Love it when problem is solved Pinside detectives. I'm still waiting on my Cliffy's to get my machine back together. It's been tough seeing parts sitting around everywhere.

I love the extra tall dmds I wish they never stopped using them. Could you imagine all the games that came since from sega/stern that could have utilized all that extra real estate?

The colordmd is great because not only does the color itself look great but the regular tall dmds are hard to find/expensive.

Pin2dmd?

It's my dumb ass fault because I left Baywatch parts sitting on a box on top of the dog kennel. Well, this is what happens when you are waiting for parts and didn't plan ahead before taking a game apart.

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At least it wasn't a ramp or swallowed pinball. Luckily Pinball Haus had a replacement in stock. While at it, I picked up some decals. I hope my Cliffy's come in soon!

Bad dog

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Hello fellow owners. I recently moved my machine and all the PF insert lights and front facing buttons are out (coin slot and Light shark flip and lite orbit still come on). I replaced both the F1 and F3 fuses on the PF power supply board.
The game plays and runs as it’s supposed to otherwise...dmd, flashers, music, etc. I do own an Energy Meastro mod that’s hooked up to it. Any thing else I should be looking for?!

Just put a toy shark on top and it'll look like you did it on purpose ! :p

Could one of the connectors be slightly unseated? Make sure all connectors are snug on the boards.
Were the fuses blown?

I see pic of the left outlane and it has two metal post's in a row .mine only ever had one . ?? Any ideas why ?? here's a pic of my area

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I mis read.

I have two posts. One above near the floatation thingy

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The fuses were not blown. I reseated all the connectors on the PF power board as well. I did see that the R113 transistor LED on the CPU rom board was out....not sure if that’s causing anything.

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I'm finishing my wiring. But still have a couple that are giving me trouble .
One is this black white from the from the power box ( on off switch) box .the other is this 4 pin its coming from the bock box Bridge rectifer area . Any ideas would be helpfull.. could this be shaker related? I don't seem to have one ?

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Ya I see you have two . I dont have a hole for the second one in the playfield. Any idea why I dont have a spot for it .did they make some without? Maybe early production?

Those are all cables related to color dmd. If your machine doesn’t have one it likely did at one point and someone left the cables

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Mine is like Northerndude's with one post in the slot and one in it's own hole north of the slot. Yours does not appear to have a hole there. I have the same color slings, btw, and love it.

I also have 2 on mine

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Thanks! I can just leave those hang for now. I'm always a little nervous about firing them up after a full restore, this time especially since I lost all my disassembly photo's.

Thanks for the info .That's puzzling. It seems that it's not a factory thing, because it would make the lower adjustable pin no longer operational. the upper one would premaritally set the difficulty of outlane drains . we should get to the bottom of this : ).

My copy has the second post above the adjustable one as well, like a lot of others...

I bet that they were added early into production because they found 90% of all balls were lost down there; the geometry of the playfield lends itself to having balls caromed into that area regularly (ie shark hole into the kickback re-light targets, then bounced right down the left out lane to be kicked back into the lock targets, that then bounce into the shark hole, and so on, haha).

I have pondered this for a long time as well.

If anyone is tight with Balcer or Kaminkow, they are always willing to chat it.

Hey all, my shark scoop isn’t registering very well, just checking on if this is wired correctly on the switch, I’ve been testing and it registeres maybe 60% of the touches. I have a spare, but maybe I’m dealing with a flaky switch or a bad diode, backwards diode?

My (green wire is on NO) and my (White on NC) with a diode across Common / NC.

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This switch is particularly sketchy. It goes out on many machines. Regarding the wiring, I don’t have Baywatch anymore but do know that all switches are wired the same way in the game. You can just check another one to confirm that it’s correct. My guess is you have a bad switch and need to replace.

From the manual, it appears to be wired correctly. I'd go ahead and replace the switch, I've had switch legs break off entirely, so I wouldn't be surprised if could be cracked and causing an intermittent connection or something along those lines.

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I checked my manual and the second post is not there. Interesting. Does that mean my high scores don't count

That is absolutely correct.

I had the exact same problem...ball would go into shark hole, then register roughly 60% of the time; the other 40%...annoying ball search. I made adjustments to the wire loop, and it never remedied anything, even though the switch made an audible "click" when it was pressed.

