Hi everybody, I have officially joined the Haunted House owner's club, took the excellent example that SunKing wrote up previously on this forum (and posted lots of details on another thread, he did just a beautiful job of rebuilding the mechanics and getting the playfield from BAD shape to back to near excellent condition in my opinion). The only things the machine really needed were:
1) some exterior cabinet work; Brad did a really smart job of taking a terrible situation and making it look good with the red "blood" effect ("before" and "after" photos below), my wife thought I should just do the same on the other side which I considered but decided against (FIXED - filled in things a bit, sanded cabinet, painted by hand and put in my own "lighting", does not match the factory paint design but close and is fine until (and if) I want to do a full repaint with templates or a wrap
2) some adjusting of the attic upkicker (FIXED - wound up swapping out the 5195 coil that was not original and going back to the 5194 OEM one, works great)
3) new Secret Passage plastic (FIXED, well soon, ordered one from Europe, here any day!)
4) the sound worked ok but sound quality was pretty bad (FIXED - new $25 Pioneer TS1634R 4-ohm speakers via Amazon sound like a darned IMAX theater compared to the original speakers ... yeah I painted the underside of the cabinet as well, had extra time and paint on my hands)
5) some troubleshooting of the trap door which opens and closes fine BUT opens when a game is started instead of waiting for you to hit the right target combos, then it closes when the game is over ... and opens back up when the next game is started (NOT FIXED, DRIVING ME INSANE).

So I beg, no I plead after spending more than a few days trying to figure out this trap door thing for some help! So here is what I have tried:
1) replaced the driving transistor (but turned out the reading for the original one showed the original one working fine, I just got a strange reading until I completely took it out of the circuit ... brand new transistor behaves the same).
2) double checked the circuit back to the Pascal board (V1.3); the repinning work is excellent (by Brad) and the L16 circuit from the board all the way to the transistor on the playfield works with a completed circuit using my meter.
4) Checked the switches that normally would activate the trap door, no issues (the trap door rollunder and the left lane rollover next to the lower bumper, switches both work, although I noticed that the score increments but there is no sound for the lower left rollover, seems odd since every other switch seems to have sound associated with it)
5) Using the Pascal board you can test each coil individually; well, they all work EXCEPT nothing happens for the L16 test, which of course is the trap door.
6) Using the Pascal board to test the "G" coils ("general" coils common to everything I think?), the VERY first test which shows "Relay" in the upper left score, "9 game" in the upper right, and "G-test" in the lower right activates the trap door coil; I think that is the Game Over relay test (since it activates the trap door I figured it might have something to do with the equation).

And I have cleaned every relay, checked the gaps for every relay, plugged and unplugged everything carefully multiple times, but for the life of me I cannot figure out this one. So if anyone has any tips or info to help with the trap door issue, I would be super grateful. But the machine is beautiful, plays great, and so far I love this pin ... a true classic that I am SO happy to have in my collection. Thanks in advance for any suggestions
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UPDATE - BAD PASCAL BOARD TRANSISTOR! I literally woke up in the night, thought about the trap door issue, and it hit me that perhaps the issue is with the Pascal board which I assumed was totally good to go. The board also has transistors, so that seems like the last area I haven't thoroughly checked. So today I pulled the board from the machine, tested everything, and sure enough there is a bad transistor ... you guessed it, QL16, which is related to the trap door circuit. I am a newbie and had never tested a transistor in my life until owning this machine, but I'm getting pretty good at reading schematics (although for the life of me I'm confused by the Gottlieb color-coding which doesn't always seem to match my machine ... especially references to brown wire which always seems to be white, but I digress).

AND this solves a mystery of the playfield transistor that I thought tested bad, replaced, and then the old one tested fine out of circuit. Now that I have the board removed, the playfield transistor in circuit tests fine, so that bad test was due to the one on the Pascal board, not the playfield. Note to self: for future transistor tests on the playfield, disconnect from the main board and test things separately where possible.

So I am relieved to have found the likely root cause of the issue, which is basically a $1 transistor (BD681). Now I have the decision to make about how to install it and not ruin a precious Pascal (and not cheap) board. I grew up soldering various little projects as a kid (model railroads and such), but hadn't tried it in years until I swapped out a coil on this machine. And it looks like a 5-year did the work, which is "ok" for a coil, NOT ok for an expensive board. If anyone has a recommendation for an electronics shop in Austin Texas that could swap out that transistor for a reasonable rate please advise. Or maybe I'll get a soldering station, practice, and then do it myself. Will post again whenever the transistor is fixed (and hopefully the trap door will be good to go, although if there is a short or issue that ruined the transistor in the first place then I may have more detective work to do). I am seeing how part (most?) of the fun of Haunted House is working on it ... fortunately I truly enjoy that aspect at least to some degree

EDIT: Well I wanted to have a System 80 game and so I think I'll "man up" and learn to solder properly, then install the transistor on the Pascal board (new soldering iron, practice breadboards, and 10 transistors on order!). Should be fun, hopefully by this time next week I'll be back in business with a 100% working machine.
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Wow, your old one looks ok but the new one looks awesome, might have to add one to the cart next time I place a Marcos order. Thanks for posting those pics.

