This is on Williams Hi-Hand.

Had problems with the ball gate not working. Narrowed it down to the C cam on the motor. Resoldered the two C cam switches.(guessing that C is the switch stack furthest from the motor.)

Now the shutter activates when the ball goes through, but it cycles shut and open again.
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Resoldered the lugs on the cam furthest from the motor. Seems to be working better. Except for the times that the motor cycles twice. Closed and then right back to open.

baldtwit

Something is powering the motor to keep going an extra time.

At no time does the motor stop with the center switch stack in a notch. Not when it is going around because I trigger the ball gate and not when it is triggered by the coin chute wire. There are two notches the stack could fall into, but it powers past them. Seems like something must be wrong with that.

The notches on the C stack (furthest from the motor, in case that's not C) were a hair away from letting the stack fall completely into the bottom of its notches. I wasn't sure whether it would be better to adjust the position of the notched wheel or adjust the switch. Going with the easy solution-- adjusting the top switch-- seems to have made the gate switch more reliable.

What's my next step?

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update....

I've replaced the lock relay with one from another machine. It works.

I've re-soldered the wires to the start relay. During the process, a short piece of thin steel rod fell either out of the relay or from somewhere. I sure hoped that either the loss of a piece of trash or the re-soldering would have fixed it, but it didn't.

On the bright side, the gate switch now works reliably. On start up, the motor doesn't cycle like it did. dropping a coin opens the shutter. Triggering the gate switch cycles the shutter shut and then open again. But at least it stops at that point.

So, it still isn't working right, but it is now much more reliable in what it is doing wrong.

Any ideas?

baldtwit Thank you for taking the time to do that diagram.

The diagram is correct. A & C have a notch that line up with each other. A has another notch opposite. B has two notches opposite of each other, neither of which line up with A or C.

The motor switches seem to be opening and closing as they should. They've been cleaned.

Yesterday when I was done, the motor cycled once at the start, and the shutter shut and opened back up when the gate switch was triggered.

However, this morning, at the start of the game the motor cycles several times before stopping and again several times when triggered by the gate switch. Also, sometimes the motor cycles several times upon power up, before the game is started.

The lock relay shuts when the game starts and stays shut. The switches on the lock relay open or shut as they should, including switch with (35) and (45) on the blades.

It sure seems like something isn't making a good connection. I've been cleaning the switches with a business card (rough paper) and alcohol. Should I re-do with a light file?

The motor moves easily; there’s nothing but the friction of the shutter to stop it.

It may be a few days before I can get back to the machine. Thank you for your guidance.

Well, here we go. I've been tinkering with the fool machine for an hour and a half.

With the shutter closed (Cam switch A is in its notch)- nothing happens when the power is on. Triggering the coin wire opens the shutter. So far, so good.

Flip the ball gate switch and the motor cycles one complete rotation- from open to shut (half a cycle) and back to open.

It is pretty consistent, although once in a while it all works perfectly. If I had any hair left, I'd have torn it out.

None of the solder points on the lugs on the motor switches or the relays look to be touching each other.

Is this the point where I re-solder all of the motor switch packs on principle? I have a multimeter... not sure where I should check for shorts, though.

I think the gate relay activates briefly and goes back off. I’ll take a look & see if I can capture it all on a video.

baldtwit Thank you. I'm tinkering around with it some and if that doesn't get it, I will do the video.

I can pull the switch stacks from a sister machine. Kind of starting to think that might be the best idea. Then again, the other stack may have its own problems.

The cams want to travel just a hair too far, so the cams on A & C are down in their slots, but when it comes to rest they are not at the very bottom of their slots. It looks like the spring that keeps the shutter tight on its mechanism may be the culprit.

I hope to be able to get back to it this weekend.

deleted. still working on it.

baldtwit
bingopodcast
MrBally

Last time, the shutter was making a complete cycle when it should have made a half cycle. Now the motor is running a lot more than it should. You'll see in the video.

The switches look to be gapped wide enough that they won't make contact when they shouldn't. It is almost like there is a problem with the coin switch wire, except the wire snaps back reliably. (Obviously, I'm grasping at straws now. I'm clueless.)

Here is the vid:

Thank you very much for your time and help.

baldtwit It makes sense. I’ll be able to get back to it in a day or two and will let you know how it went.

IT WORKS!

Well, mostly. The shutter doesn't want to close as triggered by the ball gate until the second ball. There isn’t a thing on the machine keeping track of balls. No triggers in the ball chute, nothing. But it likes the second ball.

Anyway, now I know I'm on the right track.

And now the Queen of Diamonds lights up just fine.... for an unknown reason. It wasn't before. Well, all the lights were working. Then the Queen of Diamonds wasn't. Then none of them were working. Now they all work. Can someone please remind me why I'm into this hobby?

Seriously, though, thank you for your help!

Yes, it works the first time with my finger.

Also, now everything is back to behaving badly as if yesterday didn't happen. The shutter closes and opens. I think the leaf switches have 23 hour memory.

I'll try to get back to it this weekend.

baldtwit
I can get it to work, but only for a test or two. The adjustments needed to make it work correctly are so minute that no machine under daily use would ever stay adjusted.

