I'm troubleshooting a nice clean specimen of Gottlieb Surfer from 1976. My machine runs through what seems like a perfectly normal start sequence, but the player one "hundreds" score reel always goes right past zero and stops on one. It does this every time. Then the score motor finishes its cycle, the ball is served up for a new game, and everything seems to work just fine. There is no obvious indication of a stuck 100-pt. playfield switch--it happens instantly on reset, there is no associated chime, and all the stuff on the playfield seems to be functioning normally.

My first thought was that the plastic reel itself might be installed in the wrong position, but it's not that, because the 9 rolls over perfectly to 10 during testing and game play. (Plus, I don't think the plastic reel can be mis-installed anyway.) I compared the switch positions and functioning of the player one "gremlin" score reel with its player two counterpart (which always resets perfectly to all zeros) and the switches seem to be adjusted similarly.

Weird, huh? Any suggestions on where to look?

Mike
P.S. Thanks for all the help with my previous questions on other machines. You guys have helped steer to me to the answers on multiple occasions.

Yes, the player one score resets first, this one immediately resets to 00100, then the player two reel resets to all zeros. It's already on 00100 before the player unit advances to reset the player two score.

I will check the M relay and report back.

Found it. Sure enough, it was the run-out switch on the score reel unit. A secondary leaf was connecting across all the time, making contact even when the switch was supposed to be open. All good now. 00000.

Thanks Mark! I'll hit you up with my other remaining problem on this machine--bonus scoring that does not seem to be functioning--if I can't get it figured out on my own.

Mike

Quick update on the bonus scoring problem......it was an incorrectly adjusted switch on the AX relay.

Naturally, the AX relay.