Hi all,

I just got my first pinball machine, a Big Brave . It's a lot of fun to play and seems in pretty decent shape.

I'm excited to join this community, I've been reading up and watching videos in advance of buying a machine and it looks like there's so many awesome people around here!

I've already pulled apart 3 digits of the score counters since they were getting stuck and causing it to not reset properly or to miscount. The 1,000's digit was the worst of the lot. They seem to roll more smoothly now.

With respect to the game rules, I have two questions:
1. What exactly causes the two bumpers to light up? Mine DO light up, but I'm not sure what the trigger is yet
2. The "Special" light -- tied to the drop targets, seems to give me a random number of points when hitting the last drop target. I've got 10,000 points up to 40,000 points for hitting it. Is that right?

Continuing my questions with some technical ones, here are some issues I'm still having and since I don't have the schematics I'm at a loss for how to fix them.

3. The top of the star rollovers -- the one tied to the letter 'B', does nothing when lit. It works fine when not lit, so the switch is ok. I understand from other posts that reviewing the schematic would show me some relay to look at, but again, I don't have them... The two stars below it both work fine, they award points and advance the bonus.
4. Credits decrease ok, but do not increase. I hear the knocker for bonus credits (at score multiples or matching last two digits), but nothing. Same for adding a coin.
5. The leftmost and rightmost "gutters", which cause you to lose a ball, sometimes get stuck giving me a ton of points. They are only supposed to give 5,000 points when lit or 500 + advance bonus when not. I'm not sure yet, but I think the many, many point bonus only happens when lit (5,000 points).
6. Occasionally all the lights on the PF go out but the ones on the backbox are ok). Slamming the coin box door or just playing a bit will bring them back to life. My guess is the problem is with either the fuse or the fuse holder for these lights (or the wire attached to them) is at fault here, but I'm not sure which it is.

I'll probably have some other questions later, but if anyone can help with the game rules or tech issues I have above, I'd really appreciate it!

Nice to join your community.

Sauce

To answer one of my questions about the game rules:

B lights the left bumper, G lights the right one.

From what I can tell, on Big Brave the B activates 3 features (left bumper, top roll-over star, and the light just next to the left flipper), the I activates 5 features (middle roll-over star, two outer "gutters", and the two bullseyes) , and the G activates 3 features (right bumper, bottom roll-over star, and the light just next to the right flipper) . Of course, the three combined activate the special.

Sauce

BIG Targets.jpg

Hi, unfortunately no. I mentioned it in my original post but I guess it got lost in the wall of text

Sauce

Hi Tim,

First off, thanks for your long and detailed reply. There's a little bit of terminology for me here to figure out. The biggest challenge will be to find out where these circuits are.

Thanks and I will say that the reviews on this site helped me figure out whether to buy it or not and what to offer. While I enjoy pinball, it's been a while for me and it is hard to know if this is "the one" I want to move forward with. Let's just say it is looking lonely in its spot and will have some friends one day, but it is hard to know which to start off with. My kids love it too.

When you hit the vari-target, how fast does it reset for you? I can't tell if it is behaving as expected. It always resets, but it doesn't travel super fast.

They do reset fine, but I'll look to see if there is a 5k point subsystem as you mentioned below. Since 5k seems to "misbehave", I assume this is a problem in one spot affecting all 3 5k targets. Do you only score 5k when the "SPECIAL" light is lit up for the drop targets?

Again, since I don't have the schematic, I'll have to do a bit of sleuthing here, but I assume that the star switches are probably similar to the 5k points in that their behavior ties to one shared set of switches for the actual behavior. Since the other two star buttons work, the actual "100 points + bonus" must work and it is just the thing that links together, which is, as you say, either the switch for the rollover or the wire between that switch and the mechanism to give the points.

Ok, I'll look for this. I assume this is the bank of switches running left-to-right behind the coin box. There's two other long banks of switches / relays running front-to-back deeper in the cabinet.

When I de-gummed my score wheels, I pulled them out dismantled them and cleaned things thoroughly. Are you talking the same, or just doing this in place?

I'll also check to see if there is a switch that triggers on the far end of travel (for maximum credits) that might be stuck.

I assume you mean two switches tied to the same relay, correct? Because the game plays when the lights are off. I also noticed the tilt bob doesn't seem to work well, even if I put it up against the ring it is in, it doesn't trigger easily. Wonder if there's some need for cleaning.

I figured this may be the case since I think_ the drop target was coming in increments of 5,000 points.

In any case, thanks for all the help. I have a number of things to look for later on this evening after I'm done working for the day.

