Here's my BH, had it since the late 90s I think. Only game I've owned where I decided that 2X-bright warm white LEDs 'worked' for the GI because the pf, plastics and bg are so dark. Plus on this game none of the pf GI bulbs are visibly exposed from the player's perspective. I stuck with the regular flasher bulbs behind the disc, the bg chaser 44s and of course the higher-voltage GI lamps that light up the lower pf from above. And blue LEDs under the blue inserts and some colored ones behind the backglass 'Gottlieb' and the planets. Added one GI socket by the right lower flipper, just seemed like there should've been one there.
There's is simply NOTHING like playing three balls on two playfields, one which is below the other *and* upside down, a truly one-of-a-kind pinball experience. You almost need an extra set of eyeballs

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... also a couple of other small lighting mods I forgot about - 1. added wired a top-side GI socket under the astronaut plastic by the exit tube, it looks much better than factory where only the bottom half of him is lit up. 2. I cut out some some small cardboard discs, punched a small hole in the middle and slid them over the white 2X/3X/4X/5X bonus 44s, pushed the sockets back into position and slid the discs up the lamps and all the way up against the playfield, and added three white discs to the three hi-voltage lower pf GI lamp sockets that are there so they mainly shine downward. This keeps the bonus lamps from getting all that yucky stray light when the lower pf is active, those blaringly bright GI lamps can practically make them appear lit when they aren't.

Note, my pic up there is before I did that mod, so you can see how cruddy those 'unlit' bonus X inserts look without remedying the stray light.

Looking at my playfield underside in raised position, a red/white wire on the upper right flipper's leftmost flipper lug is connected to the metal frame of the power transistor above it which is for powering some other pf coil, but those transistors are not involved in powering the flippers.
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No, not even if you cut that wire. Make sure your wiring is correct to the flipper coil, that the diode is good and you don't have an open winding in the coil.

Are you sure they aren't getting stuck basically all the way down and it may only appear they are partially down? If it's the former, I had the problem of them getting stuck down from residual magnetism and fixed it with several layers of adhesive copper foil stuck onto the coil stops where the plungers hit but people have used other things glued to the stop like a non-magnetic washer or slug, or you can buy new pop bumper frames.r I supposed drill out the old stops and put new ones that are for pop bumper applications and that bolt on but not sure that would guarantee a fix since the whole frame can have residual magnetism.

If you replaced the spoon I wouldn't think you should need to, but shouldn't be a big deal to slightly tweak it so you get it to register evenly between the registering side and the non-registering side. Before that though, make sure you have the right switch gap, that the the pivot on the skirt is exactly centered on the spoon where if you press up on the spoon you see no movement of the pivot and that the indeed the spoon is slightly pressing up on the pivot at rest and not just floating under it.

It's centered if you pull down on the spoon, then release it or even push upward on it, and you don't see the skirt pivot move.

The ones with the point are to help prevent a ball from getting hung up on the top of the skirt and needing to be nudged loose. Your test without the spoon even being there sounds like there must be something physically wrong with the skirt or how the pop bumper unit was assembled or something is misaligned, if was me I would pull the whole pop bumper assembly out (the parts above the pf) and check the parts.

I'd also shine up that display board's male connector pads with a fine scrubber pad and then wipe clean with alcohol-dampened cloth. Same with the board connector pads on CPU board J2 and J3 (two connectors on right side) which are involved with the display data.

Guess I gotta be a little more careful when trying to pull a sticky dirty worn-out sleeve out of a flipper coil. First time for everything. C-C-CRACK!

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I think the old coil was okay, after I cut it out I was able to pull the sleeve out. Happened so quick I'm not sure but I must've slipped while I was pulling on the sleeve and it jerked the coil breaking off the whole set of lugs. Put a new coil in yesterday and all is good.

Which mod? I've seen one that makes it spin only when game is playing, another that only has it spin when ball is on lower playfield.

Press the self test button on inside of door while in attract mode, your three replay levels and HSTD can be set there, credit button will reset each to zero and holding the button will increment it to what you wish.

