(Topic ID: 296070)

Spirit of '76 chimes being flakey

By Flippersaurus

2 years ago


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Topic Stats

  • 11 posts
  • 6 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 2 years ago by Sea_Wolf
  • Topic is favorited by 1 Pinsider

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#1 2 years ago

Hey all, I have this Spirit of '76 that the chimes are not working correctly during game play. They all work fine if I manually actuate the relays in the back box. Relays L,M,N. If I hit any of those with the game on I get a good strong chime. But during a game I hardly get any chimes. And when they do sound, it's often weak and even the wrong one sometimes. I'll get the 10 point when it should be 1000. It's all very inconsistent and the cross-talk has me scratching my head. All of the scoring seems fine. Bonus countdown scores correctly. But the 1000 chime rarely goes off. Any ideas?

#2 2 years ago

Clean Jones plugs to start. Clean the L, M, N relay switches and check gap on the ones that activate the chimes. Both of those are quick and easy; if no go someone with a schematic can help more.

#3 2 years ago
Quoted from Flippersaurus:

Hey all, I have this Spirit of '76 that the chimes are not working correctly during game play. They all work fine if I manually actuate the relays in the back box. Relays L,M,N. If I hit any of those with the game on I get a good strong chime. But during a game I hardly get any chimes. And when they do sound, it's often weak and even the wrong one sometimes. I'll get the 10 point when it should be 1000. It's all very inconsistent and the cross-talk has me scratching my head. All of the scoring seems fine. Bonus countdown scores correctly. But the 1000 chime rarely goes off. Any ideas?

The chime coils all share one common wire, and each also has it's own wire which comes from the corresponding relay. These wires are attached with spade connectors, and are often reinstalled out of the proper sequence. It's just a matter of connecting the proper wire to each coil to get the correct tone for each point value. The highest tone is tens, the middle tone is hundreds, and the lowest tone is thousands.

#4 2 years ago
Quoted from jrpinball:

The chime coils all share one common wire, and each also has it's own wire which comes from the corresponding relay. These wires are attached with spade connectors, and are often reinstalled out of the proper sequence. It's just a matter of connecting the proper wire to each coil to get the correct tone for each point value. The highest tone is tens, the middle tone is hundreds, and the lowest tone is thousands.

That’s exactly what happened on my Jumping Jack when I got it. The spade connectors on the 10s chime and 100s chime were reversed and it resulted in a similar way as the OP’s.

#5 2 years ago

Thanks for the response guys. The chimes work correctly when I manually activate each one by hand. So I think they connectors are in the right spots. What's weird is the L,M,N relays are working fine for scoring. They don't miss a beat. But the chimes don't go off. Maybe I just need to clean them more. I've been using a flexstone. The gaps seem okay.

Is there another path to the chimes firing other than L,M,N going off? They're pretty quiet for 500 points and for bonus countdown.

#6 2 years ago

Cleaning the chime coil sleeves and plungers usually solves this problem.

#7 2 years ago
Quoted from Flippersaurus:

Thanks for the response guys. The chimes work correctly when I manually activate each one by hand. So I think they connectors are in the right spots. What's weird is the L,M,N relays are working fine for scoring. They don't miss a beat. But the chimes don't go off. Maybe I just need to clean them more. I've been using a flexstone. The gaps seem okay.
Is there another path to the chimes firing other than L,M,N going off? They're pretty quiet for 500 points and for bonus countdown.

Not doubting you but you mentioned a couple of things that were going on that sounded very familiar.

When I manually activated the 10 point and 100 point relays, they sounded the chimes but what it was really doing was sounding the 10 point chime only.

When I manually activated a rollover for 100 (or 500 points in my case) it weakly chimed but I had to raise the playfield to notice that once again it was the 10 point chime only that was trying to sound off.

You also mentioned that the 1000 point chime hardly ever goes off and mine never did due to the fact that there was no path to it because of the backwards connectors.

