Hello,

I have been working through restoring my Sonic Butterfly and have made it to the back box. I've got some sticking happening on various scoring wheels and the player stepper is sluggish and has reset issues, but I figured I'd start with the credit/match wheel as I thought it would be a quick fix before moving on to the other issues. Apparently I was wrong... I am having trouble figuring out what has happened and how to fix it.

The wheel (1-36, blank in between) travels between blank space (about half way between 1 and 36) to 13-14. I figured maybe the wheel needed to be rotated so I marked current position and removed the nut. It is keyed so I can only rotate it 180 degrees and doing so I still cannot get home position to be at zero. After rotating the wheel numbers do not line up so its previous position seems like the correct one, apart from the count being way off.

Any suggestions? I suspect I'm missing something obvious.

Hi Dr Of Style,

Thanks for the reply. I see there are two pegs on the clock gear and the gear will travel between the long way around the two pegs when I manually step up/down the coils. From switch opening on one side to the switch on the other I count roughly 32 clicks. Switch blades don't appear bent or to be on the wrong side of one of the pegs on the clock gear.

I can attach photos later on. Right now the unit will travel between blank space on the reel to the number 14 in 32 clicks. Doesn't make sense to me. Perhaps there is something that should be in place before the unit ventures too far into the blank space? Right now it just travels between the two pegs on the clock gear with no other restriction.

Will do, thanks. When I get home I'll definitely take some pictures as well. I tried operating it inside the short side of the two pegs on the clock gear (as opposed to the long side). The pegs on the clock gear bind against the switch stacks so to me it seems like it does belong on the outside of them. Hopefully photos will make what I am missing more obvious.

Here are some photos.

I am not sure what has been repaired on this machine in the past but I'm wondering if I need to move the posts on the clock gear to change the limits. Please let me know what you think.

Photos 1, 2 and 3 show progression from one limit switch to the other. In photo 1 the wheel shows blank space. In photo 3 it is at 14.

img1 (resized).jpg
img2 (resized).jpg
img3 (resized).jpg

img4 (resized).jpg

Hi Dr Of Style,

I do not have a zero on the reel. After 1 it is blank.
I lifted the points you've identified (thank you for the illustration) and the wheel did indeed spin back into the single switch.
At this point my reel is well into the blank space, it doesn't stop right after 1 and clicking the unit up one step still has it in blank space.

Upon closer inspection of the posts on the clock gear, I can see evidence of one of the post holes in the gear having been previously used. The hole has clearly had something threaded into it in the past. Here is my suspicion... I'm wondering if someone previously got one of the posts stuck between the switch bank, and perhaps they figured the way to fix this was by moving one of the posts. If the posts are not set for correctly it would explain why my wheel travels between a large blank area and 14.

I definitely think someone attempted a bush fix and moved a post, not knowing what they were doing. One of the posts was loose compared to the other as well. Now that I know an idiot has messed with it, I clearly can't take anything for granted with this, haha.
I noted where the posts are and tried moving one of the posts (they now positioned oppose to eachother). This allowed the wheel to travel between one blank space up to 18. So it seems to be aligned properly now. However, based on what you've described above I want to confirm that blank and 18 are now in the correct locations. Should the single switch be zero and the bank of two be the high limit? Because I have the opposite (going from memory, will confirm tonight). I can manually advance the credit wheel without clicking the coils in one direction. This will add credits. Is this correct or should it be subtracting them?

Perfect, thank you for the clarification. I'll take a more detailed look tonight but based on what you've described I think I should be able to correct this.