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The solenoid test does not fire the tube kicker, the manual says it is assigned as solenoid #9 in the test but it's incorrect, #9 is the outhole kicker.

What coil # do you have installed in the upkicker? What ohms does it measure now?

Original coil was gtb a-4893, 22 gauge, 535 turns.
Substitutable is Gtb A-1496 23 gauge, 635 turns, a little bit weaker.
Mine has a Williams G23-600, kick never fails.

Make sure the two little strips are still on the tube that the ball rides along as it is shot, and that ball is not hitting the edge of the tube because of the tube being misaligned.

The manual list is a bit ambiguous. A-16570 is specified for 'outhole' and 'hole kicker', i.e. one of the two ball lock holes, not the upkicker.

A-4893 listed as 'ball kicker' is for the upkicker (one that makes most sense in the list anyway and is what everyone seems to use, or they substitute the similar a-1496 which is slightly weaker (it's used for the kicking rubbers), so either of those two would be the ones to use. The a-16570 coils in the lock hole kicker and the outhole would likely be pretty whimpy if used for the upkicker, a-16570 is 15 ohms, a-4893 is only 2.

My Williams coil G-23-600 is similar to the 4893/1496 and it has never failed once in getting the ball up there with ease.

If you decide to stick with the factory design and a-4893 coil, Piniwiki says a 2.5 amp fuse should be used in that case too, same as used on the pop bumpers. I'd better check mine, probably still has the original 6A one in there.

You mean the lower playfield trough gate, right? What is the 'other upper pf transistor' you were checking? What transistor part nbr. did you replace the one under the lower playfield with?

Also look at the settings chart in the cabinet lightbox, shows how to turn high score display on and off with the dip switches, in case yours happens to be turned off.

All the GI in the backbox should light immediately upon power on including the chaser lights so I don't think that has anything to do with it not booting.

They just mean that only the GI (pf and backbox) lights will come on with no boot but the pf feature lights won't.

I always raise mine all the way up too. I can reach the flippers and stuff way up there without standing on anything but it does make my arms mighty tired.

<<Need help with up kicker coil not working on my black hole>>

When you do the auto burn-in test (advance to step #16 on credit display, then press credit button) and it starts repeatedly activating all the coils, does the tube kicker fire too? The solenoid test won't fire it but the burn-in test does. If it fires then that at least indicates it may be switch related. If it don't, it probably ain't.

So do you know what the cause was for the two different times that the coil got fried? Just locking on because of a grounding issue?

Given that he said its predriver Q15 is working, that seems logical. Except I don't quite understand the part about knowing it was working because it was "engaging sw. 15"? That's the outhole(?) Can you give more detail on exactly how your test showed that Q15 is working?

I assume you mean the tube kicker, because if it's the actual 'out hole' coil, that definitely ain't right.

BH is very tough for me but then I'm not that great of a player to begin with. I have rarely rolled it over on 5 ball in 20 years even while earning multiple extra balls. Pretty sure I've never rolled it twice. So for me the 6 digits is 'right', similar to a typical EM where I can roll it over once in a while but not regularly. The drawback is it only saves 6 digit HSTD so rolled over scores are not saved at all.

In solenoid test, is outhole coil activating for test coil assignment #9? Outhole works correctly during game play?
If you ground Q15 (tube kicker) and it fires the outhole, are you sure you didn't make a wire mix up somewhere like on the A3J3 connector regarding Q14 (outhole) and Q15 (tube kicker)? And sure you were grounding Q15, not 14?

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Okay so the coil shown in your pic is the upper playfield trough 'ball release' or 'cardholder ball gate', not the outhole. It is also adjacent to the tube kicker pin on A3J3 (pins 22 & 23) so could possibly still be a wire mix-up there or elsewhere.

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>I put one of the old 2n3791 that I had replaced at one of the other under playfield transistor locations with a MJ2933 that was still working fine in for the tube kicker coil and it is working like a champ>

Still weird about the upper ball release firing in the testing. Well at least it works now. Seen folks in here having a lot of trouble with those pf-mounted driver transistors blowing even right after they replaced them.