The problem is the mechanism wanting to travel just a tad too far when the A switches are down, but only on one of the two slots. That says to me the issue must be on B, not A. But B is adjusted so that when the cylinder is down in the slot, the contacts are open enough there wouldn't be an arc. when it is up on the cam, the switches are closed, of course. Open. Closed. Seems simple enough, only it isn't.

Putting a little pressure on the mechanism so that it doesn't want to over travel works fine. Except I can't keep my finger there all day to slow it down because sometimes I would have to go to the bathroom. Is there an adjustment to tighten up the fool thing?

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After I wrote the above, I put the board back in place. It had been standing up, leaning on the head. The machine worked perfectly for three consecutive tests. That's all. Just as it seemed the problem was simply the board being stood up after all, it went back to its old tricks.

Back to square one. WTF ??

After letting the machine sit for about 15 minutes, it worked perfectly. For four tests. Then the machine got confused.

Still having trouble with the ball gate working on a slow shoot of the ball, but not a fast one. And now the whole thing is mucked up. It is chaotic evil-- giving me a brief glimmer of hope before messing up again.

I adjusted the ball gate switch to be a little closer. Now the slow ball / fast ball issue seems fixed.

And everything else is working fine. Tried it several times.

Tune in to our next exciting episode when our hero undrdog says, "Again!? Screw this, I'm giving up pinball for Sweet Polly."

And..... this morning we are back to where we started. Could it be something mechanical rather than switches needing adjustment?

It works!

Note To Self: In the future, bend the shit out of the leaf switches.

If it is back to its old tricks in the morning, I’m taking an axe to it.

Day Two and it still works!

Many thanks, baldtwit !

The blades that were next to a stiff piece were bent together, as close to the stack as possible. The ones next to the lifter were kept on the lifter, once you told me to do that.

This last time I bent them way up in the air, in turn, then down. Only one needed additional tweaking.

Now that it works and is all pretty I’m ready to pass it on to someone else. Wanted to get it working, to learn what I’m doing.

Got a Flipper Fair project that looks to be a much more fun game, once it’s working. Only room for one of one of them.

Still needs plastics recreated. No time to do it before the swap meet. If I end up keeping it, I’ll get them made.

baldtwit There is a counter in the back and one on the door.

Unless someone says otherwise, I'm guessing that the one on the door was added later so the vendor could count credits without opening the back. (wired with lamp cord, cut short.)

Where should I wire the one in the back to? My best guess would be to the coin wire switch, but that would mean having to cut it when removing the head, so that can't be correct. Or is the one on the door the real one?

Hi-Hand went back to its old tricks again, after staying fixed for a few days. This time I switched out the B stack from a sister machine. After a few spins while the motor figured out what was what, it worked fine from then on. Next time a set of switches has to be adjusted for the same issue more than twice in the same week, I’m switching them out. Enough was enough.

Good thing the seller wanted to get rid of all three!

The playfield connects to the head, with two sets of connectors.
The cabinet connects to the head, with a flat, double sided three pin connector. I’m not at the machine, but I think that's correct.

As stated earlier today, changing out the B switch stack fixed it. Took it apart, loaded into the truck, and took it to a swap meet. Probably forty five minutes in the truck each way. Got it home, put on the head and legs, plugged it in, turned it on, tripped the coin wire, and it was back to the same problem! Turned it off in disgust, leveled the legs, turned it back on, and it works just fine.

What ever can account for all this? It makes no sense.

The problem is the motor cycling a full circle instead of half . It is a circuit not breaking when it should, rather than a bad connection.

Maybe the problem this whole time is the coin trip switch wire. But if that switch gets stuck, the motor would stay on.

I’ve been fixing the wrong thing over and over? But, then, why did the fixes work, if only temporarily?

It’s starting to sound weather related.

Like, I don’t know whether I want to keep messing with the fool thing.

Ruled out the coin switch. Cut the wire.

Next to the relays, because I’ve fixed the cam switches over and over.

Wasn’t the relays, although I did clean up some messy soldering.

Was the A cam switch, which I’ve adjusted a few times before. Cannot figure out why it doesn’t stay adjusted. Maybe this time it will.

Oh, great!
My next project is a Gottlieb.

Thanks for the tips ! The motor does run until the score reels are reset, so de-gunking the reels will be job 1. The arms that actuate the flipper switches were “fixed” with large wrappings of electrical tape. Not sure what is actually supposed to be there, but it works.

But my first priority is doing some maintenance on Heat Wave. Check some gaps, degunk 0-9 reel which has started sticking. All ina day’s work.

Have fun doing the flooring. You can pay people to do that for you, yanno ?

If nothing should be there, the arm must be short or bent because this has a mighty wide roll of tape on it.

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Multimeter says: its metal.

Metal flipper buttons that used to be red. Time to go get some tool dip.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Original plastic button broke. Went with metal, which wouldn’t break. Needed more length and the insulation wouldn’t hurt.

baldtwit
How's the stairs coming along?

I'd like to hook up the counter on Hi-Hand so I can track how many dimes it is taking me to get any good at playing the machine. Seems like it could be wired to the start relay.

Does that sound right to you?

Smart thinking!

Turns out, the metal buttons were original, but I think they come in different lengths.