Hello - Working on a Hokus Pokus, and noticed something I haven't run into before. All of the scoring is registering properly when targets and rollovers are hit, but there seems to be a longer delay than there should be between the target contact being made and the score motor and scoring reels registering the hit and doing their job. I've watched videos of the game to ensure that this is not common with the machine. Due to the delay, multiple shots hitting quickly in succession do not register properly.

Is this a Score Motor problem perhaps? Anyone seen this before?

Ah, good question. I noticed the delay on so many things, I didn't take a moment to double-check standard scoring items like that and compare. I will do so and report back. I know for sure things like the rollovers on the in-lanes, lanes up at the top, and some roll-overs all seemed to have the problem - but those are all tied to Advance Bonus. You may be correct that the issue does not exist on things like the pop bumpers, spinners, etc. I will verify. Assuming it's only with score-motor related items, any thoughts?

I've messed with that before on another game to increase kick with pops and flippers, but that seems like an odd thing to cause a "delay" in scoring I would think. I thought maybe the score motor itself was sluggish, but haven't had time to look closely at that possibility. It didn't seem like it was slowly turning, more like it simply didn't start turning as quickly as it should in general. Once it started moving, it was fine. Trying to think of something before the scoring, in sequence, that could be an issue. Maybe a bonus stepper that's slow/gunked? I will pull up the schematic and look it over again, and start going through everything in the machine to check for oddities.

I'll check it out when I get home. I think I was stuck mentally blaming the score motor, but I'll check the sequence out and see if I can find anything between the two. Interesting I couldn't find any threads about this type of issue. Not exactly anyway. I may do a video of it to post too, just to show the delay in action.

Thanks mbaumle, I appreciate the replies! I'm hoping to get some time with the machine tonight, and if not, I'll be messing with it tomorrow and doing some testing. More to come

Okay, so I think I've got the delay sorted out. Here's what I found and cleaned up to fix the problem, in case other people run into this issue.

I observed that, indeed as noted above by Chrisbee, only items that triggered the score motor were experiencing the delay. Spinners, 10 pt shots, etc were all fine. I did some observing with the playfield up, hitting targets that Advanced the bonus. When a switch was triggered, the proper relay would pull, but the score motor would take about .5 to 1 second to do it's thing and rotate. After the score motor stopped, I noticed on the outer edge that a piece (the armature) would very slowly drift away from the sore motor and return to a starting position. Reading over the section on score motors on pinrepair.com, I realized that this was likely my problem.

The armature, which rests against a spring, is pulled towards the score motor during it's cycle, allowing it engage to the gearbox and get things moving. When the motor shuts off, it's supposed to push back to its resting position (the small spring sends it back out). In my case, it was gunked up and sluggish, so it would pull in slower than it should, and also release slower than it should.

Since the armature was slow to pull in and engage, the score motor would be delayed, preventing things from registering as quickly and scoring. Now that I've cleaned it, things are working much better. I may replace that little spring too, we'll see.

For reference... here are some pics.

Score_Motor_Armature (resized).jpg

Score_Motor_Armature_in (resized).jpg