I picked up a Haunted House about a month ago. The guy had it in a storage unit he was trying to clear out. He said he moved it into storage about 6 months before I got it and it worked at his house but didn't work at the storage unit; it just powered up but wouldn't start a game. Last night I hooked it up and it started a game so I think he just missed or had a connector backwards.

He told me the VUK for the lower playfield was stuck on and had melted a few in the past so I figured a bad transistor on that. I took a short video of it to show my friend. On the last ball I plunged it got stuck behind the VUK on the main playfield that kicks the ball up to the upper pf. Later that evening I watched the video I shot to send to my friend and the VUK for the main playfield worked.

I looked over some info on the System 80 on pinwiki. I think it mentioned that a dirty connector can cause a coil to do this. Does this sound like what I might have going on? If so would it be a good idea to clean all of the edge connector contacts with a pink eraser as mentioned on pinwiki? Since the manual is locked down and not on IPDB does anyone knows which transistor is for the VUK on the lower PF?

Ok, thanks for the info. I will have to check that the contacts aren't bent shut.

It doesn't look like any of the ground mods have been done so maybe I should just do these sometime before I try and diagnose anything else?

Good call on ordering a manual; there is a ton of stuff on this game and I'm still shocked how much there is on the bottom of the playfields! I'll have to order a manual with my next Pinball Resource order.

I had sometime to dedicate to Haunted Hole this weekend, as Clay Harrel calls it in his This Old Pinball videos that my friend let me borrow. I was going through some stuff that came with the game and found a photo copied copy of the manual, bonus! The coil that is locked on for the lower playfield is the drop target bank reset coil, not the VUK coil.

I did the ground mods on all of the boards in the backbox and the chaser board for the backbox GI. Before I powered the game on I looked at all of the fuses in the game. Someone had previously hot wired, I think it was F4 or whatever fuse is for the solenoids on the main panel and F14 on the bottom side of the playfield. I put new correct fuses in and fired up the game. Off the plunge the ball went into the saucer for the main playfield upkicker and it just sat there. I checked the fuses. F14 was blown and the solenoid fuse on the main panel was good. The switch for the upkicker was not stuck in the closed position; it had a pretty decent gap.

I checked the resistance on both coils compared to what was in the manual and they both read a little high but not a ton high. The manual says coil A-5194 for the upkicker should read 4.5 and I was getting 6.0. It says the lower playfield drop target bank reset coil should read 3.35 and it read 3.8; I verified both coils had the correct part number coils installed. With the F14 fuse blown I noticed that neither of these two coils were locked on. I also noticed on a couple of the coils someone in the past had installed capacitors for some reason.

Does anyone know what I should look into next maybe the transistors for those coils or is there something else I should look into first?

F4 didn't blow after I replaced it but F14 did and I believe it is related to the two coils that are stuck on.

All of the pop bumper boards in my game are marked "modified" so someone did something to them at one point but that doesn't necessarily mean they are still good.

I have a copy of the manual and believe the schematics are in there, even though I'm not much good at reading them!

I can check but I don't think the trap door coil is stuck on and I need to figure out what the right side kicker is but the main pf upkicker and 5 bank reset are the ones I'm having the problem with.

What is the right side kicker, a slingshot or maybe the VUK for the lower playfield? I know the main pf kicker isn't shorted because I tested it's resistance last night and it showed close to spec. What would I want to look at and for on the connector? I had all of the boards off to do the ground mods and all of the board contacts looked good. I didn't look too closely at any of the connector contacts except for the MPU to driver board connector and they weren't shiny but dull looking. I would like to replace all of those contacts if I could but I think they quit making those contacts so not sure what to do, any suggestions?

I won't rule out the pop boards but do you think they could still be related to this problem?

found it, getting 44.5 ohm outside lug to outside lug, middle lug to left 41.7, and middle to right is 3.3

I did some resistance testing on the trap door coil since it's on the F14 fuse and came up with some strange readings. It has the same coil in it as the main playfield flipper coils. I was getting some weird readings on all of the coils- see my notes. I did not disconnect the leads on any of the coils and re-check but I guess that would be the next step.

I also found that a resistor is missing on the resistor bank on the lower playfield. I looked at the wire colors and one end goes to the saucer switch and the other goes to a target; I can't remember if it goes to a stand-up target or a leaf switch behind a rubber but definitely goes to a switch.

I disconnected all 4 of the pop bumper boards but the two coils are still locked on.
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I was thinking of pulling the drvr board tonight and testing all of the transistors to see what I get.

I was going to disconnect both wires and re-test. Thanks for the tip on holding the EOS open while I take my readings!

Thanks for clarifying it's a regular diode I'm missing; I'll have to look it up in the manual for a part number. Anything else I should be looking at?

Zacaj,

Good call on under playfield transistors; I will check those as well. I was planning on checking all transistors on the main board, the pre-driver lamp transistors are on the main board also, just the smaller ones, right?

I do think I have some of those diodes you mention.

