I initially tried to build a little support out of washers and superglue to hold it in place, but that only worked for a few days before it broke again. What I did then was swap the two posts at the bottom end of the plastic and drill a new hole to accommodate the swap. The end was so broken off that there was nothing left to attach anyway. Now you can see that the plastic is back a hair from the targets, which is where it was getting hit the most for me (nothing on the bottom end left to hit!). I also had to put some washers on the top right post to make sure it was being held, as that part had also broken off. It's not perfect, but I've already spent enough money working on this thing, I don't need a whole new set of plastics on top of that! :p

hsplastic (resized).jpg

I guess I've been in the club for a couple of months now, and just found this thread yesterday. My machine has some wear, but not nearly as much paint is gone as some of the pics in this thread, thanks to the mylar which I think I'll leave on. Polishing it and the wood seem to work pretty well, I can easily (assuming I've lined them up correctly! :p) shoot the orbit all the way around from both sides and hit the ramp from the top flipper. I rebuilt the flippers and pop bumpers following vid's guides, and now they're great. The pop bumpers can really get going now! Having read through all 35 pages of this thread, I think I found some solutions to some of my remaining problems. There are basically three at this point, the ramp acting strange (go figure!), the shooter not making it up the ramp reliably, and the kickback not always working quite right.

On the ramp, I think I'm pretty much committed to cleaning and adjusting the switches no matter what, but the real problem is that sometimes the diverters stick in the closed position, forcing the ball to the left hideout (I do not believe the coil is stuck on when this happens). A good hard shot will pop them back open, but that isn't a solution. If I manually work them back and forth for a bit, it seems to help them operate properly for a while, but eventually it happens again. I think I may be stuck tearing the whole thing down to clean, but is there anything to look for in particular? The coil and sleeve seem fine when I move them by hand, so I don't think they need to be replaced. I do get phantom pops of the left hideout, which I thought was because maybe one of the switches was being intermittently grounded, but now I'm thinking it's more likely the ramp switch just needs adjustment.

I think I may have solution to the shooter issue after reading through this thread, and I think it's multi-faceted. As it is, I can hit the ramp from the shooter about 40% of the time, but sometimes it doesn't have enough power to make it all the way through, or even up to the left hideout. I've got a new red spring and sleeve coming that should help with that aspect. The legs that came with the machine are rusted so that the leg levelers can't be adjusted any longer, so I have new legs coming. I need this because the angle is currently low, and the ball seems like it hits the high side of the ramp entrance more often than anywhere else. I already did a quick and dirty black spray job on the original legs and they looked good, but not being able to adjust them is a problem. But, I also discovered the adjustment for the metal guide in the shooter lane thanks to this thread, so I think between the three of these things, I should be able to get it up the ramp every time!

On that note, one thing I ran across was getting the shooter tip aligned with the ball, and I'm not sure how to do that. The ball seems to sit a little off-center in the shooter lane, and I don't know that adjusting the plunger will ever line them up perfectly (the tip would have to be partially behind the metal guide to align with the ball as-is). I guess I'll see how all these other adjustments go first before worrying about that. I can get the ball up through the whole ramp as it is, it's just not very reliable, which makes multiballs a two-ball affair more often than not

The other problem is that the kickback is somewhat unreliable. I know it's not always going to hit the exact same spot every time, but sometimes it just doesn't get the ball out of the outlane at all. I'm sure it's an adjustment thing rather than a bad coil, since what happens is that the plunger shoots out, but the timing is such that the ball doesn't shoot out, it just rests on the tip. Sometimes this happens, and the coil fires a second time to pop the ball out, but other times the plunger just sits there until the light goes out, then the ball drains. I'm just not sure how to go about adjusting things to prevent this. I don't think that the plunger is hitting the switch, but maybe that's what is happening and I just can't see it well enough. This only seems to happen about 10% of the time, but it's super frustrating when it does happen (usually in the middle of a really good game, naturally). I haven't really been able to tell if it only happens at specific ball speeds, since sometimes a slow ball will shoot out fine, just like a fast one.

I've been an arcade guy for over 15 years, but this is my first pin, and I'm definitely hooked I had HS on NES when I was a kid, so I already kind of knew the rules, and when this came up for a reasonable price (wasn't a steal, but it wasn't a rip off either) while I was looking to buy, I had to jump on it. I still want a DMD game, but I'm really happy I got this.

