two weeks, about 40 hours labor, and quite a lot of $ in parts. I’ll share the results, but first here’s a list of improvements and some before/in-progress pics.
Bottom side. Rebuilt flippers, slingshots, pop-bumpers. Removed and went through every mech and subway, cleaning, looking for missing or worn parts (replaced any such). Replaced all coil sleeves and springs. Cleaned white wood as much as possible.
Top side. Removed all ramps and plastics, cleaned. Thorough pf clean, wax. Replaced both gophers with new high quality repros (along with gofer caps). Replaced banged up slam ramp with new one. Replaced misaligned wheel decal. Replaced all rubbers. Added LCD Color DMD (great mod on this machine!) Added a simple green felt background behind the ramps. Added putting green light mod.
Cabinet. Cleaned, polished legs, replaced bolts. Vacuumed out. Cleaned coin box. Added golf ball shooter (interestingly, this added a lot of mass to the shooter rod which really throws it out of whack. I’ve tried many different spring tensions and still haven’t found anything that shoots to my satisfaction)
Lighting. It came with LEDs, all neutral white on top, insert color matched on bottom. After the work, I spent a lot of time with lighting, trying all kinds of LEDs and I have ended up going back to all incandescent, except for the spot lights (warm white) and pop bumpers (because I don’t want to remove the ramps to replace those bulbs). I found that with bright LEDs in the two spot lights (left and right ramp) there was no need for the tower of spot lights by the jackpot ramp and once I removed that I was so happy at how it cleared up the view of the jackpot ramp. So yeah, lighting is a matter of personal taste. To me, the inserts were just so dang bright they blinded me, and even with the warm LEDs in the GI I did not like how the playfield art showed up.
Here are the before/in-progress pics (result pics coming up in next post).
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Here’s the results! The thing you can’t experience is how it plays. With everything gone through, it plays like a new machine. I have next to brand new JJP Willy Wonka and it’s every bit as fast and snappy! My family is having a blast. Well, having gone through this machine so thoroughly I can probably answer questions about any of the mechanical aspects if you are working on anything. Thanks to many of you in this thread who answered a lot of my questions along the way! Thanks for reading and happy playing all.

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That's pretty fuckin' cool with the green felt on the back playfield wall !! Eventually, I'm going to do a thorough top side tear down and clean on mine, and I'm going to remember that little trick!

Great work. Looks fantastic.

I went to replace my gofers today and found that one of the plungers is broken. Does anyone have a spare plunger they'd like to sell. Part number is A-21814. The only place I see them available is pinball.center but they don't ship direct to the us and ZITT's last bulk order just happened so that could be a bit of a wait.

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If you can't find one, here is another option:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/wtb-no-good-gofers-armature-a-21814-anyone#post-6418013

Thanks. This is what I ended up doing for now since I had the stuff around the house. Hopefully it holds while I look.

A local machine shop could make one real easy. If I ever get back into the hackerspace I'll keep this in mind.

Hello folks. Looking for some tips with some wheel errors that I am currently experiencing. A few weeks ago my machine started randomly throwing a "wheel motor is broken" error and a "wires to wheel motor are backwards" error. At first I ignored this as the wheel was still functioning normally. After being annoyed by this for a few days I decided to take the opportunity to replace my wheel decal and clean up the mech. I pulled the mech, cleaned it, cleaned the optos and the connector pins and replaced the decal. Once I reinstalled the wheel the errors were still present and now the outer opto doesn't always work. This means that the awards are off. Also whenever the wheel award is players choice the wheel just spins and the flipper buttons do nothing. Occasionally when testing the single switch outer wheel opto the switch will close but it's seems random and based on height of the wheel and the wheel mech angle. I have been adjusting wheel height and angle. I can't the outer wheel opto switch to close regularly. I suspect this is the root cause of the above errors. Am I missing something?

Thanks

I have the same problem and have never been able fix it. It comes and goes even after rebuilding everything.

If you figure it out, I’d love to know what this goblin is.

Well at least I'm not alone!

It sounds like a bad solder joint on the wheel opto board is making the connection flaky. I would check it for cracked solder joints or just reflow the board to see if that fixes it. I've seen it mentioned a few times that replacing that board fixes the errors.
A-22026 - http://www.greatlakesmodular.com/products/pinball/ngg_sdo.html

Thanks for the tip. Also glad to know that the part is available if needed. I'll check the joints first.

Great Lakes has been awol for some years now. Conrense is they are not in business anymore.

Great Lakes Modular is no longer around. The website is still up but the business is not fulfilling orders.

