That’s the left inlane switch

Well right inlane is setup the same way so I doubt that’s it

yep thats not it. back to the drawing board.

Thanks for the encouragement. I had given up for the day, but after reading your post I decided to go back down and give it another look over.

Someone soldered a common wire onto the play field shoot again light that went to common wires on the bottom of the playfield that connected to the blue wires. I thought that I would snip it and connect it to one of the yellow commons to see what would happen.

Boom. Problem solved. I suppose at one point someone solder that one back together but instead of soldering it to one of the yellow commons they soldered it to a blue instead. I need to do some play testing, but I think that fixed it.

First pic is where they had it soldered before. Second pic is where I jumped it to the yellow common

image (resized).jpg

image (resized).jpg

That seemed to do the trick. A dozen games or so with no issue and the replay lights are working appropriately.

On to the next thing. Does anyone know how to get the chime to work on things like the slingshots and the advance bonus switches up top by the 5000 saucer? If I manually press them they will activate the chime but it seems no matter how hard or soft the ball hits the rubber, the switches and kicker fire faster than the game can register the hit. I’ve fooled around with adjustments but don’t seem to be making progress.

I probably spent two hours messing with the 10 point relay and the 10 point switches up top and on the kickers. Everything seems to be clean and appropriately adjusted.

If I touch the relay with a feather the chime unit sounds but somehow it still isn’t activating the chime unit when the ball hits the advance bonus switches up top. The kickers will register a chime unit sound about 50% of the time. I watched the relay while the switches were activated with a ball and it seems they were all making appropriate contact. Kind of at a loss on this one for now. I’m gonna move on to something else and circle back later unless someone has suggestions.

Thanks in advance.

K. I checked that last night but I’ll check it again. So thinking this through that eos switch should open only when that coil plunger is all the way in correct?

Thanks for all the help so far. It's been a minute since I've had a chance to put some time in fixing my remaining issues. Still haven't got the chime unit figured out yet but moved on to some other arguably more significant issues.

1 - Coin unit - Game wouldn't start a 4 player game
Solved - brought the mech panel up where I could work on it. Took the coin unit apart and cleaned and lubed the shaft and adjusted spring tension and the switch. Problem solved.

2 - Player unit - Game doesn't cycle to the next player during a game but if the player unit is manually moved things work just as they should. This I believe is two separate issues. First I don't believe the player unit is getting power to pulse the coil to move to the next player. The reset coil works however. For example, if I manually advance through all the players it will reset to player one once all players have played their first ball. Second issue. I took the unit apart and cleaned/inspected. It freewheels great when the player disc (the one with all the little spring loaded contacts) is not attached. When the player disc is on it seems the tension from all those little springs causes quite a bit of resistance to smooth functioning. I must be missing something here. Maybe thats just how it is but it seems that it took a lot of revolutions on that spring to move the disc once it was tightened down.

I did put a spring replacement kit on the player unit.

Interesting development. Soaked the player disc in some mean green and made sure all the springs on the snow shoe contacts were actuating freely. Dried off, Put back on and started a game. To my surprise it let me start a two player game and actually advanced players during the game. I then started a 4 player game and it advanced through each player. It didn’t give an extra ball to the second player when extra ball score was reached. But hey I thought I’m making progress. After that game i started another and then it began doing the same stuff as before. Not advancing to the next player after a ball.

At this point I suppose the problem may be a connection on the player unit. Going back in to test/play and see if I can identify the issue.

Update. I was just beginning my deep dive on the schematic to test the circuit that energized the player unit step up coil. I thought maybe I should just test the coil to be sure it’s not shorted or something. So I set my multimeter to ohms and checked the resistance. It checked out just fine but had to monkey with the lugs a bit to get my meter on them. And voila now the step up unit works. Must have been a bad solder joint on the lugs or something. I’ll resolder tomorrow.

Played for the last two hours with my son and it works on multiplayer games. The tension on that disc or the spring could still use some adjustment because it still gets stuck kind of in between player two and three and three and four. Played a dozen 2 player games before it started doing the same thing on the 2 player games. Overall making progress.

Anyone know how many turns should be on that player unit spring?

Disassembled the player unit again. A little more cleaning. Removed the thin film of grease I applied to the contacts. Put the original spring back on and with a little adjusting now she’s playing 100%. I would like to add some sort of lubricant to the contacts. I tried the super lube stuff just a thin film but wiped it off when I cleaned up the disc again. Is that the best stuff to use? I’ve also read that some type of Teflon lubricant would be good.

All in all very pleased with where it is compared to where it started. Still have a few small things to chase down. I’ll post a list soon. Thanks again for all your help folks.

Awesome!

yep. ive watched every minute. he's talking through a lot of the stuff i had to figure out with pinside's help. really helps understand how it all works. only issue i have left are my chimes. i haven't had time to work on it in a while but I'm sure ill get it figured out.

just watched the one he posted yesterday. with this series and the prior he worked through about 90% of the issues i had

so if none of my score reels activate the chimes when it's tallying the score after a ball drains, where is the common place I should look to further investigate. during game play the chimes work but not 100%. If i hold any playfield switch even half a second I get the chime, but sometimes the ball hits so quick it won't activate the chime. but it never chimes at all during the score countdown after a ball drain.

Yes sir. Rebuilt with a kit from Marco. This one really has me puzzled. If I manually actuate any of the 10, 100, 1000, or 10000 relays the chimes sound every time no matter how lightly I push them. But when the game is firing them rapidly during the score reel counts it doesn’t make a sound.

I stepped away from this about a month ago to clear my head and come back at it again. Can’t wait to get this one solved.

I'll give it a shot and report back

Alright folks. It's been a bit since I've had time to mess with this game. Other than the chimes, which i don't know if I'll ever figure out, I only have a few minor issues left till this game is playing at 100%.

Here they are in no particular order, though I can't help but believe they are related.

1. The RIGHT lower stand up switch advances both bonus ladders/activates both RIGHT and LEFT advance relays. The LEFT lower stand up switch functions normally advancing only the LEFT.

2. The LEFT outside roller switch/LEFT outlane scores 10,500 points instead of 10,000.

3. Top eject hole scores 5,500 when advance LEFT bonus is lit. It scores normally when the RIGHT is lit.

So there they are. The only remaining game play issues. I have to think 2 and 3 are intimately related. I've looked at schematics for hours and examined relays and switches that seem to be related to these areas. I've also watched all the Joe's Classic Arcade/Ronnie's videos on Grand Prix, which are awesome by the way.

Hadn't messed with the game in months and then dove back in a couple nights ago to try to finish her off. As it stands now, its a great playing game, I just want these final bugs worked out. Thanks in advance for all of your help.

Travis

Well. I thought I had. But I’ll go back and double check when I’m able to get back down to the game room.

This man is a genius. Takes me a minute to get around to messing with games. Work, family, other games, etc. But sure enough, the stand up switches were actually misadjusted on both sides. Put in the correct spacing and problem solved.

Now the only issue left is figuring out the chimes. I suspect it has to be somewhere on the score reels because I was a bit lazy and only thoroughly cleaned the ones that weren't working when I got it. I'll methodically go through and disassemble and clean each one and see if that fixes the inconsistent chime issue. But as far as scoring/gameplay she's 100%. Thanks for all the help getting to this point. It took about a year of off and on tinkering, but its quite gratifying to see one come back to life.

Currently have a Rancho that was a complete mess. Been working through it a little at a time for months. Haven't even powered it on yet, but getting close.

Thanks for all your help folks. Have a great week.

Fixing misadjusted standups fixed all these issues.