Yes, I did too! But I managed to get hold of a "silver standard" one. It had a fault on the upper pf, but I got both pf's clear coated though. Some dimples and holes was a little of center but compated to my originaled pf, this was woth it both time and money wise.

So my solenoid 28V voltages, both in/out are sitting at 39.8v, is that too high? The fact that my bell or jet bumper can both blow an IC on the driver board, tells me the issue is further upstream from the PF. Ordered a Kohout system 6 power board and the transformer is in the head. Thats whats in there, but I think this issue predates with the stock power board.

... and 38v is normal as per the kohout power board documentation.

_{Post edited by NightFlight73: read the documentation}

Yeah, my machine runs right around 38-39V for the 28V circuit. I think that's pretty normal in a no-load condition.

... But this Voltage/Current spike issue has survived power/driver/mpu board replacements. What to do... Keep replacing parts?

Wow, I just discovered a setting I never knew about. My BK now requires the player to hit the turnaround to qualify the lock. I love it! Makes Multiball much harder to get.

I like playing it that way for competitive play.

Novice players have more fun factory.

I´d like to know, how can I set that fuction? Thanks.

Function 37 - set to 01

BK was the only casualty of our tournament last night. About halfway through qualifying, it started tilting like crazy. I checked the plumb bob, and it looked fine. Intermittent switch issues suck!

So to isolate my jet bumper issue (blows IC's randomly/under load).. I swapped it with the shooter lane coil because I had a new one there.

It locked on at blew F2 on power up. Found I had power on the wrong lug of the coil. Should that have created a short condition due to the polarity of the diode being wrong or is the coil just plain bad?

Now solenoid driver 6 is stuck on and fires up the same coil on power up during attract mode. Disconnected the ground lug and find the Kohout diag LED for that solenoid shows lit on power up. All the others check out.

Did I blow a pair of driver transistors? Was it the coil or the backwards connection?

Yep. Hooking up a coil (diode) backwards will take out the driver transistor. Replace the driver, pre-driver & diode. Been there, done that.

BTW I fixed this - a wire had broken off one side of the playfield tilt switch.

Lovely. The BK docs say the ball ramp thrower is (driver 6): Q14, Q25. Kohout says those should line up as IRF9530N (Q14) and IRL520N (Q25). Are those P-Types with a max -100V?

Here is my mouser cart:
http://www.mouser.com/ProjectManager/ProjectDetail.aspx?AccessID=b1dee6b567

NightFlight73 did you manage to replace the driver transistors? I am going through a similar issue with my Kohout driver board. I screwed something up when replacing my Jet bumper switch. I think I have now got the switch installed correctly with the diode in the right way. It works in test mode but triggers the bottom ball trough kick. I have gone over all the switches in that row and column and all diodes test fine and no loose wires however some of the other switches also are triggering odd solinoids. I am now thinking it is in the board. Is the anyway to swap transistors in the board to confirm it is a transistor?

I did! The part is listed in the schematics, which turned out to be exceptionally easy to decipher once you put your mind to it. Smoking the transistor was the result me troubleshooting by swapping the coils around and hooking one up backwards. Soldering in a new one was pretty straight forward if you have done circuit boards before. Can't say enough good things about the Kohout build quality - you get what you pay for I guess.

In the end, the issue turned out to be the jet bumper coil which would short only once it started to heat up. At least that is my best guess. I still have that coil on my shooter lane kicker, where it doesn't get the same workout and it seems more or less fine. I currently only have one new coil. Once I put it on the jet bumper - the issue of the IC17 blowing after 5-10 minutes of game play disappeared!

In my internet troubleshooting travels - I'd read several times the chances of a coil going bad were slim. Well... I definitely had two coils be the root cause of some very difficult issues to track. I've read people dissuade newbies from re-coiling old machines and to replace the mechanics and sleeves. Fine. But when the machine hits 30+ years old with original parts... switches and coils start to go. I've learned the hard way on this point. Neither bad coil shows a low resistive load either! Both test perfectly fine, but would blow a fuse and some circuitry after some use. EVIL!

But I've learned a lot about this machine in the process. I could have learned more by sticking it out with the original boards. That would have entailed checking all the chips out with a probe to determine which was not signalling correctly. The Kohout boards just light up a diagnostic LED most of the time... so with the provided docs its a cinch to trace backwards to the point of failure.

I've finally got my game completely bullet-proofed, but the last problem stumped me for a while. I bought 2 microswitch trough assemblies, and installed one of them in the lower playfield (i.e. by the shooter lane). Long story short, I had to bend the actuators on the 2 switches ever-so-slightly to make them reliable. I really should have just stuck with the blade-type switches.

I'm still glad I went to microswitches for the single rollovers (inlanes and outlanes). Those are much more reliable now, especially when the ball is flying over them.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/guide-upgrading-early-ss-rollover-switches-to-microswitches

Let me know what you think.

Hi all,
I'm looking for some nice color free play instruction cards. Any suggestions?

BK left insert.jpg
BK Right insert nonle-910.jpg

thanks

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/fs-nos-black-knight-bumper-cap-and-tri-fold-flyer

Finally getting around to completing the last one.
Nicest one so far!
P1050731.JPG

P1050737.JPG

Really nice.

that is a thing of beauty! just laid down the first coat of clear last night on mine. had to do a ton of touch up so it wont look as good as yours but way better than it was...

20150325_210751.jpg

It's looking good!

need help buffing out the clear on mine

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/black-knight-clear-coat-hazy-need-help

Thinking of painting my lane guides, anyone have any suggestions?

image.jpg

I simply made new ones and painted them black.