Sauce

I certainly appreciate the help from both of you!

Sauce

Yup, not afraid to learn, looking forward to it. Also logic done entirely through switches is fascinating, and very old school

As you and lowbeau67 suggest, I'm trying to order the manual and schematic (and a few spare parts), PBR is hard to get in touch with right now. No email orders & busy signals on the phone, but I'm working on it.

The left flipper buzzes like crazy when the button is held down, I think someone put in the wrong coil so that's one of the things I want to order from them. Also, one of the plungers in the credit mechanism reduces, and the other... does nothing. Maybe some parts are gummed up like you said.

I'll work on it tonight or tomorrow and let you know how I do. Thanks again!

Sauce

Forgot to ask you a critical question, TimMe ... As a seasoned pinball machine restorer, would you say it is ok to consume an alcoholic beverage while working one one's machine?

Sauce

Here's my update:

I found the relay responsible, and tried nudging the contacts slightly while the game was on. I found one contact that "woke up" the rollover when pushed slightly, so I gave it a tiny bend. The star rollover seems to work well now. I'm including an image of what I did. Some of these relays are self-documenting, at least the contacts look pretty clear in terms of being NC or NO or toggle.

Contact that needed to be bent

Circled in red is the contact I bent slightly to make sure it comes into good contact with the lever that moves back and forth as the relay is engaged.

The only wing nuts I found are in the relays near the coin box.

I touched the various cables / fuses. Found one that even the slightest touch made the lights go on / off. Removed the fuse, it looks fine but there was some green stuff (hate green stuff in electronics) in the fuse holder. Scraped it off a bit and the lights seem to be behaving better. The PF lights seem to be protected by the middle fuse in this picture. I think you can still see some green on the top of two of the fuse holders.

Fuse Holders.jpg

If the little cheat sheet in the machine is to be trusted, that relay, labeled 'E' is all the way in the back right of the machine. I was very excited for a moment when I found that the cables going to the PF were resting on that relay, and when I moved them out of the way there was a PF wire tangled in the switches. Sadly, that didn't help. I'll pull the relay out later to look at it, but it may be easier to do so after removing the PF since it is under where the PF "hinges" so that'll need to wait until I can give it proper attention.

Credit adjuster will wait until later too, until I can give it some proper attention. It might be easier for me to just take it apart since I'm not positive where to put the penetrating oil (an assembly diagram would help if I can find one between now and then).

Sadly, it isn't mounted very firmly, and I see that on the other side, the back glass is scraped right where the credit counter is. Maybe people jiggled it to give it credits? Or it bumped around during moving... It's only slight, and luckily on an unlit part of the back glass which means repainting it may be a bit easier.

More on the 5k bonus and the credit adjuster later.

As for the game rules, I see that completing the drop targets wants to award 5K. I still don't know what the "SPECIAL" light does.

Sauce

You were very helpful, I appreciate it.

That's very valuable and very definitely extremely gummy. I didn't even realize it was a pivot until you showed me the drawing. Now I see how it works, that arm (pawl?) gets pulled into one of the little notches on the wheel and advances the wheel a bit.

I'll pull that out tonight and clean it out. Don't have penetrating oil (I have goof off), so I'd rather pull it out and just use lacquer thinner and give that part a good cleaning. Then we'll see if it fires or not (hard to test it when standing behind the machine). The good news is the knock sound that happens when a credit is supposed to be awarded is there, so at least some of the +credit logic works.

Maybe this weekend I'll work on the 5k relay. Looks like it'll be easiest to get to if I remove the PF altogether, that'll take a little longer.

Sauce

I was able to pull the part out. I just had to remove the knocker switch and detach the long spring, both things I was able to do while the assembly was in place.

gunky credit advancing part

That pivot really wanted some love. It only took a couple of drops of lacquer thinner to get it moving again, but then I scrubbed it all clean anyway. Looks like not only was this pivot necessary to raise credit count, but it was also necessary to make sure that lowering credits happened just one by one. TimMe was spot on on this one.

I didn't test it by lighting up special, but I hit 36,000 points (my first free life mark) and 50,000 points, and they both worked as well as dropping a coin in the coin slot.

Something else I noticed is my varitarget doesn't always work well. For instance, I just hit it up to 3k or 4k, but was only awarded 1k points for it. I've seen that happen before too. So on the remaining todo list to getting all the bits functional are fixing up the varitarget issue and cleaning out the 5k bonus relay which will hopefully fix multiple bonuses being added.

Sauce