Ok, the new legs came in today and they're installed. The angle's now about 6.3 or so, and that seems to have helped the shooter ramp situation somewhat. It does seem like getting the ball all the way up the ramp is maybe a little more difficult from the shooter, so it's a good thing that I've got a new spring on the way. I think I may still have to angle the metal guide down just slightly to help though, since it still hits too high sometimes.

I've only played a dozen or so games since the new legs were installed, but I haven't had an issue with the kickback yet. I'm wondering if the increased angle makes the ball more likely to hit the switch 'correctly'.

What a different less than two degrees makes! It's faster, but I seem to be getting far more SDTM shots in my first plays after increasing the angle...

When you say to countersink it, what specifically do you mean? There's not a lot of clearance in the cabinet, I'm not sure if I could move the rail to the right.

One thing I've noticed is that the ball seems to sit off-center in the shooter lane.

t1 (resized).jpg

As a first time pin owner, I've never looked that closely at the shooter lane before on any game, so I don't know how normal this is. It almost looks like some of the wood on the right side of the switch was broken off or just worn down over the years. If I manually push the ball to the left a bit, it stays in place and seems to shoot better from that location. I was wondering if it made any sense to shave the left side down a hair to get the ball to sit centered?

t2 (resized).jpg

t3 (resized).jpg

Also, after reading a bit more, I'm thinking I should probably do an overall 'restore' on the shooter lane no matter what else I end up doing. Sand it down a bit, spray some new clear coat on it, thoughts?

Yeah, it's leveled, I got it evened out with the new legs. The rest of the parts I had on order came in today, so I put a new sleeve and spring on the shooter, and the ball makes it up the ramp every time now. I think I'm good

I think at this point all I have left is to disassemble the ramp and diverter mechanisms to clean and adjust and I'll be golden. I'll probably still sand and coat the shooter lane at some point, but I'm not going to worry about doing anything too drastic since getting the ball up the ramp from the shooter is working reliably now.

Man, how clunky this game was before I started working on it and how it plays now, the difference is like night and day! Thanks to everyone for the direct advice and all the messages that were posted three years ago that helped out!

You weren't kidding! I used a toothpick to add just a dab to each end of the metal rods on the spinners and holy crap they spin way faster now. The sound effects go crazy and I get a lot more points each time I hit them

That makes more sense... I was trying to figure out how countersinking the screws on the bottom would help :p

Ok, so I had the playfield out to work on the ramp diverter and relocate the stoplight, and it's good news, bad news. I figured out why the diverter kept sticking, a C-clamp had come off and was letting the bat slide further up than it should, which was causing it to get caught on the ramp. The stoplight looks great in the back left of the cabinet, and I don't have to worry about an airball knocking the case off any longer.
Unfortunately, now I've got a bunch of stuff that won't respond. The wiring didn't get kinked or squashed during the process, I was very careful about that. GI and flippers work in diagnostic modes, but a few switches seem to be affected, since the ball trough doesn't register (this causes the game to fire all coils to try and dislodge the ball, but the saucer is the only one that actually goes). I did run through the edge and switch tests, but IIRC, almost all of them worked. None of the coils/flashers affected share a transistor, am I right to be looking at the big plastic playfield connectors first? Until now, I had never disconnected any of them, and I'm wondering if they're not making good contact. I've tried reseating all connectors in the backbox and to the playfield to no avail. Everything was working great before this, and I feel like once I get this issue sorted and clean up the shooter lane, it'll be ready to bring in the house from the garage.
Thanks to the test mode, here's the list of what's not firing with their part numbers and corresponding transistor:
Outhole 1P11-1 8P3-1 Q33
Ball Release 1P11-3 8P3-2 Q25
Flasher 1 1P11-9 8P3-9 Q17
Flasher 2 1P11-6 8P3-5 Q31
Flasher 3 1P11-7 8P3-6 Q23
Left Hideout 1P11-8 8P3-7 Q30
Right Hideout 1P11-9 8P3-8 Q22
Ramp Gates 1P12-6 8P3-13 Q15
Kickback 1P12-7 8P3-14 Q7
Right kicker 1P19-4 8P3-18 Q71
Also, @hs1stpin, hit me up in the PMs, I was out of town for a few weeks and missed your message! :p

Added over 7 years ago: You know what, this probably should have been in its own thread, sorry for cluttering up the club thread. If someone with the ability wanted to remove the post that would be fine since I've started a new thread in the tech section. HS1STPIN should still hit me up though :p

Are you sure it's not just the ramp switches needing attention? I get phantom diversions and firing from the hideouts sometimes when the ball hits something hard, especially if its in the pop bumpers and really going. Pretty sure I just need to tweak the switches on the ramp in my case, but the last line of your post makes me wonder if you're having the same issue or not.

