Quoted from Mark0:Wow, this is great to have a forum for High Speed. I picked one up back around 2005 from a guy on Long Island. It gave me a couple years of fun, but one day it crapped out and has been collecting dust in my man town since. Got around to cleaning it up the other day and was able to get it working, well, that is I remembered the left flipper solenoid must have heated up and frozen.
Not sure if it's better to post a new thread on this issue or simply report it here for help. Let me know the general procedure for asking for help?
I purchased a new solenoid, specifically this one: ebay.com link: itm which is supposedly the stock solenoid accoring to the parts list. Problem is the one it's replacing has two diodes, not one. Simply soldering it back resulted in very weak action. Is there a simple fix for this (like re-using the diodes), or will it involve some re-wiring. I read some flippers are in series and some parallel. Could this be causing my issue? I understand there could be mechanical issues, contact points, etc... it just seems as though it's not getting the full 50v of power which leads me to believe it's component, wiring driven.
Any help appreciated!
Mark O
I'm relatively new here, so I might not have the social conventions completely down yet. But I have the impression that tech questions likely to be easily answered without much investigation belong in the "club" thread, while more complicated ones are better posted in a separate thread where a lot of back-and-forth can be done without cluttering the club thread.
As for your specific issue, I'm not an expert on flipper design (as evidenced by the question I posted earlier ), but I assume I found the same useful articles online that you already have, e.g. https://homepinballrepair.com/pinball-flipper-rebuilding-how-to-fix-and-replace/. The author writes that they are unsure whether serial and parallel coils are wired the same, but it may be that the new solenoid you purchased, a serial coil since it has just one diode, is not compatible with the connections required for a parallel coil.
It does make sense that the hookups would be different, since the EOS switch has a slightly different behavior depending on whether the coil is serial or parallel.
Looking at my own machine, I have a serial coil, so I expect that's what's "stock", meaning your machine got converted to parallel at some point (apparently that's a thing). If you want to connect a new coil the same as the old, you'd have to have a parallel coil. But as I understand it, conversion is simply keeping the connections correct, so in theory you could revert back to a serial coil, as long as you change the connections appropriately.
This would involve understanding which terminals go to which sets of windings (whether serial or parallel, the coil has two different sets of windings), and making sure that you configure the connections so that the EOS switch is bypassing the "hold" windings when closed, for the serial coil. I would guess there's a diagram online somewhere that says exactly what the terminals on the coil are, but I would guess you could tell just by checking the resistance, since the hold windings should have a lot more resistance than the power windings.
I don't know off the top of my head what changes to the connections you'd need to make, but I did find several web pages discussion converting to/from parallel and serial coils. In case you haven't already seen them:
https://www.thisweekinpinball.com/pinball-u/vids-guide-rebuilding-flippers/
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.pinball/c/wscS_REZHO8
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.pinball/c/7w_ylCWpvHo/m/sPUKBGMuEAAJ
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.pinball/c/qltr_0C-l1Y
That should hold you until someone more knowledgeable pipes up. Hope that helps!