Pinwiki is your friend. Start there. In the meantime, I assume you’ve got it out of your car and have it somewhere that has workspace and light.

Check all the fuses for continuity and correct ratings. Make note of blown fuses and wrong size fuses. Those are clues as to where potential problems could be.

Look around for areas that would indicate where the smoke came from.

After all of this, you’ll be ready to plug it in and start it up. Make sure you have some credits before hitting start. ( you would be surprised how many times someone has been tripped up by this.)

Report back what you’ve found.

If it was playing fine through a bunch of games before that happened, it could be something was loose on the bottom of the playfield (screw, relay, mech) and fell onto the mech board making a connection. Or maybe a target got stuck closed. Usually the most simple explanation helps find the cause of the problem.

I’d look for the coil that smoked. That will point you to what is stuck. Since it is an older game and you have no idea if or when it’s ever been serviced, you probably have several mechanisms that are sluggish or stuck. When that happens, the normal sequence that would turn on a coil and then turn it off gets stuck in the on position. Most of the coils are not designed to stay locked on and then they burn up. It’s all fixable, but it’s likely to require some additional work to make the game reliable.

Dave

Not a lot of info to work with but my best guess would be a stuck playfield switch caused a score reel to lock and and cook.

Find out why is fried and then start working out why.

Wouldn’t hurt to post a bunch of pictures on here, especially ones inside the backbox, under the playfield and the bottom board inside the cabinet.

Lots of experienced eyes on this forum.

I’m envious of you right now. I really miss that first feeling of digging around in an EM. It’s the best man!

Considering it has 100,000 plus games on it, it doesn’t look bad.

You will need a new coil for the stepper unit, along with a new gear - it looks melted in the pic. It may be easier to find a whole new stepper assembly than mess with it.

A coil on the chime box is burned, that may be why the chimes connector is unplugged.

It also looks like someone may have used some sort of lubricant on the stepper - which means they probably lubed anything that moved. Be prepared to clean all that stuff. Don’t forget to look at the score reels, too. They are a stepper unit.

For the stepper coil, you need to check the schematic and see what energizes it. Check those switches for one that is permanently closed when it should not.

Welcome to the madness!

The nylon gear (to me) looks alright. It looks like the plastic housing for that coil melted and the molten plastic dripped onto the gear for that stepper. That’s my hope anyway.

Aside, OP, that chime coil looks pretty toasty too. Might wanna ohm it out. Anything under 2 ohms is bad news.

Since you said you played several games on this machine before this happened:
One thing to remember, when you get it fixed, is use your ears when troubleshooting, actually even when playing. It's not hard to recognize a stuck coil once you've heard it a few times. Maybe I'm just more aware or sensitive to it, but I can hear a stuck coil from the other side of the room. It's unmistakable. It happened and could easily happen again someday. But if you turn the machine off right away, you can find the stuck switch and go about playing the game. It's usually something minor.
When you see smoke it's too late. That got so hot that it started burning the wood on the bottom of the playfield. The fuse won't blow just because the coil overheats. Hopefully it blows when the coating on the coil wire melts off and shorts out the coil. When this happens, your scenarios can range from needing a new coil, to needing a new step-up unit, to needing a new game, to needing a new house.

Moral of the story is: Once you hear or feel that consistent buzz, turn it off. Saves a lot of heartache.

Make sure that all the fuses are the correct value.
That toasted coil and scorched playfield show how close that game came to a full on fire.
I agree with edednedy that the fuse won’t always save the coil, (and his advice on listening for locked coils) but the situation can get worse if the fuse is too high.

The IPDB online schematic is a bit fuzzy right on that color code, but based on the red wires and the red-yellow wires I think this is the Wheel Unit Step-Up Solenoid. I'm not familiar with Freedom, but based on the name I presume it rotates the big wheel in the playfield. There is a switch on the 10-point relay along with a switch on the spinner relay that makes it go.

The 10 point chime solenoid looks toasted also. So combined with that, it looks like something is continually activating the 10-point function.

This could also impact the 00-90 unit (or Match Unit) in the same way. Can you get some pictures of that one, especially the solenoid? I think it should be the smaller one in the backbox near the top, just above the credit wheel unit.

The switch blades can be adjusted/bent so that they change states when the relay is activated. You should only bend the short blade. It is the one that does not slide into the armature. The longer blade can also be adjusted but, state with the short one and only bend the longer on if you need more traveling distance when the relay is activated.

That 10 point relay switch with the red-yellow wire should be open when the relay is not activated. I can’t tell from the pic if the blades might be touching. If it is touching at all it will send voltage to that burnt up coil with the red-yellow wire.

This was the exact situation in this recent thread with a similar vintage Bally:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/bally-monte-carlo-issues

There's a pretty good chance that that credit wheel uses the same gear. I would see if it looks the same and if it does. just swap them. You don't really need the credit wheel on free play and if you do there should be enough teeth left on it for it to still work.

Bally steppers come up pretty frequently on eBay. You could also post in the EM parts needed thread and get one from a fellow pinsider.

Dave

There are several pbresource.com is one good one