I'm working on restoring a Bally Sky Kings. After doing a bunch of work on the playfield and a little on the cabinet, I'm having some start-up issues. Basically, when the game is initialized, it resets the score wheels fine but instead of kicking out the ball for ball 1, it shuts off all backbit and playfield lights. Any ideas what this is? I was thinking it wasn't dealing with the ball advance right but not really sure after messing with it some more.

Here's a video of the problem in action:

Thanks for the replies!

They both seem to be working correctly. All of the switches conduct when they are supposed to and not when not supposed to.

Thanks for the help! I noticed the same behavior too, except that it triggers the delayed blink lamp (near the relay) to come on for a bit, then go out. Seems to to be working correctly. Still searching. Still learning.

Yep. Both the Lock relay and Game Over Interlock relay energize and de-energize. The Lock relay de-energizes right after the out hole switch is triggered, turning lights out and ending game function.

Yes, the left flipper does turn the GI lights back on and stay on.

If I close the coin door slam switch, the delay lamp does come on. If I close the out hole switch, the delay lamp does not come on.
I'll have to look closer at all the things that deactivate the Lock relay and see how I can trace this back to the out hole switch (seems like the tough part).

Here are a couple more videos related to the discussion above. Thanks again for the help.

Thanks again for helping me think through this. I'm following completely at this point. So when the the power is cutting (i.e. the lock the relay is deactivating), I'm thinking that under normal conditions the out hole relay is activated and the out hole solenoid is energized. Watching things closely again, I noticed that the out hole relay was indeed activating for a moment, but the out hole solenoid never moves. Looking at the wiring to the out hole solenoid, I noticed the black wire seemed to be pinched under a tab securing the yellow wire. A little tug and it was free. Tried the game again and BINGO!! That was the problem. The wires to the out hole solenoid were shorted. Now that they are not shorted, the game is operational. Keeping up with the videos on this, here are a couple more; one showing the shorted spot and one showing 1st game play since working on it. Next problems I'm already seeing are an occasional left pop bumper skirt sticking in the switch "cup" keeping the pop bumper stuck on, and the ball in play lights not working.

Thanks again for all the help!!

I've had the switch stack and spoon out a couple times to clean and see what adjustment it needs. I did a little tweaking and so far it seems to be performing better. Time will tell.

As for the ball in play, I took apart the ball unit, scrubbed the ball unit contacts, mating arm and contact/arm near the center. It mostly fixed it. There were a couple times during game play it still didn't work, but I also scrubbed the switch in the game over relay (if I remember right) that feeds to the lights and it seems to be working better now. Jury still out if I have it working solid yet or not. Feeling like there's still something loose, but the more I play it and it consistently works right, the more confident I am that it's working right.

Thanks for the heads up on the Double Bonus. It's now working, probably because I have the ball in play now displaying.

Still watching for other function issues. I've noticed it's hard to hit the captive balls hard enough to make it to the Special targets. I might need to tighten up the flipper EOS switches to see if that helps.

Thanks for the compliments on this game! This game actually doesn't belong to me; I'm just doing all the refurb work. It's going to be a gift for a friend; his first game after wanting one for a long time. His wife asked me to find a game for him, and this one was a great fit. The plastics are original but were warped a bit. I cleaned them up and flattened them between glass in an oven. I really wanted to repaint the cabinet, but stencils aren't currently available and the condition isn't all that bad. Pinball Pimp would be willing to model a stencil off mine, but I didn't want to pony up the cash for a game that had decent artwork already. There is paint missing near the flipper buttons, but the rest is mostly in good shape. I'll patch in some paint to hide the worn areas. New Titan silicone bands throughout, Comet warm white clear LEDs, new pop bumper parts (including the mushroom bumpers) and all new flipper parts. Fixed a few minor playfield wear spots. Scrubbed the coin door, plunger, new legs, etc... The back glass was surprisingly flawless. It's coming together and getting close to being done.

I've restored a couple Gottlieb EM's and swapped out the coils for the yellow-dot 5141 for a little stronger hit. I'm wondering if there is an alternate coil for this Bally game that would do effectively the same thing (something with a few less turns)? Regarding switching the transformer tap, I'm seeing around 57-58Vac vs the 53-54Vac on the original tap. Is that what it's supposed to be? Just a slight bump up in voltage?

I just noticed on the schematic what the transformer voltages are supposed to be (53.5V on the main tab and 57.5V on the higher voltage tab). BTW, I forgot to mention that this game came with a lot of original documentation, including the schematic. I'll get all the docs scanned in and submitted to ipdb.org.

Just another minor update; I switched over from the 53.5V to 57.5V and it seems to have made a very minor but slightly noticeable difference at flipper strength. At this point, seems “good ‘nuff”.

Yeah, I found that other thread mentioning that about the coil swap. For now after bumping over to the high tap, I’m thinking it might just be good enough but will keep the coil swap in mind if I end up wanting to juice it up later.

BTW, I uploaded schematics, game operation and parts list to IPBD.org (https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?2196) so hopefully that helps someone. Thanks again for the help w/ my game. Playing good so far.