Fortunately I've never had any of those transistors go bad and I've had this game since the 1990s. And I didn't even add the 4.7K pullup resistors to two of the three on the lower playfield until last week. But I did the basic board grounding mods soon after I got the game so none of the transistors/coils has ever gotten locked on and toasted.
Only time I notice a coil may lock up on me is in the solenoid test or the burn-in test. Any coil that was firing at the moment I exit the test might stay locked on and I have to shut the game off and on again. But I'm thinking this is an oversight in the diagnostic code. Don't know for certain.

Could try switching pop boards with each other to see if the fuse blowing moves somewhere else, then that would indicate it's the board. Also check the ohms on the pop coils to be sure none have an internal short. Might want to replace the diodes on any pop coils that are causing fuse blows too since they are only a few cents, they can look okay but still be bad.

The pops magnetized the stops as well as the entire pop bumper frame on my BH. I fixed it with 3 or 4 layers of thick adhesive copper tape (used for fixing circuit board traces etc.) on the end of the coil stops and trimming around them, checked one months later and the copper was holding up to the pounding just fine. Or you can form a U-shaped piece of thicker copper sheet metal around the stop.

If the spoon is pressing too hard on the stake, why not just adjust the blade a little for lighter pressure? It's going to look the same and just as straight afterwards, it just won't be putting excess pressure on the stake. Somebody could have overadjusted them in the past too.

It's not an issue of lowering it really, just tweaking it so it isn't putting excess pressure on the stem of the skirt, adjusted closest to the switch stack, just like any other switch blade. Adjust as light as possible where the stem touches and bottoms out in the center of the spoon. Also adjusting the switch mount in all directions in respect to the stem if it needs it (by loosening the two screws that attach the switch mount to the playfield) is important so the spoon and stem are centered to begin with and you get even switch closure from the ball at any point around the skirt.

Adjust so the actuated switch blade puts very little pressure on the relay armature at rest, and adjust the outer switch blade that lights the insert lamp with a decent gap. You want the least amount of spring load on the armature that you can get away with. Or could try a little bit weaker spring on the relay.

I finally did the 'disable the lower gate clicking in attract mode' mod today, pretty easy plus I had plenty of scrapped Gtb EM relays around here to pull the required extra relay switch from. I'm not doing any spinning disc motor mods though since I'd already put in a new motor and I love it running in attract mode, and compared to the 'on' time the game had in the arcades, home use 'on' time is practically nothing. It's a pure player-drawing attract feature and would just look wrong to me only working when a game is in progress and not running in attract.

The other relay that turns the lower playfield GI on and off in attract still clicks though, not as loud as the gate but you can still hear it. If you took the rubber bushings off the relay and mounted it directly to the pf it would be a little louder still. And/or can set the attract speech for every 10 seconds but it kinda gets on my nerves especially with the volume on high so I have it set to every 4 minutes.

That is normal, display test digit will begin running across pl 2 and pl 4 first. Have you tried reseating the two connectors on the right side of the MPU (control) board? That's where the display data comes from for the displays. As with the displays, only do this with the game powered off. Though if that was it I'd think you'd get something more than all zeroes.

If the display zeroes are also doing a horrible fast strobing it definitely sounds like the slam switch. If they are solidly lit, could be something else.

I love that one because it's the only place that could happen. And you couldn't recreate it manually even if you tried, it would simply have to happen... and it almost never would. Never happened on mine in 20+ years.

Here's how mine is set with speech enabled and background sound 'on'. Sw 1,2,7 & 8 should be off. 3 & 4 are for different time interval for attract speech, off/off disables it. 5 is background enabled, 6 is all speech enabled.

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So even when game is stone-ass cold, powering up and immediately running the solenoid test doesn't do anything goofy when the target bank(s) fire?

When you turn it on cold does the 'coin up' sound work, and the 'start' sound works when you start a game (before it resets to attract mode)?

