You're not listening.

Did he set the target height WHEN THEY ARE DOWN.

If not, that is a major reason why the ball is getting trapped. If the top of the target is below the playfield surface it creates a catch point for the ball.

And it is a common problem with new drop targets.

You see the black rubber ring stretched across the 4 posts (5 in your pic, looks like it goes around the back one)?
Put an additional rubber ring stretched across those posts UNDERNEATH where your current one is. In most cases, it does not interfere with the drops dropping, but it helps prevent a ball from sitting where you have it sitting in your pic. It also prevents balls from going under plastics, but that's not the issue in your case since there's more posts there.

They need to sit a bit proud from the playfield when they are DOWN. This way there's a little bit of a ramp on the drop so the ball tends to not sit there.

Some people have gone to extremes on games and added a piece of wood in between the drops so the ball can't catch there either; I wouldn't do that solution.

I had this issue on my EBD, Fathom, and Centaur, each with CPR playfields. Turns out the 1,2,3,4 targets on Centaur were ADJUSTABLE, but oddly, not on EBD or Fathom. So, while Centaur was the easy one, after buying a small roll of magnet tape, I cut a strip to length and added it to the floor of the drop target assembly in the area where the dropped targets rest on EBD and Fathom. It was the perfect thickness to prevent a ball from hanging up against another drop target. Never had an issue since.

81KB11oA45L._SX522_ (resized).jpg

Here's a question for y'all. This is something I see in my centaur, and in friend's centaur, and on pictures I see of centaur online. The wire inserts beneath the flippers are not centered with the flippers, they're off kilter. Only on centaur, not in any other machines. Anyone know why? It's mildly infuriating.

IMG_20221105_204944814 (resized).jpg

I was looking at mine on the weekend and noticed the same thing on my cpr playfield. I’ll have to check the original to see if it was the same.

Looks the same on IPDB, and I don't think the image is a playfield swap, so I'm thinking they came from the factory like that. I just can't figure out a reason. Unless it was a factory error that we keep repeating, which I suppose is possible.

https://www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=476&picno=13247

Yeah my original playfield has the same placement.

Maybe they offset that right side down farther to prevent deathsaves?

Centaur feature lighting issues. The lights are really dim with the board hooked up. The lights are too bright when the board is unplugged. Volts run 7.2 which is too much and burns out the LED’s. Put incandescents in and they are bright but the 20 amp fuse blows with the aux board plugged in.

7D42A3B1-1802-4046-A282-CF5AA44AC589 (resized).jpeg

Check the voltage at TP1 on the rectifier board which should be 6.5V, if higher there, it could be rectifier R2 ceramic resistor that has gone open - check for 25ohm resistance across R2.

I have seen this before with a failed R2 measuring close to 8V at rectifier TP1, all incandescents were burned out

Plugging in the AU lamp driver just adds more active lamps which may be why the fuse is blowing with more current draw with that voltage & not blowing when unplugged as less lamps in total are lit.

Awesome thank you! I will pass this along to the guy who is working on it and have him give that a look! He thought with the triac disconnected the machine to be not blowing the fuse? Any suggestions on this? Or still the same issue?

R2 is just one possible cause worth checking/eliminating, 7.2V is a bit high. Not sure on the Triac, would have thought the 20A fuse would have blown both with or without the AU lamp driver board installed if the Triac was shorted. usually a very robust part unless lugs get physically broken. If it does end up needing replacing, this is a suitable Triac sub.

NTE5673

ebay.com link: itm

Ok thanks this was his reply:

If the triac is connected and the aux driver is not, the feature lights work fine and doesn’t blow a fuse. And vice versa, triac connected and aux driver not. If they are both connected, the 20 amp fuse blows shortly after and the feature lights don’t work correctly. Trying the different used aux driver boards I had on the shelf, changed how the feature lights acted, but eventually blew the fuse 20 amp fuse

That sounds more like a partial short somewhere, good idea to look around check for shorts. Start with the braid & then inspect other lamp connections/sockets.

Ok thank you!

I'm trying to get at the GI to sort out an issue there, and noticed this when I removed the top right plastic. The top side of the launch gate just floats. It looks like there should be a post, but there's none in the pf and no hole for one in the plastic. Is that normal?

