Hi Pinside!

I have a Solar City bonus stepper that doesn't want to be 100% accurate. Some of the things it occasionally does. It misses counting the first bonus. It misses counting the last bonus. It gives random 2000 bonus instead of 1000. It gives a 5000 bonus burst for the last bonus.

I've re-adjusted the stepper position 20 times, and never found the sweet spot that will get it to perform 100% every ball. Eventually I settled on around 90% accuracy and left it alone.

None of the issues are constant. Some games they happen. Some games they don't. This leads me to believe that no matter how many times I add or remove a millimeter to the steppers position, it's more a reliability issue, than a misaligned contact disk.

I've rebuilt a Williams stepper recently. When I did that, every instructional video I watched on the process included a greasing of the contacts and contact springs. The couple of videos I've seen working on Gottlieb steppers didn't include that step.

I'm looking for any advice in general or specific on this issue. I've seen questions asked about these steppers before, but they're usually more specific. Mine probably needs a tear down and rebuild, and as of yet I haven't been able to find a good video on that. Thanks if you can help.

Thank you. There are some things for me to check from that thread.

It definitely counts to 15.

Thank you very much. My double bonus is also mysteriously not working. This might be it.

I was hoping maybe some lube on the rivets. lol Oh man!

Hi again, Pinside.

I'm still trying to get my Solar City to count it's bonus correctly. I saw a video where someone pointed out that the Bonus 15 position switch has to be exactly right in order for this unit to work correctly. My game seemed to be counting at the same slow speed as the machine he was debugging. I tried to adjust the switches and now my game doesn't count bonus at all. So far I've mangaged to.

Get the game to endlessly eject balls to the plunger.
Endlessly run the score motor.
or endlessly score 1000 pts, very rapidly.

I notice that when the game is endlessly scoring 1000 pts rapidly, the bonus stepper has stopped on the first rivet that corresponds to the first dropped target, but doesn't proceed.

I will try to get a picture later, of what I've done to the switches.

Thanks if you can help or give advice.

Evan

EDIT : Nevermind. The faq someone previously uploaded has pictures of what I need to get the switches to look like. I should be okay. thanks again kangourou

I think I might need help after all. I'm pretty sure I got the switches correct on the 15 th bonus switches. Closed, Open, Closed then Open, Closed, Open on the 15th position. The bonus seems to count to whatever is the first target down and then fires 1k points till I kill the power. Not sure if I've done something wrong, or someone had previously messed with something that now doesn't jive with factory settings. I'll try again tomorrow, but if this rings a bell with anyone, please speak up.

Thanks

Evan

Good morning baldtwit

Really glad to get your help on this. This Solar City is my first machine, and also my favorite. The bonus unit was a mess when I first got it. Scoring was all over the place. I pretty much got it scoring once for every target down accurately, but never had the double bonus working at all and the length of time to process each bonus seemed unusually long. Eventually saw a video that showed the issue with the 15th position switch and G relay relationship. I haven't really watched what the G relay was doing, I was just trying to duplicate what I saw for the 15th position switch setup. That's when my game stopped counting bonus at all.

Here is the current state of the 15th position switches.

I'll go have a look at what the G relay is doing now.

Thanks again!

IMG_0113 (resized).JPG

IMG_0117 (resized).JPG

Hi @baldtwit,

Right now, I have the G relay and score motor working, but the bonus stepper doesn't seem to be advancing. It was as recently as last night, but my messing with everything seems to have affected that. Not sure what I've done.

I guess at this point, the 15th position is irrelevant, since it isn't advancing.

I'll keep looking.

Evan

By top step, do you mean 15th position, or 1st position. Whatever I'm suffering at the moment, is stopping the bonus unit from advancing at all. Seems to stay motionless when the ball drains. Sorry if I'm misunderstanding. I'll look again.