Are your power supply board voltages all excellent?
Maybe one of the two lower playfield banks are involved? Each fires at what looks to be in perfect unison with one of the two banks on top when game is started. Diagonally... 5 bank resets at same time as 3 bank below, and the 4 above with the four below. Perhaps whatever it is is only showing up with the power draw from two banks firing simultaneously which happens at game start but not in the solenoid test. And doesn't show up when you disconnect the 5 bank first because of the reduced draw during game start reset(?) Maybe the 3 bank or its circuit has an issue. And maybe the speech board disconnected is reducing the power drain just enough to let the cold game start 'get away with it' for those first 5 minutes. I mean the whole thing seems to be just on the borderline till it warms up a little bit. I dunno, I'm just throwing something out to see if it sticks.

Yay! That's gotta be it.

So it goes into attract mode after power up?

Does coining up with the coin switches work? Then will it start a game? If not, does the credit button register? Start diagnostic test with the inner door button, then press the credit button - that should advance the diag test display # to '16', showing that button is at least registering.

As per the Pinwiki recommendation that the tube upkicker 6 & 1/4 fuse be changed to 2 & 1/2, I made that change a couple of weeks ago and today it blew. Though I do have a Williams coil in mine that by the coil windings is only slightly more powerful than the original Gtb one, I've never had any issue with the kicker before in 20 years. Have never even blown any fuse in the game before. So just a note that 2 1/2 might be borderline if using the original coil or little bit stronger one. On the copy of the schematics I downloaded, whoever had scribbled things on it here and there seemed like perhaps they had the same issue. Original '6 1/4' is crossed out and they wrote '2 1/2', then crossed that out and made it '5'. I've replaced the blown one with a 4 amp to split the difference. I didn't have any 3 amp fuses but maybe one of those would "make it".

Perhaps it is related to which under-pf driver transistor is installed. Gottlieb recommended changing 2N5875s to 2N5879s for early-run BHs but with no explanation. All three of my under pf transistors are MJ15016s and my serial number is within their range where it would have the 2N5875s. But I've never had to replace any of them and can't really find what the equivalency is between the 2Ns and the MJ.

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It was originally built with white rings made out of regular rubber so that's what I put on mine. I'm weird that way.

I've seen the lit tubes before but never heard about having it change colors for status, good idea. But I'd go with green and red. Does the light have to shine into the edge of the bottom of the tube for it to work?

You could just add the lamp wires for the two colored LEDs to the switch lugs on the gate relay as mentioned, it already alternates the two yellow arrow lamps down there. I'm thinking you might need to mount the two LEDs on the lower playfield to point at the bottom of the tube for the fiberoptic effect, but maybe just mounting the LEDs under the main playfield close by the gate there at a high angle towards the top of the tube might work? If it did it would save running the long wires down below.

If there was a poll for "What color looks the most ridiculous and out of place on Black Hole?" I would definitely vote for Cheetos Orange. If I put those on my game the MPU board would try to commit suicide.

I hate when that happens. Somebody could probably come up with a 'fix' that would lock the gate when it's activated. Boost up the relay magnet as much as one could given it's powered by a lamp circuit, or something else.. but it wouldn't be the same. XD

If the wireform gate were only about 1/4" longer, the ball could still push it open but it wouldn't be able to slip between it and the tube exit gate. So that would be a fix, solder a little extension onto the end of the gate. Or removing the right screw on the tube exit gate and rotating that end down the side rail about a half inch, or repositioning the whole gate down a half inch, that would stop it too.
Or since the tube exit gate is just a single piece of wire and it would be pretty easy to make one, make a new longer one that extends another 1/2" down the channel, bent upward a little where it rests at the bracket so the end where the the balls hit it is still at the correct height.
That is if somebody just can't live with it, but I can. Even if Gottlieb didn't do this on purpose it's fun to think they did

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Make sure you have the correct coil on the kicker, or at least one that is not wound stronger. You can tweak the bracket with the rubber stop on it forward a little too or put a taller rubber stop on it to reduce the stroke a little. Mine is strong and makes it up 100% of the time but has never hopped the gate.