During the "great Pinside outage of 2021" I completed my soldering job and swapped out the bad transistor on the Pascal board. It was scary due to my lousy skills, but after getting a new cheapo iron from Amazon and practicing on a breadboard my confidence grew, and the final product looks almost as if a robot did the work ... quite proud that I didn't botch it! So the big test: I fired up the machine, started a game, and lo and behold the trap door now functions exactly as it should ... it is FIXED!!! So the machine is truly now 100% functional, and I have been playing it for about a week with ZERO issues. I really love this machine even more than I thought I would and am thrilled to be part of the HH club. Now I'm thinking a Black Hole would make a great sibling machine ... aaah this hobby is addictive

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Thanks SunKing yep it certainly went to a loving home, you really gave it a completely new life, now I have an even greater appreciation for the amazing work you did with the mechanicals and the playfields, man what an endeavor!

Just for future viewers, my "new" HH is playing great, but every once in a while it decided that the cellar to main playfield VUK was just not going to kick the ball up enough. I tried adjusting it, would see it work fine maybe 5 or 10 times in a row, and then fail several times in a row to where it was ROUGHLY a 70% success rate. Playable, but everything else on the machine is absolutely 100%. The coil was fairly new with a crisp wrapper, but I finally realized that the coil number was a 1496, yet the part number should have been the slightly more powerful A-21741 per page 54 of the manual (although it appears to be a different part number in another location in the manual and on other forums threads). But bottom line, I put in the A-21741 and it has that ball flying up and out of the tube EVERY single time, probably have 100+ upkicks at this point with 100% success rate. So of course there are a variety of other issues that can cause the upkick problems, but at least for me swapping out the coil for the 21741 finally did the trick. LOVE HH, what a great game! And it has taught me SO much about working on machines in just a matter of weeks, been 1% frustration but 99% satisfaction

Beautiful in any setting! Yours looks like a really nice machine. Funny, I only have two pins: a Wonka and a Haunted House, and now that we have had some friends and family over I can say 100% (old and young) are immediately drawn to the HH. Update us with a pic in your "arcade" please!

and PS, the Viper in the background is not too shabby either, maybe not HH level of awesomeness, but not bad

Wow what a stunning pair!

Just FYI everybody, the Netherlands site www.ministryofpinball.com has some HH plastics (but I did not find the lower bank playfield part unfortunately). I ordered the "Secret Passage" plastic for around $30 total including shipping to the US; took maybe three weeks to arrive, but it is a perfect replacement and looks great. I was just glad to find somewhere that sold it; no luck with any US sites or eBay / etc.

I installed these on my HH a couple of months ago and they amazing and fit perfectly, nicely laminated and very sturdy as well. I bought them via eBay from a guy in the UK, around $12 shipped, well worth it for me. I can contact the seller and ask him to list another set if you are interested in picking up a set.

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This project is epic. Seriously, check out the other thread and prepare to be amazed. Haunted House fan of the year for sure!

100% good info, the flippers very likely are just a relay that is not contacting properly. I would be most concerned about the sound but certainly for the right price just grab it, everthing can be fixed. HH truly is an awesome machine and an all-time classic.

For me on my machine #1 is hard, maybe hit it 1 out of 10 shots, #2 I can get maybe 1 in 5, #3-5 all reasonably easy, maybe 1 out of 3 shots, extra ball is hard but easier than hitting #1. I am a very inexperienced player compared to most Pinsiders, but much better at HH after owning it for about 6 months.

Fantastic, welcome to the club, and that is a nice looking HH you have! I love mine, just a classic game and one I always gravitate to for a quick pin fix. And I have learned a bunch about working in machines, because truly is haunted . Anyway, sounds like yours may need some switch adjustments, don't think the three knocks is normal for ball eject, and taget 1 and 2 behavior should basically be the same. You might try watching some gameplay vids on YouTube for comparison. And yes the ball should have NO problem reaching the top, maybe replace the rubber and disassemble and clean if needed (might need a different spring as well). Also you can at least get an eyeball idea of how fast the table plays from YouTube and set yours up to be similar. I can snag a quick digital measurement of my playfield angle tomorrow if that would help. Anyhoo, have fun with your HH, truly is a magnificent beast!

Epic win!!! Seriously guys, he built this darned thing from the ground up. This definitely would be a potential winner in the "did you hear about some guy who built a (insert crazy insane project) in his garage?" category. This isn't just a Haunted House resurrected from the dead. A new life has been created here folks ... a Pinball miracle I dare say!

This resto is freakin' amazing. You Haunted House people are a dedicated bunch to this machine

Welcome! Sounds like you have some gremlins to work out, but that is part of the fun, right?!? My 3 nephews (ages 11, 15, 17) just spent a week with me, and 2 of them said HH was their favorite pin in my small 4 machine collection, even over Wonka and WOZ. This machine really strikes a chord with non-pin folk, young or old, absolutely a classic.

Negative ... I have looked into it and came away realizing nobody makes that as a standard offering. It is a shame as HH really could benefit from it, especially for better visibility of the upper playfield.

Looks nice, and when it is in use I bet 99% of people will never even notice any touchups. Well done, and it makes me happy to see folks caring for these machines. Long live HH!