I replaced the switch with another I had lying around, but carefully pulled the wire loop from the stock switch and transferred it over to the new one. I have heard that the new version with the fork/"Y" shaped wire could be iffy in Baywatch applications, for whatever reason. Either way, the old wire loop on a new switch has been rock solid since.

Interestingly, the switch that registers a full tower ramp hit (the one hung from the habitrail after the ball hits the apex and makes a right hand turn) on my copy does not register reliably in test mode when pressed by hand, and in fact, usually sticks shut (even though it doesn't indicate that in test). It is also a Cherry switch with a yellow trigger. For whatever reason, it functions perfectly when an actual ball triggers the switch, and it doesn't stick. Thusly, I've left it alone and it works fine. I can only guess that engaging the switch by hand over extends it internally or something.

Channeling a little Joe Dirt's dad: "How exactly do the cherry micro switches in Baywatch work? Nobody knows, they just do!"

Added a comet "spotlight" to add a little light to the guard tower area.

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Glad to hear you got it fixed up. Beers!

We're probably beating a dead horse, but I FINALLY got everything reliable enough (that I would put mine on location like yours was), by replacing the trough optos and rubber grommets and getting them perfectly aligned; bending the ball bracket back a smidge so the balls sat on their respective roller switches perfectly, and adjusted the shooter lane switch a bunch.

I'd of rather just stuffed a rag down the shooter lane kicker or removed the balls prior to lifting the playfield like in EVERY other game ever, than to deal with the quirkiness of simply getting a ball to the shooter lane reliably, lol.

Good luck my friend!

Yeah, I was able to order a complete set (left and right opto boards) off of marco or pbl over the summer...I was also able to order the actual optical sensors so I could rebuild the originals in the future should there ever be another problem. Make sure to grab new rubber grommets as well, as that keeps them centered and more impervious to vibrating loose.

Isnt there a solenoid that pushes a ball into the up-kicker. Only one at a time. The opto in the up-kicker is probly bad and not sensing a ball there so it pushes another ball.

Gotcha. When you physically "lock" a ball, it rolls from the tower trap door, down the subway, to under the left side of the apron, and is then kicked over to the trough to put the ball back into que. There is a setting to disable the trap door, so when a ball is "locked", it simply continues around the ramp to be fed to the right flipper. The only caveat is that you have to complete the ramp for it to count, as opposed to having a half-ramp shot be good enough with the trap door.

Ahh...good ol' Sega "quirk".

If there were something wrong with your trap door or the solenoid to kick the ball back up into the trough, you could at least keep the game up and running by choosing that option. I would consider that a clever design - not a quirk!

I've never made a hole in one golfing yet, but that doesn't mean it can't happen! Linkages break, transistors get fried, switches fail - hell, the subway could fall off the bottom of the playfield. I'm staying with clever design to give the operator an alternate means to keep the game running while still keeping it's scoring functionality. There are many games designed to disable certain mechanisms, so as to keep a machine playable until you have the opportunity (parts and/or time) to really address the underlying problem.

I have long sold my Baywatch but if I’m understanding the question correctly, the game notices when a ball enters the “ball lock” left trough instead of the normal right trough. I remember it would always give a “Baywatch will be right back” so there were times it came down the right out lane with speed and I’d give it a bump to try to make it “accidentally” enter the left eject trough.

Theres is a switch inside the ramp underneath. Perhaps for some reason, the up-kicker wont kick unless the ramp is triggered. And if A ball somehow gets in there, it will stay there until theres a ball search.

How often do balls roll up there?

Does anyone have any advice on getting the skill shot working consistently? I've tried adjusting the wireform exit and I've also removed windings from the coil to make it stronger. It was working good after strenghtening the coil but now it's failing again.

Is there maybe a list of things to check/adjust? I think the skill shot is the last thing I need to do before I've got the machine dialed in.

I've struggled for a couple years with my plunge. Used to be great, now it makes it....usually, but it's tough sometimes. I have waxed the wireform, lined everything up, tightened this, that, dang, its annoying.

Edit- I have a handful of different coils laying around, I could try a stronger one also

I threw a ball in that hole to see what mine does. And once it did a ball-search and 3 times kicked up and gave me the ball-save animation.
Maybe you can install a one way wire-gate?
Then balls can roll down, but not up.