If the rollover switch at the back of the spinner lane doesn't register, the ball will just drop down there without activating the lower flippers or lower lights and will be kicked back up, as you are seeing. Try activating that switch by hand and see if it is working or just needs cleaning. However the persistent sound and relay clicking sound strange so maybe that isn't the problem. There will be various things clicking between when the ball drains into the lower pf trough and is eventually kicked back up.

What does the 'persistent sound' actually sound like, the background sound or the lower pf 'blowing wind' sound or (?)

When ball enters lower pf, do the upper playfield lights turn off like they are supposed to?

I'm old school and stuck with white rings, but clear ones do sound like a good idea for letting more light out from under the plastics on this particularly dark playfield. Even with extra bright LEDs it's still pretty dark!

<<< I’m thinking these are end of stroke switches for the coils? It seems they are open at baseline and close as the coil fires. Isn’t this backwards from how an EOS switch usually works?>>

That's a scoring switch, not an EOS. So make sure NOT to file it.

<<<will the bastard Bally coil be ok here or should I find a Gottlieb one?>>>

It's just the saucer kicker and that Bally coil is appx. the same power as the Gtb hole kicker coil(s) for BH, no biggie, I'd keep it.

Question about missing pull-up resistors: Pinwiki details how early BH's lower playfields may not have pull-up resistors on the three transistors down there, so I added those. BUT in the old 'Pinball Lizard' BH/HH documentation it states that my game's serial number "would require the resistor additions" and they were talking about all five transistors, no distinction between upper or lower depending on when the game was built. And the two upper pf transistors on mine have NO resistors nor an extra wire connected to them.

Can anybody verify that I indeed need to add resistors to these upper two? I'm assuming I just run the two wires to the common +24V point at fuses F14/15/16, similar to how the lower pf ones are done?

Thanks!

Okay I'll add the two upper pf pull-up resistors, thanks.

Mine is a tall one there and I've never messed with it, it is probably to assure the plastic at that spot stays at same height as the shorter ones (but which are taller if you include the top of the acorn post) to, as you suggest, make sure the ball can't rub or get stuck under there. With everything assembled on mine it seems fine, plastic is not not being flexed and looks level.

Are you using brand new plastics? Mine are original so any flex in that particular plastic if it was there is probably broken in and not tight anymore. In any case it's a very small amount of flex, no big deal. The tall post could have been taking into account heat possibly causing that plastic to warp downward but really they probably just didn't want to take a chance about the ball clearance there.

One interesting thing about that material is they don't really seem to be on board with the Sys80 "add ground wires to all the boards" mod. They focus in detail about the poor design and assembly of the boards and meticulously fixing all the little things. But I did the ground wire adds if for nothing else than to add insurance against coils getting stuck on and cooked and have never had a coil lock on since nor any other grounding issue. Would be different if a bad ground connection ONLY resulted in the game not working correctly and didn't fry coils. The ground wires mod maybe isn't the most by-the-book fix of various issues that could cause the problem but it bypasses a lot of those causes without needing to fix them.

On mine it's the one on the cabinet that's missing. I never even noticed that nor the bracket on the playfield until now. Probably for shipping purposes -- securing the upper pf with a bolt and nut thru it. And perhaps to help keep the lower pf from flopping forward/out, but they don't look like they would help with that much and it already has its own shipping bolt holes anyway. Nothing in the manual about these brackets as far as setting the game up. I'm guessing somebody removed the one in my cabinet to get it out of the way for raising the lower playfield, or it was jamming up with the pf bracket when lowering the upper pf. But they don't look like they are necessary once the game is set up.

For the heck of it I moved the bracket to the cabinet position to check things out, and it's actually a potential pain in the butt. If I slide the lower pf all the way up against it, the bracket's mounting screws jamb the pf so I can't lift it. Now I know why someone yanked that sucker.

No menu buttons, you just use the test button in conjunction with the credit button.

All those coin door switches and the credit switch are tied to return 7 so since they all are dead you might try reseating the two connectors that come off it, laying under the tilt mech in the cabinet. Return 7 may have a broken connection in the wire bundle where it's attached to the door too, takes a lot of flexing. Check for continuity with meter of return 7 from the connector(s) to any of those switches. Just another thing to check first since you are stuck there. Try reseating A1J5 at the MPU board too for same issue.

