I have a question about the game play of my Jacks Open regarding specials.

The drop targets sequence from jacks to queens to full house to royal flush to only royal flush for special.

Once the targets are all knocked down for special it awards the special. But the targets do not come back up.

My recollection from back in the day the royal flush targets were supposed to reset for another crack at the special?

Dies your game play differently than mine?

Thanks. That’s what I remembered.

Thanks.

Are you offering to work on mine?

So my game gets all the way to where you have special lit and only the red royal flush targets grouping up. The black targets have been knocked down. Once the red targets are knocked down a credit is awarded but they do not reset.

Unfortunately the game is not convenient to me. It's at my parents house in Michigan and I am only there a few times a year for short periods. I was there this past weekend but didn't get to spend much time on it. I did take a picture of the schematic and it appears to me a cut communication line between the 3 and 4 positions on the sequence unit could exhibit the symptom I'm having, which appears to limit to one the number of games a player can win when the special is lit. Does anyone think that would be the next spot to look for what would keep the drop targets from resetting and keeping the drop target trip coil from dropping the black targets?

Drop Target Mech Snippet Jacks Open (resized).JPG

Kent, Thanks for that reply. It had crossed my mind.

Do you recall what wire you had to replace/correct?

5B is all four suit lanes at the top of the playfield made.

P is the target bank reset relay.

I was thinking that 3 to 4 link on the sequence unit also. This would be the first time I had a game an operator modified if it turns out to be the issue. I'll look at it next time I'm at my parent's house which will be a few months.

I finally got a chance to circle back to this issue from 4 years ago and still would appreciate some help.

The suggestion to inspect if the original operator had cut the cut the jumper between rivets 3 and 4 showed they were intact.

I have been able to identify that the the sequence unit advances one more position past the 4th position which is putting it past the position that interprets it as the special position. This appears to be my issue. This fifth position coincides with the missing tooth on the stepper gear to keep it from advancing further. This seems out of sync.

I adjusted the follower disc one position so that the missing tooth would align it to the 4th position but that ends up putting the wiper one position short of the jacks pair and never makes any of the hands available.

The above diagnostics have all been evaluated with the game set on 5 ball play.

Further, I set the game to 3 ball and it immediately jumps the sequence unit to 3 queens at game start and then moves past the Royal Flush and won’t allow subsequent specials.

I’m wondering if there is possibly a defect to the missing tooth on the gear on the stepper, that it is at one position too late. I’m writing here for some insight of if grinding off one tooth earlier will solve my problem.

Here is a photo showing the position of the missing tooth in relation to the rivet. Can anyone confirm if the missing tooth is in the same position as on their sequence unit?

IMG_4514 (resized).jpeg

Thank you for responding. I heard back from another JO owner today and we sorted through it. I will post the solution with photos this weekend.

The solution to my problem was related to the reset stop position for the unit. There is a cam adjustment that somehow was misadjusted so far that it allowed the sequence unit to step 5 steps where it is designed to only step 4 steps. Because of this it either over stepped the special after it was earned (a broken logic condition) or if I adjusted the wiper such that the 5th step aligned to the last special rivet the pair of jacks never illuminated because the the sequence unit reset one position off (another broken logic condition).

Below are pictures of the location of the stop cam that can be adjusted, effectively removing the extra step. This is an adjustment I have never encountered in over 25 years of collecting and fixing pinballs.

Sequence 01.pdf

Sequence 02.pdf

The problem was that the game was not with me and I only had very limited access to it a couple of times a year. Finally had some time to dive into how it is supposed to operate.

I will admit it felt good being able to focus on it and really sorting through what was going on vs what was supposed to be going on.

It adjusts at the screw where the screwdriver is pointing in the above photo. In my case it was misadjusted to allow the reset condition to reset off a full rivet position, being the heart of my problem.

I need to disassemble a spare resetting stepper unit to see this part as it doesn’t show it discretely in the parts catalog.