Might be worth a shot to switch the spade connectors on the 10 and 100 point chime coils to at least eliminate that possibility. When I did it out of desperation it was a huge relief to something that was really aggravating. Hope that’s it.

#8 2 years ago
Quoted from pinballdaveh:Cleaning the chime coil sleeves and plungers usually solves this problem.

I rebuilt the chime unit. New coils, sleeves, grommets, beer seal strip, washers. The rebuild did not effect the behavior of the chimes.

Quoted from Sea_Wolf:

Might be worth a shot to switch the spade connectors on the 10 and 100 point chime coils to at least eliminate that possibility.

I'll give that a try. I'm thinking it's poor connectivity maybe. I don't think there's any reason that the relay would fire for scoring but not activate the chime. Sometimes you have more than one circuit to do the same thing. Like light an insert, or ring a chime. So there could be an open switch I'm not aware of. But I don't know about the chimes. I thought they always have a direct circuit path. I'll clean the jones plugs and clean or replace the spade connectors.

Thank for the input. I'll keep you posted.

#9 2 years ago

if you don't find anything with the chime wiring, the only real difference between you manually operating a relay and the game circuits doing it is you are almost certainly holding the switch on the relay closed longer and you may be making a different/better connection by tilting the armature plate.

none of the below would explain the wrong chime powering (assuming it's not just when the digit is rolling over from 9->0), so if that's definitely happening, ignore the following.

tmi alert
----------

there's hold-in switches on the relays that keep the relays powered until score reel switches open the circuit. E.g. on the N relay, there's a switch with WH-BL wire and the SL-WH-RED wire going to the coil that is the hold-in switch.

look for the WH-BL wire on the 10's reel on player 1 ... usually it's an EOS type switch. You should have 25V between the WH-BL wire and BLK wire on the coil when the reel is not doing anything.

alternatively, measure resistance between the WH-BL wire and RED-WH wire on the same switch on player 3 tens reel. You should have almost zero ohms.

also on the N relay is a switch with MAR and RED+WH wires. That's the one powering the chime. Make sure it closes quickly/reliably.

it's basically a race condition. The reel coil and the chime are more-or-less firing at the same time via different switches on the controlling relay. If the coils are wrong or switch behavior doesn't make the chime plunger do it's thing first, the reel will unpower the circuit before the chime has ... chimed.

#10 2 years ago

Thank you guys so much for helping out. I was so focused on the 1000 chime that I didn't check the whole unit well enough. When I manually hit the 1000 point relay I was getting the 1000 chime. BUT, I was also getting the 10 chime sometimes as well. I didn't hear this at first. Thanks to Sea_Wolf for urging me to double check the connectors. And jrpinball for bringing it up in the first place. The 10 point chime coil has two push on spade connectors. They were reversed when I got the game. I reassembled the unit going by the pictures I took rather than the schematic. I only checked the drawing for the 1000 chime coil wire color at first. When I went back and checked them all against the drawing, I found it. Then lesson I'm taking is basics, basics, basics...double check the basics.

Thanks again for your time!

#11 2 years ago
Quoted from Flippersaurus:

Thank you guys so much for helping out. I was so focused on the 1000 chime that I didn't check the whole unit well enough. When I manually hit the 1000 point relay I was getting the 1000 chime. BUT, I was also getting the 10 chime sometimes as well. I didn't hear this at first. Thanks to Sea_Wolf for urging me to double check the connectors. And jrpinball for bringing it up in the first place. The 10 point chime coil has two push on spade connectors. They were reversed when I got the game. I reassembled the unit going by the pictures I took rather than the schematic. I only checked the drawing for the 1000 chime coil wire color at first. When I went back and checked them all against the drawing, I found it. Then lesson I'm taking is basics, basics, basics...double check the basics.
Thanks again for your time!

Awesome. Glad you got it fixed and working right.

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