Looks like Marco has some old GLM boards still in stock.

This board should be fairly easy to reproduce if needed.

Thanks, I didn't know GLM was closed.
There's also Pindora Box but more options for a replacement are always good.
https://www.pindorabox.com/product/no-good-gofers-disc-opto-board-a-22026/

My current board is a Pindora it turns out. I just removed to inspect. I did find the one on Marcos as well.

Thanks

Ok, this may sound nuts but... If your flasher for the insert "Wheel Value" was replaced with an LED.... Try changing just that flasher bulb back to an incandescent bulb and see what happens.

Just checked mine. I have two bulbs under the insert. The flasher is incandescent but bulb right next to it. GI I guess is LED.

Go to flasher test mode and make sure the flasher bulb isn't burned out.

Yep, I did that the flasher flashes.

Any opinions as to the reasonable price for a low play HUO NGG? Looking to possibly join the NGG club. Thanks!

Hard to say these days but I figure a real nice one can go for $5500-$6000.

Sounds about right to me. I picked mine up in November at the low end of that range. Remember there are only like 2600 of these. Low production. Glad to have mine.

Yeah, very glad to have mine as well. Simple game, but hard to put in big score. Super jackpot is one of the best shots in pinball.

I got a super jackpot last night! So awesome. Agree score wise. I have what I feel like are great games yet my highest score is 36 million.

Very similar/almost identical Super Jackpot as Ripleys. Another under appreciated title. I've cracked the 60 million threshold, but just barely. A friend of mine has the GC score on mine at around 64 mil. I can't beat him and it drives me nuts!!

I cracked 100mill one time. Had the jackpot shot dialed in. That side ramp is a rush when you hit it.

I'm finally ready to put my gofers back together tomorrow. I had to order some 7/16 aluminum rod and an 1/8 slitting saw but my dad had the other machinery I needed to make my gofer plunger. I also modeled the plunger and ordered it printed in nylon just to see if that's a viable option. I know the aluminum one will work so I'm going to put the nylon one in to test how it holds up.

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Nice work!!

Great work. I know these would be highly desired if you ever decide to produce and sell them.

The printed one can be bought here if someone needs one, https://www.shapeways.com/product/SFPXEMSWF. Or I posted the file to print it here https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5275062. I'm not going to be making any more aluminum ones, that one represents a few hours of work. A drill press "works" for milling but it's not the correct machine for volume work.

If anyone is in need of a set of new plastics I have one up in the marketplace.

Parts - For Sale

No Good Gofers Plastics set NOS Archived

New - “Williams No Good Gofers plastics set. Was told the were NOS and they are unused with protective coverings still on both sides of each plastic. Buyer to pay shipping.”

2022-06-14

Suffield, CT

qbass187

125

Archived after: 42 days

Viewed: 136 times

Status: Didn't sell to Pinsider

Sometime the game makes a glass shatter sound effect and the dmd gets a diagonal stripe patternand the game restarts. It is not like a typical low 5v restart I’m used to. Seems more like a software crash. Anyone have a clue?

Sounds like a slam tilt. Check the slam switches, including the coin door one.

Thanks. Ok, yes, it’s definitely the slam tilt routine but it is not being caused by the slam tilt switch physically closing. I have some kind of switch matrix issue. Please see the pic - when the three switches circled in black are physically closed simultaneously (and thus register as “on” in the switch test), the two switches circled in red show “on” in the switch test, however they are not physically being closed.

Somehow those three switches being on all together make the machine think the two circled in red are on.

As you can see, one of those red circles is the slam tilt, thus my problem.

What was happening during gameplay, the coin door was closed of course, and when the ball hit those two kick switches simultaneously - bam, slam tilt switch activated.

I recently adjusted the leaf gaps on the kick targets and had them out and back in (but not disconnected) and this problem seemed to show up after that (can’t be certain it’s related). In visually inspecting kick leaf switches and wires it looks fine. All kick switches work fine in switch test.

Thanks for any ideas on next steps.

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Actually upon closer testing…. When Coin Door Closed and (K)ick are closed, Left In-Lane appears on in switch test. Then when K-I-C-k Advance is closed on top of that, Slam Tilt then also appears on in switch test.

UPDATE: I migrated to this new post for more visibility - https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/switch-matrix-help-3#post-6885735

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Would anyone please compare this wiring of switches 81 and 82 to mine? Are the diodes right? Look up a couple posts, they are the two standup targets I’m pointing at.

(The solder looks like hell - it wasn’t me! )

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