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Figured that was a good place to check because I have two iffy coin door wires on my own BH, to the coin slot lamps and the coin reject relay. Open the door just so and they can cut out but they both 'work' with the door closed. Someday I'll have to replace them, the insulation is fine but the wires have broken internally from flexing via the door opening and closing.

<<Right now I have a A-4893 and the ball comes up the tube so fast that it flies into the plastic and gets stuck>>

Which plastic, and gets stuck where?

5 & 1/2 or 6 degree pitch sounds good.

I have a Wms coil that is very close to the original coil, never fails with perfect delivery, I'm at slightly less than 5 & 1/2 degrees. You could also try tweaking the bracket with the rubber stop just a little or use a rubber stop that sticks out further to shorten the stroke of the kicker arm a tad. Funny that without the coil stop you got a slower, better kick... I woulda guessed it would be the opposite.

If the warp always comes back after the oven method, it would be great if could use two sheets of glass that had just tiny bit of curve in them to make the disc go past the warp in the opposite direction, but when it cooled it might end up flat. When Piniwiki said it doesn't work who knows if that meant it has no effect, or just not enough because the warp always springs back a little bit.

Had mine on 5 ball forever, then finally changed to 3 ball and I'm keeping it this way, I like it. It eases up a bit on the rules like the higher scores on the pops and how the yellow standup targets' status is kept from ball to ball to make multiball a little easier.

It has grey transparent shading screened on it that accentuates the artwork on the main backglass.

I didn't see it on PBR, it's the lower ball gate wireform. Could have sworn I saw pics somewhere where someone had made a homemade wireform replacement but can't find it.

I was doing some upgrades and lifting the playfield a lot, so I decided to put a thin strip of clear mylar tape along the top edge of that tall lower rail just to make it smoother and less likely to hang up on the wire bundle or to wear on the wire insulation.

I've temporarily modded that gate area on mine by moving the right side of the tube exit gate down about 1/4 inch and holding it down with a bracket. I can undo it as it uses the original screw hole in the rail. Then the ball cannot squeak between that gate and the lower gate. The ball getting thru there just pisses me off but someday I'll undo it.

The pinwiki mod of changing the 313 lamps to 44s or 47s seems like bunk to me as written. “313s are slightly brighter than 44s”? I looked at a chart and they have nearly *4X* the candlepower and wattage of a 44 and *7X* that of a 47. They needed 313s with that tinted pf window and the lower pf down there in the dark, that’s why Gottlieb used them. Seems to me one would HAVE to use brighter LEDs otherwise it’s a factory downgrade. Now if you put LEDs in there that are *brighter* than 313s, then it makes sense.

I was considering doing it until I looked that stuff up. So I bought a box of 313s for $5 on ebay, a couple of my lamps were a little toasty looking. But after 25+ years with this game I don't think I ever actually had to replace a burned out one.

Found this list:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pinball-lamps-1

And the pinwiki 'auto spin disc mod'... makes sense to me if you have an original motor and you want to preserve it or it's getting noisy and worn out. I put in a new slower-spinning one so I'm not going to do it for a low-use home machine. I already did the wonderful 'gate chatter' mod so if I did do this one too, I'd do it the same more direct way and run a 2-wire cable with a disconnect at the motor thru pf wire bundles and connect those two wires at another added Q relay switch. But really I dislike like the idea of taking one of the best attract features ever... and turning it off in attract.

Yes check the gap on the switch, under the upper playfield right before it drops down the hole. So it is doing it only by dropping targets, not by the targets resetting? Try banging on the playfield near there with your fist and see if you can get it to do it.
But if it is only vibration from targets dropping I'd think you'd have the same problems from the pop bumpers firing up there.

Is should do a "Ohhhhh" voice sound effect when the ball triggers the lower playfield. Do the other voice and sound effects all work correctly? A relay will activate the lights on the lower playfield. which sounds like it's working.

Also is it only missing the voice effect when it's falsely triggered? Or it's *always* missing?