I did some testing on the transistors. First I tested the driver board transistors. All of the U45s tested good except Q14 was slightly out of range. I then did the round metal cased ones (2N3055) In Clay's video he tells you to put the red lead on the right leg, when looking at the back side of the board, which I believe is the base lead and you should get between .4 to .6 and then place the black lead on the nut and you should also get .4 to .6. All of them passed this test but I saw another test on Pinwiki that said to place the black lead on the case then place the red lead on each of the legs; one leg should give .5 to .7 and the other leg should be null; only one out of the 3 passed this test.

In Clay's video he says to test the under playfield transistors by taking the red lead and placing on the metal casing and take the black lead to both legs and you should get a reading of .4 to .6 on both legs. I got this reading on one of the legs and the other legs were no reading for all 3 of the under playfield transistors. I did NOT have the board in the game at the time I did this test so not sure if that is affecting my results; mainly the no reading.

At this point I think I should replace the Q14, the 2 2N3055 resistors on the board and maybe all 3 of the resistors under the playfield. What do you think?

The only ones I came up with that I didn't get a reading on were the 3 on the underside of the playfield and that might have been because the driver board wasn't installed at the time. Clay's video that I have been using is specifically for Haunted House and Black Hole so it should be spot on and Pinwiki will be more general.

I went ahead and order a few 2N3055 and 2N5879s from Marco. I guess when they get here I will start out replacing one of the under PF transistors first, if it doesn't fix it, move onto next under PF transistor until I get all of them done then move onto board transistors. Not sure what else to do at this point.

Ok, I can do that. How do I know what under PF transistor goes with what pre-driver? I do have a cheat sheet of sorts that was printed off of Clay's site that lists what each transistor goes to but I'm not sure since there is no labeling on the under PF transistors. Would you know what their designation is?

My Marco order with resistors is supposed to be here tomorrow so I thought I better double-check things under the playfield like checking coil resistance and stuff to make sure I don't blow out my new resistors if there is a bad coil. Can anyone confirm for me that I have the lower playfield 5-bank coil wired correctly so it doesn't blow out what will be my newly installed transistors? I have taken a picture of the schematic that shows the coil and wire colors.

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Before I power the game on after replacing the transistors under the PF and on the driver board should I remove all of capacitors someone added to the coils for some reason? There are more than the two in the pictures; those were the only ones close to each other.

I also found resistors where I guess it should be diodes. I'm thinking this could be part of the problem because I looked at the wire colors on and each one of them goes to one of the under main PF transistors. Do you think I should swap these for 1N4004s to see if maybe that will fix the locked on coils before replacing transistors? The under PF transistors were giving some weird readings and i wonder if this is why?
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Thanks for confirming. I am not great yet at reading schematics. I was pretty sure it was right but wanted to make damn sure before I fired it up with the new components in it.

thanks, looks like the capacitors are supposed to be on some of the coils. I thought someone added them for a work around on something else since I've never seen caps on coils before but then again this is my first Gottlieb.

Do you think I should try and replace the resistors that are going to under PF transistors or just go ahead and replace the under PF and board resistors? The only bad thing I can think of is if it doesn't fix it that will make one more time I have to install, remove, and install the power drvr board which I try not to pull boards/connectors anymore than I have to on older games in fear of putting extra wear on the connector contacts, especially since these bifurcons are difficult to come by. Not sure if the resistors in place of where resistors should be would make the coils lock on, probably not?

Looks like the resistors are actually supposed to be there; thanks for clearing this up for me! I will test them to be sure they are good though.

I haven't had a chance to look at the caps yet, but you are right from looking at the picture and from the piece of the schematic Zacaj put up the ones currently on the coils aren't even in the same ball park! Whoever put them on must have been thinking some capacitor is better than no capacitor! lol

Weird! I wonder if your coils are getting the 38 volts explained above instead of the 24 volts since there are no caps?

I would like to test the game after I replace the transistors. I'm guessing it will be ok to try it, even though they are the wrong value, since they've probably been on there since before I got the game and I don't think those coils are in anyway related to the 2 that are currently locked on. I will definitely end up replacing them with the correct ones sooner than later. I don't have any on hand but my friend is checking to see if he might have any of them.

I am happy to report back that I no longer have two locked on coils! I replaced Q14 and Q17 which are both U45 transistors. I found resistor R55 was off value; it is supposed to be a 1k resistor and it was reading 275 ohms. I replaced it with the correct resistor and it was reading 275 again. I got to looking and this resistor went to one of the 2N3055 metal-cases transistors, which I planned on replacing anyways but hadn't done yet, after replacing R55 started reading correctly. I also replaced one of the other 2N3055 transistors on the driver board and one that is mounted to the bottom of the main playfield but don't think I needed to replace that one.

I went ahead and replaced the caps on the coils with the closest values my friend had for the time being until I place an order and get the correct ones. I didn't have much time to test the game before I needed to leave but when the ball went down in the lower PF it couldn't make it back up because the tube or something must be broken or mis-aligned and the sound would work on some games and not on others, so I guess those will be the next things I look into. If I can't figure them out on my own I'll start new posts.

A big thanks to everyone that contributed to the thread; I definitely learned A LOT between everyone here, looking at the schematics, reading the guides, etc to get this fixed.

Thanks, I'm looking forward to it!