I just measured mine, and with the police light topper, it's around 6'8" tall give or take an inch.

I've lost my upper flipper, and I'm wondering where to look next to get it working again. Quick background, I rebuilt all three flippers when I first got the machine and they flip strong, the gap is good. I rebuilt the power supply and my voltages at test points on the boards are good. I get 70V DC at the lugs, and if I ground the center flipper lug, all three will flip.

Before it stopped working (a while ago, I've been too busy to look into fixing it for a few months), I would occasionally hear a noticeable hum/buzz when holding the top right flipper up (it never happened if I pushed halfway down and only activated the lower right flipper). This didn't happen always, only occasionally; if I let go then hit it again it almost always went away. Today when I started troubleshooting it, I couldn't flip any of the flippers in test mode, but after playing around a bit in the test mode checking different things and resetting the machine, I can flip the two lower flippers again in test mode, but not the top one (as I said above, it's getting voltage and I can manually fire it). Everything else seems to be working properly except for the right slingshot in test mode (it worked fine in gameplay, but doesn't fire in test mode).

Looking at http://techniek.flipperwinkel.nl/wms11/index2.htm#flip0 , it seems like this section is the most pertinent:

The CPU board flipper relay K1 is not engaging. If the relay that turns the ground on to the flippers (when a game starts) has failed, the flippers will never work. Replace this relay or examine the logic that controls this relay. This is a 4P, 40 ohm, 6 volt relay. It connects through transistor Q67 (2N4401) and a 7402 at U50 and a 7406 at U56, and ultimately the 6821 PIA at U10. If any of these components are bad, the relay may not activate the flippers. First test transistor Q67, as this fails the most often.

Am I on the right track in looking here or is there something else I should be looking into?

Yeah, that makes sense, but when I first fired it up today none of the flippers worked. Later, I heard the relay click and I was able to use the lower two in test mode.

I'll try jumpering through the EOS path and see what happens.

Ha! Ok, so grounding the lug that runs through the EOS worked exactly the same. I spent a lot of time adjusting the gap when I rebuilt the flippers, since I had read Vid's guide, and seen so many other people having issues with the EOS switch gap, so I was doubting myself. Then I thought 'hey, the cabinet flipper buttons also control the flippers, maybe I should look at those'. The second switch in the stack that controls the right flippers just needed to be spaced better, it wasn't making good enough contact! I tweaked it a bit and got the upper flipper to flutter a bit, then I went back in and worked on the gaps for both cabinet buttons, and now all three flippers are flipping strong again!

I'm also planning on cleaning the cabinet button contacts because I never thought to mess with them when I first got the game. For these particular contacts a fine metal file is appropriate, correct?

In regards to the relay issue, I'm not sure where the next step would be since it seems to be intermittent? I've already looked closely and don't see any obvious physical signs of damage on the components involved, and I didn't see any issues on the solder side when I last had the boards out.

That was what I was thinking, my other option would be to shotgun the boards for potential issues and that isn't ideal. Thanks for all the troubleshooting help, you've got me through a couple of jams now!

Last time I ran a check, only one of my slings registered in the test, but both work. Let me know what you find out

I've been having some intermittent sound issues. The game will play just fine, but occasionally the music will drop out. When it happens there is often a beep-like tone that plays for a split second then the music drops. The sound effects and voices will still play when this happens, and if I drain a ball the music will restart when the next ball begins. I know music is handled on the sound board, but I'm not sure if this issue could be residing there or if it's a communication issue with the main board. I've replaced all ribbon cables (I was having some intermittent score display issues that went away with new, more snugly fitting cables, so I replaced all of them), reseated all power cabling, and I already rebuilt the power board a couple of years ago.

Also, totally unrelated, but I recently replaced the flashers with colored LEDs and the difference is huge! The blue insets on the playfield in particular look amazing now. The blue plastic with warm white incandescents was hardly noticeable, but now it really pops!

Edit: Ok, I may have a larger issue, was trying to play a bit just now and I keep getting glitchy resets where the game ends, the display has garbage on it, and I have to power cycle the game to get it back to normal. I don't think it's a coil diode situation, I did go back and double check no diodes on coils had broken off like a week or two ago. It can happen when no flippers or other coils are seemingly being activated :/