That rollover switch is on the same column or row as some of the drop targets, might want to check switch diodes. But it's not on any of the rows/columns for the upper pop bumpers, sw 06, so uhhh I dunno.

When whatever "it" is is falsely triggered, do the lower pf lights come on and the lower flippers become active, like they normally would when the ball goes down there? Or is it only partially doing that stuff or not at all?

It shows 99 at the end of both the switch test (none closed) and if memory test passes okay.

I didn't take the original battery out of mine until last year and was amazed there wasn't a speck of corrosion or leakage anywhere and the battery still looked new, had never failed to hold memory even for weeks. Kinda felt bad throwing him out, he was a good soldier.

Is that one of the upper kicker coils? They are powered thru the T and Q relays, and then directly by the kicker playfield switches. Maybe the diode is bad. And make sure those pf switches are not stuck closed. Was this kicker stuck on before the smoke?

Do the other diagnostic tests work okay? Maybe try shorting sw 25 with an alligator clip just to make sure it's not the switch itself acting flakey.

I had one bad window so I scraped the remaining blue off with a razor (carefully) and put in one of those Gottlieb blue windows that attaches over the display tube itself. But I'm sure others know how you could attach a blue cello film over that somehow.

Correct. If you do the trick to disable the gate opening and closing in attract, the light will just stay on solid in attract.

On Pinwiki it only says something about how they forgot that the gate was powered by a lamp driver. I dunno, that seems a little far-fetched. I mean if they didn't intend it to click on and off, that noise would have stuck out like a sore thumb. I disabled it anyway just because it gets to be annoying after 20 years.

Mechanically it's so simple it's hard to see it wearing out, just a regular old relay armature moving the gate. Maybe clean the nylon bushing once every 50 years.

You have the same green and yellow wires mine does. Green wire coming from the bridge rectifier (the lug with another green wire attached) goes to cap negative.

When you score it with the glass off, if you hit each BLACK target one by one, does each one score? And if so they still don't reset?

As another test - with some or all of the BLACK & HOLE targets already down, start up a game. The HOLE bank should reset about a half second before BLACK does. Are yours doing that, or firing at exactly the same time?

Mine came with four 27" legs. Front levelers are all the way in, rears are only halfway up and I'm at almost 6 degrees and both main and lower playfields plays fast. 31" in back would seem like overkill on my game based on this. Both HH and BH manuals just say "bolt on the legs" but not sure if that indicates all four would/should be the same length or if that was just a standard instruction for all their manuals.

Also take into account that if you are cranking up the level on the main pf, you're slowing *down* the lower pf just as much.

When it is 'locking up', are the displays strobing as you would normally see if the slam switch was open?

The Pinwiki page for System 80 lists the different R13 resistor values on the lamp chase board used on different games that have different speeds, you just change that resistor for a different speed.

Here ya go, from the old BHHHC repair guide. BH's lights are 4X faster than Haunted House. So increasing R13's value slows down the lamps.

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Mine is at 5.7, plenty fast for me on both playfields. I could probably live with 6. Yes shimming up the lower would compensate if you're accustomed to 6.5 or 7 on your games.

Is your track switch #53 clean and adjusted correctly? Is the gate release coil pulling in okay but the ball is still not clearing it, or (?) Or does the ball just sit there on the switch and nothing happens? I suppose if your lower playfield slant was WAY too low after really cranking up the upper pf, it could mess with the ball being released by the gate cleanly, or cause the ball to barely get hung up by the switch sometimes.

I did exactly that too. 313s are readily available and cheap, I bought a couple of boxes just in case that will last long after I'm dead, but none of mine have actually ever burned out. The 6V mod is the way to go if you really prefer LEDs there, and in colors, and ones that are even brighter than 313s if you want.

Never had a spoon gunked up or sticking like *that* before, blech. I always clean everything and then smear a tiny speck of white coin machine lube on the spoon with a Q-tip or toothpick.

So you get the 'reentry accomplished/failed' speech even when it doesn't kick the ball out?

There are two power transistors under the lower playfield right next to the cutout under the tube kicker coil. Doublecheck the soldered connections on the left one.