(Topic ID: 286302)

Black Hole backglass chaser lights seem dim

By solarvalue

3 years ago



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#1 3 years ago

Hi all,

The chaser lights around the perimeter of my Black Hole backglass seem a little dim. They flash on and off as usual but never get really bright during the cycle. Is this just how they are?

#2 3 years ago

My blackhole did the same thing when I bought mine and it was that way for a long time. One day I had the playfield up and I accidently pulled on a wire going to a fuse on the bottom of cabinet right behind coin box and they got bright. I had a poor solder connection to a fuse. I reflowed it and the chaser lights were nice and bright. They should not be dim. Hopefully you will find the samething I had. It could also be poor or dirty connection in the circuit. Do a wiggle test on the wiring to the chaser board and fuses. Goodluck. I sold mine and wish I kept it. That is the best gottlieb game of that era.

#3 3 years ago

I am braindead. My issue was in the rectifier circuit not the fuse. The terminal on mine lost connectivity. When I touched it the whole terminal wiggled and restored the lights. I changed it to a new one and it fixed it. It was many years ago and it just hit me on my drive home from work. Here is a picture, not from blackhole, but what they look like.

B6F01DF8-02A1-42A4-B265-B9AC377F4B85 (resized).jpegB6F01DF8-02A1-42A4-B265-B9AC377F4B85 (resized).jpeg
#4 3 years ago

Thanks for the follow up. I'll take a look.

#5 3 years ago

Try wiggling those wires and see if yours are tight or broken. You can also check the voltage outputs off them.

#6 3 years ago

It's possible you might have a voltage/connection problem BUT even if you are using the original 44 lamps, BH chasers do move pretty fast so the lamps don't really have time to fully light up. If you have 47s there I would try switching to 44s. Also try an LED in one spot and see if it is a lot brighter than lamps, that could rule out an actual problem since they light up instantly. Also you can slow down the chaser lights by changing one resistor on the chaser board (noted in pinside someplace), or just switch to LEDs. That resistor might be out of tolerance on your board too.

Strangely enough, two days ago I finally slid my BH's inner backglass out for the first time since I bought the game in the 90s to clean both backglasses (can you tell I'm lazy?) and the lamps were all very dusty. You'd think they were frosted bulbs! So that can help too if you haven't done it.

#7 3 years ago
Quoted from frenchmarky:

Also you can slow down the chaser lights by changing one resistor on the chaser board (noted in pinside someplace), or just switch to LEDs. That resistor might be out of tolerance on your board too.

Had a look around but couldn't find this info.

#8 3 years ago

The chaser lamps should flash around 3 times a second, unless yours is much faster than that the speed is normal. I can't find the info on that resistor either but I've seen it somewhere.
Okay I found it, R13 on the BH chaser lamp board is 270K, other games with that board that run the lamps slower use higher values all the way up to 1.1 megaohm for Haunted House. But resistors tend to go up in value as they age and from long use. So you could slow down the chaser lamps via this resistor but it is probably not causing yours to run faster than they are supposed to.

#9 3 years ago

Regarding 44s vs. 47s, now I'm wondering if 47s might be brighter in this application where they are blinking on and off so quickly, since they draw less amps so probably have a finer filament that may react faster. But I'm not going to pull my backglass back out again and try it.

#10 3 years ago

My machine chaser lights were dim and the speed of the chase on backbox was the same with dim or bright lights. I had a voltage problem to the bulbs. What he is describing sounds like the issue I had. It could be many things or something different, but I would start with checking the voltage output of the rectifier first then go from there. It would take less than five minutes to check. I had a bad leg and it was obvious with multimeter. Check the rectifier that feeds them. I dont have the manual anymore, but look at wiring and compare strings to identify the rectifier feeding them.

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