Black Knight - Lower Playfield.JPG
Black Knight - Players View..JPG

That black looks awesome,

I had a thought to paint them silver, to give the thought of armor or a sword blade

Thank you! The idea of using silver is something I never thought of. It very well may look better than stock or black. Only one way to find out!

I made new ones out of white oak. Look fantastic, much better than the original soft crappy wood covered in wood grain vinyl wrap.

-Hans

Pictures or it never happened! (But yeah, the vinyl wrap was pretty crappy!)

I went with silver, looks good so far

image.jpg

Sweet! That is going to look great when all assembled!

can somebody please send me a picture of what the flipper relay looks like.
thank you

I believe you're looking for this:
http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Omron/MY4-02-DC6/?qs=%2fha2pyFadugpP%2fig%2f2AOA3eJzkGcnfhR7i7Yolv6UENkHIV8eeNbRg%3d%3d

Relay.jpg

Cool thank you. My lower right flipper is weak and not getting the ball up the left ramp. I took it apart and it looked good, the coil sleeve was really old though, and new ones are coming in a couple days. Someone
mentioned that I might be getting the right voltage but not enough current, and to check the relay. Anyone else have the same issue?

You will also want to check connector 2J12 (second one down on left of driver board) bottom 2 pins for overheating. I had to replace the header pins & rebuild the connector plug on mine.

Thank you.
Do new coil sleeves make a big difference?

I am a new member in the Black Knight club! I have been searching for one for a while and finally scored one at Allentown. It was missing the lower flipper assemblys but I bought new ones. Just need to figure out how the wires attach. Anyone willing to snap a pic or two?

Congratulations I just picked mine up on Monday and can't wait to get it up and running.
image.jpg

I was bitten by the Black Knight bug when I was a teenager. I can't remember how many quarters I've dumped into that machine at the corner pizza shop. I couldn't play it enough!

So a few years ago a friend of mine that has some pins told me he saw a Black Knight LE at a weekend moving sale. He said it didn't look all that great and he didn't have the time to do anything with it. So I figured "what the heck, I'll check it out". So I go over there and took a look at it. It was pretty dirty inside the cabinet and the playfield had some wear(the upper playfield looked a lot better). The cabinet has a few scuffs of different color paint(must have bumped some walls during its life), but the art work looked pretty good. The back glass has a little bit of the normal flaking(I've already sealed it up to prevent any further flaking). So I asked if it worked and the guy said that it did but it was missing 1 ball. He turned it on and it went right into attract mode. I didn't get the chance to see the inside of the head because he said he lost the keys. He said he was moving out of state and couldn't take it with him. So I made him an offer of $300 and he said he can't sell it for that but gave me his #. I called him the next day to see if it was still there and it was and I asked him if he would still take my offer. He reluctantly said yes so my friend and I dismantled it and loaded it up in my truck and brought it home. The first thing I did was drill out the lock on the head to check everything out. The boards looked in really good shape. No battery corrosion(which I feared), but it had the usual burnt GI connector. No big deal, I can fix that. I re-hooked everything up. My friend just bought new balls for one of his machines and gave me one of his old ones since one of them was missing in mine. I fired up the game and started playing. There were a couple of issues while playing. The bottom lock hole would work occasionally and one of the lane switches would not register. Also, when I locked two balls in the upper trough, it would go right into multiball. I lifted the playfield and saw that a diode on the bottom lock came loose and was just barely touching so I soldered it back on. The one nonworking leaf switch on the out lane was dirty so I cleaned up the contacts with a pencil eraser(the eraser worked pretty well). A micro switch in the upper lock was broken and a jumper wire was installed to bypass the broken switch. That explains why it went into multiball with only two balls locked up top and why 1 of the balls were missing. I replaced the micro switch and every single thing is working in the game as it should. There is a speech problem which I haven't figured out yet. When the game is over and it says "will you fight the black knight again", the word "the" is garbled in speech. I had the machine in my garage at the time and it would only garble the speech when it was damp outside but worked fine when it was dry. Any thoughts?

I have since removed the playfield to clean it up and did some touch up on the paint. I am no artist and can't paint worth a lick and by no means does it look as good as some of the others I have seen on here, but I am happy with the results. I'll get to play my childhood favorite pin whenever I want when it is done and it didn't cost me much. It will take some time to get it going again(time that I don't have at the moment). But somehow someway my Black Knight will live to fight another day. I do plan on bullet proofing this machine with the help of Vid's great guide before I put it all back together.

Sorry for the long drawn out story. I just thought I'd like to share it with this great community.

-Talon

I just got back from picking one up today. I want to know does CPR still do the PF's, I didnt see them on their site?

Will damaged transistors reduce current flow for flippers?

CPR still does playfields, believe their only run of the Black Knight was back in 2007
http://www.classicplayfields.com/photo10.html
so I think the best bet is finding someone that would be willing to part with theirs.

Personally, I would replace them with up to date Mosfets, don't know if they would reduce flipper current.
Could always try by removing the F2 solenoid fuse on the power board and see if it works better.

I also found that the flipper fuse was at 10 Amp instead of the 20 amp would that reduce current flow?

Fuses would not reduce current, their whole goal is to stop current and all future current (by breaking the wire inside it) if it goes above that rating.

Or I've heard to make sure the EOS switches that are on the flipper assembly are properly adjusted as they control how quickly they switch over from primary power (the main oomph of the flipper) to secondary power that holds it in the up position.

Finished the clear coat... Worked all day to put 95%of the beast back together, looking pretty sharp, I'm upgrading the upper flippers per seigecraft (will do the lower flippers later)

I added in extra gi on the upper right, and for the lower hideout I put a purple ball rest in and added purple gi under it, I'll grab pics when I can get it to fire up...

A few pics of the evolution

image.jpg

image-928.jpg

image-512.jpg