I’m guessing that the coil and mech needs a good cleaning . Try taking it apart and with some alcohol clean the coil plunger and the coil sleeve . These games can get gummy and cause the mech to not move smoothly . Try that first

Does the switch score or work in test mode?
Joe

Looks like the switch is recognizing the ball.

99.9% sure that click is your ramp diverter which is tucked away behind the back panel. It is trying to move but stuck and needs to be cleaned/lubed up.

Back to the saucer - starting with the easiest things first - lift the playfield and have a look to make sure the wires are connected to the coil terminals.

If everything looks good there, next stop - Diagnostics menu.

^^^^^^^^^
One of the wires that are on the coil maybe frayed and only connected by a strand or two. This will not allow enough current to fire the coil. Get each wire a good tug to see if it breaks off.

download a copy of the manual here - its better than nothing

https://www.ipdb.org/search.pl?any=police+force&search=Search+Database&searchtype=quick

I had a similar clicking on my game and had to replace the worn cam on the diverter. You can see from Blackbeard pics just how far the playfield will actually come out if you try

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/police-force-diverter-diagnosis

It was actually Blackbeard’s thread that helped me service my game . Once you pull it out (no connectors removed) its a very easy mech to service.

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The clicking would be the relay on your AUX driver board. This relay clicks on whenever a solenoid needs to fire. So the game is sending power to the kicker solenoid, but obviously it's not firing, and it keeps trying since it knows the ball hasn't been ejected. Like has been mentioned above, check the lugs on the solenoid to make sure no wires have popped off or snapped, which is fairly common. If that's the case a little soldering will get everything working again.

To get into test mode, press the advance button while the center button is in the down position. Once you get to the first test screen, you can press the center button into the raised position, and then use advance to cycle through the different test menus.

Nonsense!! We were all new once and i don’t know the real stats but i’ll make them up and say 80% of people on here didn’t know anything about repairing pins until they bought one. As long as you aren't afraid to ask for help, and listen anD learn as you go you will know how to fix these things. You already have some heavy hitters on here (I don’t include myself on that list yet) so i’m confident you will get this running. Pinside has a 100% success rate for helping with my tech problems.

You cannot hurt anything by going into diagnostic mode. There are a series of tests to check sounds, music, coil function, lamps, closed switches, detect new closed switches etc. Then you can scroll into audits and game adjustments. Don’t worry about these for now.

So for the next things you will want to have glass off, playfield down and power it up. Pay attention to any messages comin up on the display. Then open coin door. Inside you have the three buttons:

Advance Button - usually closest to door.
Center - auto up / manual down.
Highscore reset. Don’t need to use this one.

First thing is to press center button into the down position. Pressing advance once gets you into music test. Now press center to bring it back to auto up. Now each time you press the advance button you cycle through the various test. Once you find the test you want, push center button back to manual down. Advance now lets you manually move through that test.

The interesting ones for you now are coil test (to see if saucer eject will fire). Switch levels will indicate which switches are currently closed. If you have balls in the game you will expect to see the trough switches come up.

Switch edge test is very useful. Here the display will tell you which switch is closed when you depress it. Use a ball not your finger for best results. If you put a ball in the saucer do you see it one the screen? If so is it the correct switch number as per the manual and is it the only switch registering?

After you do this you will start to develop a troubleshooting roadmap .

Then go mess around with the other tests. You will get the hang of what each one does. I guarantee you will hit wrong button a few times, move to the next test by accident, curse, then reset game and start over.

The menu is a little overwhelming at first but entering diagnostics wont change any of your current game settings.

Its actually pretty simple, open the coin door with the game off, press the red button on the door into the down position and turn game on.

Now press the black button closest to the coin door and you will be in diagnostics and the display should read 'MUSIC OFF'
Press the front game start button and you can cycle thru the various background music

After that push the red button again (so now its in the up position) and you can then press the black button closest to coin door again and move to 'DISPLAY TEST',
press the black button again and it moves to 'SOUND TEST',
press again to 'ALL LAMPS',
press again to 'SINGLE LAMPS' in single lamp test you will go back to using the start button to move which lamp is currently lighted.
press again to 'COIL TEST'
press again to 'SWITCH LEVELS' -display will give current status of car, diverter and ball trough switches
press again to 'SWITCH TEST' - you can manually trigger switches on the playfield and it will show on the display
press again to 'SELECTED A-SIDE & SELECTED C-SIDE' - lol I have no idea what this test is for
press again to 'CAR TEST' - will run the car up and down
press black button again and you are out of diagnostics and into audit/adjustment mode.

