I bought a much better condition playfield for my Bow and Arrow machine. The problem is something got knocked out of whack somewhere between the sellers machine and mine.

Here is what I noticed when the new playfield was connected, after starting a game:
- First player 10's solenoid buzzing loudly
- Reset cycle never ends
- endless repeating 5000 scoring

I had none of these issues before the new playfield so I decided to unhook it and power up the machine. I started a game and the result was that the scores reset normally.

I've begun to look for issues on the disconnected playfield and I've found *something* but I'm not sure what to make of it.

There are two switches on the Bottom Inner Lanes Rollovers. Its a make/make switch arrangement. The bottom switch (closest to playfield) shows no connection as it should. However, the top switches both show they are connected. However, both the switches are correctly aligned and are not touching, nor are the solder tabs touching.

The switches in question are connected to Blue-Red and yellow. Via the schematic I found other switches wired similarly and found that they were also shorted some how.

My questions are:
1) Am I chasing my tail here?
2) How would you go about finding the short circuit here? I know that in the absence of any other ideas I'm going to work my way across the circuits which connect the Y and R(or B) lines in the schematic until I find another one that is shorted.

Tested with a careful application of DMM test probes on the switch leaves and verified additionally at the solder tabs

On the schematic the Bottom Inner Rollovers each have two Normally Open switches (in 9H and 15H). On the playfield these are stacked. Should I be just referring to this as stacked Normally Open switches?

Yes. The original PF does not have these this short present on it.

I'll post a photo tonight when I get home. The score relay buzzing is what led me to discover this short in the first place.

Here are photos of the bottom of the playfield. I'm not sure you'll be able to find anything on them.

The one with the issue is on the pinball machine. Thr known good one is on the table.

IMG_20161026_214220 (resized).jpg

IMG_20161026_214244 (resized).jpg

Not quite ready to call this one solved but I did find some perhaps too sensitive switches.

I got tired of trying to fix my playfield on the machine itself and decided it was time to put my my poor-condition but working playfield back in. When I got my new playfield on to my bench I discovered all the shorts I found were gone which made me wonder if there was torn insulation on the wire harness. There was... but it wasn't anything that would have caused this. I realized now that my playfield was on its side inside of on end which means gravity has a slightly different effect. I decided to rotate the playfield around again.. and my mystery closed switches returned. With this new information I decided to hook my DMM in continuity mode and to move the playfield around until I could determine what moved when the beep stopped.

The result was both spinner switches were super close and the slightest breeze seemed to get them close enough to conduct.

In the process here I did also verify that the original playfield worked fine so now its just a matter of doing the swap yet again.

Good Spinner (resized).jpg

bad spinner switch (resized).jpg

Got the playfield back in the game. Still kinda busted.

I noted lots of symptoms this time:

After starting the game:
-reset relay stuck
-100 pt relay stuck (and thus the 100 pt chime solenoid buzzing)
-outhole bonus relay stuck on
-my right flipper doesn't work (left one works fine). Sometimes I can get it to flip ones or twice. Sometimes it locks in place mid-stroke.

Before the even starting a game my 100 pt relay is closed. I'm pretty mystified at the moment as to what could be causing this issue. As far as I can tell the 100pt relay only gets activated for:
1) Via the 500 score relay
2) Rollover from the 10s score reel

I'm feeling pretty stuck here:

The 500 score relay is off. Nor is the score motor running to run its steps so #2 is out.

To try and detect the fault in rollovers I manually stepped the player up unit to players 2, 3, and 4 and found that the 100pt relay remained stuck. I guess I could I have a fault in all 4 player score reels. However, that doesn't explain why the game worked fine with my original playfield.

Am I missing something in the schematic here?

Screenshot 2016-10-28 at 10.37.49 PM (resized).png

I've really found my problem now. Its bad. The new playfield is wired completely different than the original one and doesn't match the schematics at all.

I found this because I noticed the wire coloring for the right flipper (which I previously noted did not work) was wrong. I was wired with an orange yellow/white. It terminates on the new plug in a completely different location. Was there really *this* much variation in construction of a single model of machine?

How screwed am I here?

Screwed (resized).jpg

I've done a bit more comparisons and it seems like this one connector is the only difference. I checked all the wires on the on right side of the connector almost all of the wire colors match with the positions on the schematic. The only color off is the wire for the right flipper which should be yellow/black but is instead orange/white. The rest are just slightly out of position.

My plan is to de-solder and re-assemble the right-side of this plug based on the schematic and my notes.

sneakerpin (the member I bought the new playfield from) had schematics which sorta match what I'm seeing on the connector. I've posted the plug maps for the playfield from his schematic and the schematic from ipdb.

The connector I have is still not true to the schematic he provided. The right side of the connector has an extra black jumped across the right 2nd and 3rd pins from the top. In the cabinet this is met with 2x pairs of black wires on as well.

Either way I'm going to redo the right side of this connector today and with luck it should be compatible.

new pf connector (resized).jpg

old playfield connector (resized).png

Its fixed!

I re-wired the right side of the small playfield jones plug. It solved all of my issues.

Summary: Not all Bow and Arrow playfields are wired to the cabinet the same. There are slight variations, some schematics contain this variations, and as far as i can tell there are no version/data/numeric distinctions between these schematics.

Next time I'll be comparing wire colors on connectors before dropping new parts in.