Hey Everyone,

I have a 1964 Williams River Boat that I've brought back to life. Everything was working perfectly and I decided to loan it to my local pinball club. So the machine is now getting more use than it has in probably 30 years or more. I just found out that we are now having some issues. The machine is simply turning off mid game. It's not all the time, it'll play a few games fine, or sometimes it'll happen a bunch in a row. It seems to happen when the ball drains, but is also happening when the ball is just on the playfield somewhere. So no real pattern I could figure out.

The game just goes dead (everything off including lights). What's weird is you can just hit the left flipper button right away and it comes back on and it'll start a new game right away. So it's definitely not a fuse or anything as I saw this happen over and over.

My best guess is that there is some switch somewhere that is adjusted a little too close together and now that it's getting more use that switch is bouncing around more than ever and tripping something. Maybe something in the kickoff or the lock relay? I'm not really sure. What switches in a machine would cause immediate turn off?

As I mentioned it's on location, so I'm hoping to compile a list (with your help) of things to check when I go over there to give it a look. I'm hoping my Pinside friends will have several ideas of what it could be so that I can find the culprit at my next visit.

It's funny, whenever I think I'm getting pretty good with EMs, something new crops up and I feel like a newbie again! That keeps things fun! I greatly appreciate any suggestions, as always.

I did not think to check while I was there (I was looking at the machine right before closing), but the the schematics show a "knock-off switch". So I'm assuming this is what they called it in the early 60's? That's definitely on the list of things to check out. If it is like the kick switch, I guess I could just bypass or bend it so that it won't touch as it'll never be used.

Great suggestion, but I know the tilt light is working. We actually purposely tilted to see if that would shut off the machine and it didn't. What was interesting (and I forgot to mention) is that after it turned off and the left flipper button was pressed, sometimes the tilt light was on and sometimes not when it lit up again. Weird. I'm not sure about the whole tilt thing because I can't see how it would cause the whole machine to shut down....but maybe?!

Thanks everyone. As always the Pinside community is very generous. I plan to head over there tomorrow evening and poke around. I'll be concentrating on the lock relay and the kick switch. I will be sure to report back with what I find.

I cleaned and adjusted the lock relay. Plus I removed the post of the kick switch just in case (although I don't think that had anything to do with it). Seems to be working pretty good now. Thanks again.