Who here has successfully replaced their sarcophagus switch with the williams rollover microswitch that was recommended on pages 2/3?
I just tried, and it was NOT fun... Despite my grumbling here, I mean no offense to the people who recommended this. I'm sure the replacement worked fine for them, and I appreciate that they posted info on their fix here.
So, to start with, just getting access to the sarcophagus switches is a complete pain. Even with a switch adjuster tool, I couldn't find any way to get access to the original microswitches to adjust them without removing the entire sarcophagus mechanism. So, I started to disassemble the mech and pull it out from the bottom. To do this, you need to:
-Unplug the 3 connectors to the sarcophagus mechanism
-Unscrew the newton ball actuator from the mummy newton ball
-Remove 4 wood screws holding the mechanism to the playfield
-Undo 4 nuts around the captive ball mechanism
-Remove a metal plate from the captive ball mech
-Unscrew a circular disk from the captive ball mech
At this point, the spring popped part of the captive ball mech apart, and a few parts went flying. It took me a while to locate everything, and I'm still not sure I have all of the parts put back together properly.
Finally, you can remove the ball lock assembly. If there is a better way to do this, please mention it here for the benefit of anyone else doing this.
So, now I discover that its impossible to get access to the microswitches since the sarcophagus mech was in the down position when I took it out. Great. I guess I should have paid more attention to that before I started
OK, so I plug the mechanism back in since its impossible to adjust the lever arm by hand and I didn't want to dismantle any more of the mechanism than I had to. I let the game reset the ball lock to the up position, and then take it out again. On to the fun part.
Unscrew the bar holding the rollover switches. Test the bottom switch that wasn't working, and yep, it's defective. It fails to register most of the time when depressed, and it feels stiff. So, I decide to swap it for one of the williams rollover switches.
Remove the cable tie, cut off the old microswitch as close to the lugs as possible, remove the heat shrink tubing. Put new heat shrink tubing on the wires, solder on the new switch, re-mount everything, tidy the wires back up. I've attached a photo of my attempted repair.
So, I put this back into the lock mechanism and do some basic testing with the ball. This new switch is WAY too stiff. The ball doesn't roll smoothly over it at all, it gets caught on it. I tried bending the lever arm a bit, but I can't find any position that actually contacts the ball properly without offering too much resistance. I got it as close as I could and then tried putting the assembly back together to do some testing in game.
I bought 3 of these williams switches from marco, and I compared the one I installed to the other two. The resistance is identical, so its not just that one switch that is too stiff. I was also very careful not to over tighten the metal screws. I just tightened until there was some gentle resistance.
Well, despite my best attempt at adjusting the switch, the new switch is still trapping the ball half the time. It usually has enough momentum to roll down the assembly when it first drops in, but then when you hit the mummy ball and the captive ball rolls up the ramp a little, it gets stuck on the switch. At this point, you're hosed as far as the sarcophagus lock goes since its impossible to dislodge the captive ball (which is no longer resting against the newton ball).
Furthermore, Stern barely left any slack on the wires in this assembly (normally a good thing I guess), so when I had to shorten them to solder on the new switch it made the cable slightly too short to reach the connector without straining it. My soldering was also a little sloppy and the wires are coming off the lugs of the new switch at a bad angle. This makes them bump into the lever arm when the lock lowers to dump the ball out, and they will probably break off if I don't redo the connection. Since there isn't enough slack in the wire now, I'll have to try to lengthen the wires.
Anyone have any suggestions as to what to do now? I think I'm going to have to call stern and beg for a complete new assembly. Not sure if they will charge me at this point since it was technically a botched repair attempt on my part that really messed up the mech. I had no idea this process would be such a pain. I probably should have known better than to try it, but now that I did I'm not sure if I can get this working again w/o a new mechanism from stern.
Please post here if you did this repair and had it work out. If I am the only one who botched it, that's one thing, but if only a few people have actually tried this successfully it might be a good idea for anyone else reading this thread to proceed with caution.
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