I have a Blue Max that I acquired for $75. I kludge repaired a bakelite card on one of the reset relays, and it seems to work now. The score reels were continuously running, so I rebuilt a few of the sticky score motors, and now they all go. I still was getting a continuous cycle though, so I hooked up a multi-meter to the "zero-position" circuit, and was able to manually align all the score reels so they zeroed out, and the game popped out a ball.

I need some advice in the score motor rebuild arena. I already dropped one, and cracked the score drum. Fixed with Super glue. Now I am VERY careful with the parts. For some reason though, after I've cleaned and polished the mechanisms, they work almost too well. When they advance to the next digit they don't always stop! They'll be advanced a little further forward, sometimes enough so they don't line up on the zero switch! Advice on what I'm doing wrong with the score motors? I've found if you tighten the thing too tightly the whole thing locks up and you get nothing!

Thanks for your advice!!

-Brian D. Prenovost
Best Data & Pinball

Interesting you should mention how problematic these things are. Someone I know has a bunch of gun games that originally had the Herb Silvers' treatment. Very shiny. The score reels however were a different story. The same sort of issues that I'm having on Blue Max, Digits not aligning properly, and whatnot. Those score reels are at the same time VERY delicate, and also just hard to get adjusted properly. The reels on the Blue Max seemed to be the same as on the Shooting games, but I didn't have any luck adjusting those either.
-Brian