Hi folks! New member here who has finally realized a long time dream and recently acquired two pinball machines I've always wanted, one of which is a Bally Wizard. The game works for the most part but has a quirk that I haven't been able to sort out. I'm usually pretty good mechanically, but this is my first foray into EM pinball machines. I've searched the forum and found posts from others with similar issues, but I couldn't find any where they posted what the actual resolution was. Here's what the machine is doing:
When you start the game and push the credit button, everything resets as it should and the ball in play count goes to 1. However, when the ball launches into the shooting lane, it advances to ball 2. If you push the credit button again, it resets again and starts on ball 1. It does this every time without fail.
From there the game sometimes plays through all five balls normally, but sometimes does not. It will skip balls, i.e. ball 2 goes into the drain, and it will advance to ball 3 and then to ball 4 before the ball is ejected to the shooting lane.
The stepper unit works easily by hand but I cleaned it to be sure. I've also checked and cleaned the ejector solenoid, cleaned the switch on the ball drain, as well as the # 3 and # 8 switch stacks on the switch motor. I'm at a loss as to where to look next, so any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.
Springfield, MA