IMG_20221117_205206261 (resized).jpg

Yups. It just floats there.

That was fast! Thanks!

Yep great job! He found it! Thank you!

D3891B50-E387-451A-A00E-856E9037C2AC (resized).jpeg

You're welcome, great to hear it got resolved!

Yeah between you and vec-tor he was able to find it. He thought it was a board issue but both you outstanding people came up with the same answer to the problem. Very thankful to have both your help!

I’m still having the OCCASIONAL orb misfire on my Centaur. I know that switch mis-adjustments in the saved ball channel can cause the game to lose track of the balls. There’s three or four microswitches in the saved orb channel, and I’m still not entirely sure which switch(es) to adjust to get them all synced consistently. Several months ago, when adjusting the switch midway up the channel, I accidentally snapped off part of the actuator. It didn’t really seem to affect gameplay, but occasionally when a lot of balls drain simultaneously during 4-5 ball multiball, the game comes to a standstill due to two balls stacked up in the outhole (against the ball sitting on the trough switch)! When I remove the three balls sitting in the outhole and raise the playfield to release the remaining two balls, they both roll out from under the flap. It’s my understanding that there should only be one ball (not two) in the deployment lane at a time, no?

That said, could the broken actuator be part of the problem here, since if a ball not deploying for some reason rolls backwards, it’ll get hung up at the broken actuator?? I can’t imagine a ball not deploying fully though, since the kicker is strong and balls deploy well every time.

Anyway, I would like to replace the actuator so that a ball rolling backward will fall back to the kicker if not deployed. Can I fashion one of my own, or replace the whole switch?? If so, what type of wire is used?

Hope all this makes sense, since it’s a complicated issue that I’m doing my best to articulate. I can’t seem to manually duplicate it either, as it’s only an occasional problem. Many thanks for any feedback.

0B27D322-ED12-40F3-A92B-3ABE0E034B78 (resized).jpeg

2F62E304-78B9-4922-A2E9-5DA21471E239 (resized).jpeg

F2CFFA9C-2E60-49D6-894E-6498C86D8345 (resized).jpeg

I am looking for a Centaur II. If anyone is selling or has a lead, please PM me.

Hello everyone, I'm about to join the club sometime tomorrow. This will be my first Bally.

What are some of the must have mods or upgrades I should look into? Looks like the Home ROMs would be one thing I should look to add. No idea where to get them though. Anything else?

I have an LED OCD board in a few of my games so I can put LEDs in the inserts and they dim like an incandescent lamp, with no ghosting, is there anything like that available for older Ballys?

I'm very excited, I've been wanting one of these for a long time now. All of the stars aligned for me for once.

I think this era of games considerably predated the mods craze / addition of extra toys etc. You could probably LED it without any major complications . . . but then, I wouldn't be particularly keen on improving the view of THAT artwork; better to leave it dark. And I'm fine with the factory ROMs.

Have been playing this every day now for some time. Cleaning & Waxing the pf, on top of the return gates adjustment I described previously, has made a very favorable difference. A minor jolt-nudge is returning way more balls that would have drained, and the waxing even has certain balls returning through the gates on their own. Have been securing MB stacked upon MB, and edging ever closer to the 6.5 Mil. GC score left by the previous owner.

I agree: there are no must-have mods. You either keep it original and tuned-up or make subtle, tasteful, reversible improvements to get the best enjoyment (and resale value) out of a game.

Sorry, I wasn't referring to toys or other mods of that sort, more like on how on a Williams System 6, you beef up resistors and MOSFETs, etc. My poor wording.

Re-capping the squawk-and-talk board is a good idea if it has never been done. On a game this old, pretty much every capacitor on all boards will be going or gone.

And the pots too. The OEM ones aren’t very good.

If my MPU is good. anything good reason other than the optional setting to free play if I upgrade to an alltek?

Im going to swap the power supply board.

The lamp driver already has a new board. The S&T and reverb have been gone through.

Have no idea on the driver board. Hopefully the caps have been replaced at least once.

Ok, no reverb on the Centaur I just picked up. Could it be anything other than the Say It Again board? I'm still driving home, so I can't look at it until tomorrow. But I may wait until the weekend when I have more time.