If you get confused or want to start over just turn the game off and go back to the beginning
After you get familiar with watching the game cycle thru tests you can beginning using the red button inside the individual tests to pause auto advance testing and move them 1 at a time with the black button on coin door

Get a jumper wire like in picture. Connect one side of the jumper wire to the ground braid inside the cabinet. Turn on the power and BREIFLY touch the other end of the jumper wire to the purple/green wire on the coil. Does it fire now?

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Looks like the coil wire has broken. This is a pretty common problem, it was actually the first big problem I had with my first pin! It can be fixed by taking the coil cover off, unwinding a bit of coil, and then wrapping that around the lug and soldering it. You'll need to use some sand paper to remove a bit of the coil insulation at the tip of the wire before you solder it back onto the lug. Once that's finished you can just tape the coil cover back on. This all might seem a bit overwhelming at first, but eventually you'll start to gain some useful new skills and a pretty decent collection of tools!

About the diverter, if it's moving then it should be fine!

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Good eye! Should be an easy fix

Using your multimeter, test the resistance across the coil by putting one lead on each terminal. That coil should read around 4.2 ohms. If it reads zero ohms there is a dead short. If it reads OL there is a break in the wire somewhere, which may not be visible.

Assuming the coil is still ok, do what Grumpy suggests next (or first, he has a knack for these things). This will narrow down if the issue is with the mpu.

Ah, you're right, my bad. Definitely follow Completist's advice to make absolutely sure the coil itself doesn't have any breaks though.

Most of the screws on Police Force are 1/4" - definitely get something magnetic, I use Klein drivers in 1/4, 5/16, and 11/32 and dont recall offhand if I ever needed a different size. Something like this:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Klein-Tools-7-Piece-Magnetic-Nut-Driver-Set-with-6-in-Hollow-Shafts-Cushion-Grip-Handles-647M/100648072

Check fuses - may have inadvertently blown one. Sound board test passed tho

Your CPU isn't booting now. Check the yellow highlighted fuses.

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Was there any spark when you touched the jumper?

Great Plains Electronics. You should buy some spares for the whole machine, just in case.

OK so this was just a coincidence that the fuse blew at same time you were testing. That is what I was thinking but just wanted to make sure. The fuse that I think is burnt is for the 5 volt CPU power and has nothing to do with the coil power which comes from the aux power supply.

Good, I didn't know you had a meter. Replace the 2 fuses in the power supply and turn it on. Set your meter to DC volts. Place the black lead under the ground braid in the backbox and use the red lead to check the test points on the power supply. Check the 5, 12 and neg 12 volt test points and report back what you find.

Looks good. What are the 3 leds on the CPU board doing when you turn it on?

Ok, use your voltmeter on DC setting and check the cathode (band side) of ZR-1 on the CPU.

No, check for voltage with the power turned on. Set DMM to DC volts not diode test.

When testing for DC voltage always place the black lead under the ground braid or board screw.

No but you do have a few issues to correct. Start by removing the power supply from the back box and posting a good pic of the back of the board. Maybe close ups of the header pins. There maybe cracked solder joints causing one of your issues.

I don't see any problems with it, might as well put it back in and reconnect it.
Turn on the machine, put it in coil test and stop on solenoid 5a lower right eject.
While this is going on take your jumper and connect one end to the ground braid in the backbox. Then take the other end and briefly touch the metal tab of Q-31 of the CPU board. Does the coil fire when you touch the transistor Q-31?

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Good, this means everything is working but the CPU. Your other issue is on the CPU also. Do you have a logic probe? Can you solder small parts of a circuit board?

The logic probe would be used to determine which parts are bad. If you're not ready for board work I would see if there is another pinsider near you that could help. If you send it off to a pro you don't need to troubleshoot any further.

When you get a logic probe, connect the red lead to the 5 volt test point on the cpu board. Connect the black lead to the ground test point. Set the probes switch to TTL and turn on the machine. Check the probe for correct operation by touching the 5 volt and then the ground test points, it should light up high for the 5 volts and a low for ground. Place the game in solenoid test and stop on solenoid 5a as you did before. Starting at U-19 you need to check pin 3 for a high pulse. If good then check the emitter of Q-27, it should have a high pulse on it too. Let me know what you find.

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You need to find notch in the chip. Then you start counting in a counter clockwise direction from the notch.

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