Hi Again,

I just went down to see exactly what the bonus stepper was doing not doing, and tried to adjust and clean the switches to make sure the closed switches were tight. I feel the switches are probably working as intended. The two closed switches seem tight and there is a noticeable gap for the make/break switch. What is happening when the ball drains atm is the score motor turns on and the G relay fires and the coil to advance the stepper sucks in, but then hangs and the score motor just spins. When I shut the power, the G relay relaxes, the solenoid releases and the stepper steps up, but in reality it's hanging at the 1/2 position. If the first target is in the down position, the game fires 1000k like a machine gun until I cut the power. Hope this helps track down the problem.

Not sure what it's worth, but I've always suspected that my Solar City was hacked by someone who didn't really know what they're doing. I know that since getting it, the Double Bonus has never worked and it's always had that slow bonus count. I wonder if something else on the machine became an issue, and the person working on it found they could at least get it counting again by opening the 15 bonus switch permanently. Now that I've got the switches pretty close to factory, it's acting like I've broke something, but honestly. I feel that I've been pretty careful not to disturb other parts of the mechanism. Not sure I'm understanding why the coil that advances the stepper is locking. Is there some kind of EOS switch involved in this process?

Thank you

Evan

Thanks for helping out paulace

Speaking of Motor switches. I noticed this switch in my initial scan of the game many months ago. I gap'd it and the score motor just endlessly spun. Put it back and stopped touching things. To my thinking that switch should be open and then get closed by the arm when the score motor comes around. No?
IMG_0118 (resized).JPG

OMG!! When I fixed that switch (this time) the game counted down the bonus. Sounded different than I've ever heard it before. I think faster. When I fixed that switch last time the score motor just ran endlessly. I'm pretty delighted at the moment. I'm going to go do some more testing now, but we're on to something! Hopefully it's accurate, and then on to the double bonus issue. Wow!

EDIT : It fixed the double bonus too!!

On the double bonus ball though, the score motor kept running after the bonus was counted and the game didn't end. Seemed to end okay for ball 1-4. Could that be the switch gap you were talking about? I'll check that again.

Here is a better pic of those motor switches. If the game is north to south it would be in the SE or bottom right position.

One thing I did notice. The Non scores on the bonus countdown take significantly longer than the scores. The scores are now like a machine gun, but the non scores seem to take as long as before. Maybe slightly less. I'll have to test it some more.

IMG_0121 (resized).JPG

I would say the sound of my bonus unit at the moment is creative drummer. That is, it's faster than before to be sure, but the pace is not a constant rhythm, more of a jazz drum solo. Is this why people say this 15 position switch has to be perfect? I'll have another go at them.

Thank you everybody who helped me with this. baldtwit paulace kangourou @john_i.

Thank you all!

I finally know what machine gun bonus is supposed to sound like. As a side bonus, double bonus started working as well. I think the blades can still be dialed in more. The bonus still breaks rhythm occasionally. The game is now ending correctly as well. That might simply be a glitch. Think the ball count unit might need to be adjusted cleaned. Another day. Thank you again!!

Hi Alberto,

If you look at the 13th post in this thread you'll see position 1 and position (14) of my bonus unit. My bonus unit was only counting to 14, because the make/break switch that ejects the ball was being triggered at the 14th position. I adjusted both switches to allow for a 15th count and it's working great now. Your bonus unit should be starting on the 2nd rivet on the outer track and it should count 15 times until it triggers the 15th position switches which should correspond to your bonus unit being over NO rivet. That's what was confusing me a lot. The cycle ends on the position after the last rivet, not the last rivet as I thought.

You will need to adjust your unit so your 15th position switches are triggered at that point. If you take pictures of your first and last position I might be able to give you better advice, but you haven't really given any indication of why your machine is doing it. Is it starting too early? Are your switches somehow bent and getting triggered too early? Is your mechanism out of sync and resetting to the wrong spot?

Good luck

Evan

Let me know if you need a close up of a particular region.
kangourou 's faq mentions the 4D switch schematic error. Should be near the beginning.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-scan-bonus-unit-of-canada-dry-target-alpha-solar-city-
IMG_0146 (resized).JPG