Re-cap the Say-it-Again board or it could be that the reverb chip is dead - these are NLA but you can substitute another reverb circuit. Parts4Pinballs used to sell a replacement reverb board but I don't see it on their site anymore - maybe contact them and ask if they have any left over.

Marco has replacement reverb boards:

https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/AS-2518-81-PB

One might tinker with the components on existing ones, but I did not have the patience for that: just replaced both speech boards with new ones, which are available. (At least, I think both of them are. I bought the S&T as spare stock from an obliging fellow Pinsider.) Mr. Centaur went from sounding like a drunken sailor to having exemplary elocution !

PBL has one a little cheaper. I’ve had this board for a couple years, no issues.

https://www.pinballlife.com/bally-say-it-again-replacement-board.html

I ordered this one. Thanks, everyone.

I ordered a replacement, but may still tinker. No problem with having a spare if I can fix it.

Is there a recommended pitch for the playfield? For instance, my Firepower is recommended to be 6 degrees and F-14 is supposed to be 7.5-8 degrees of I remember correctly. Those were in the respective manuals. I didn't see anything in the Centaur manual and was just wondering. I know it's to taste, but I like to start at the recommended settings before I adjust it to my liking.

I have to get new leg levelers because there's a drain in the floor near where my Centaur is so the floor dips by one of the legs.

I also need to play with the dip switches and make scoring a little harder. While this plays better than the one I was used to in league, my scores are way higher than I've ever gotten, and I'm not a very good player.

I'll have to see if I can track down the home ROMs to get that bonus to not carry over.

They are too low. Mine are flush with the playfield and never any stuck balls.

If my original MPU is good. Would there be a good reason other than the optional setting to free play if I upgrade to an alltek?

Also I thought I read back in the thread, there is an actual home rom chip you swap out easily that upgrades the game play?

**I realized my original post was worded poorly.

Has anyone developed something similar to a GI OCD board for Bally games? The Centaur I just picked up came with LEDs in the GI and in attract mode, the flashing is very difficult to look upon. If the LEDs faded in and out like an incandescent, I bet it would be fine.

Nope just as annoying with incandescent.

Sheev - An easy work around for lack of free play with original board set is to set the first free game as low as possible, say 100K or less. Unless you really have a bad game, you will always be awarded a free game. Then set second and third score awards where you want them or match the game card.

Damn.

Incandescent GI is much less seizure inducing on Centaur.

This is what I read or what I meant when I was talking about home roms. I read this awhile ago so I knew I had read something on home roms. Anyhow after re-reading this it seems super confusing and over my head.

You can disable that flashing GI during attract mode. As a result, the game won’t momentarily go dark when balls are deployed from below, but for me, that is MUUUUCH less annoying than that strobing, pulsating GI! I felt like I needed a Xanax just to get anywhere near it!! LOL Plus, when all my other games around it are lit up, that blackout feature isn’t really that effective anyway.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/how-to-turn-off-attract-mode-on-centaur

There has to be a best of both worlds solution out there, I'm just not knowledgeable enough to come up with one.

20221125_122328 (resized).jpg

Two questions:

1. Is there a way to avoid what the "R" is doing in the photo? I've had to adjust slide this back into place twice in two days. What causes this to happen?

2. Should you be able to make a Queen's Chamber shot from a trap on the right flipper?

1. Have not encountered this, so I don't know. But, due to age and wear, I have at this point replaced all of my drops on this game. A couple of them (one in each bank) had snapped, and the others had quite a lot of mileage on them, so it was time.

2. L. flipper shots directly at the QC captive ball only seem to work at a certain linear angle. I make that sometimes on the fly, not from a trap. My R. flipper shots that hit the QC captive ball are all I think curving around inside the "guide" (with the round plastic target on the outside), but more often on the fly, and more often from a light pass than from a trap.

Your drop finger is worn, or the plate that stops the fingers from going too far is. Take a look at the reset plunger and coil stop as well, if they are worn it will pull the targets too high. If it happens very rarely that sort of just happens... but more often look for wear.

Yes, if you hit it correctly. If you already have a couple of the drops down though you might not get enough mustard on the shot to get more.