So I went down to south florida today to pick up an STTNG at a damn good price. Played a game on it before making the purchase and the only glaringly obvious problem was that when you hit either flipper at any point in gameplay it automatically plays the “shuttle craft leaving” sound and animation on the screen... figured it was something making contact where it shouldn’t and I could figure that out.

After the trip now when you turn it on the game will launch one ball at a time over and over again, sometimes they make their way back out and sometimes they disappear around the back of the playfield and don’t come out. IF I can manage to have all 6 in the drain at once it will let me start a game but the shuttle animation issue persists.

The startup diagnostics say right flipper EOS (found that the ground was missing its leaf spring - easy fix) and soundboard U8 checksum error so I’ll check the connections there.

Could the busted leaf spring be shorting something out causing the animation? It doesn’t only happen with right flipper press, it happens with both...

The ball launching thing? I’ve seen a few threads mentioning to check the diverter and I’ll do that later tonight or tomorrow - what am I looking for? Why would the diverter being bad cause the game to launch balls in the first place? Is it potentially a problem with the launcher that loosened on the drive home? Because it wasn’t doing that at the person’s house when I tested it

is that so? So, it should fire three balls and then be ready to go? So if balls are coming back to the trough then something IS wrong with the diverter cuz it should shoot 1, 2, 3 and then be ready to start instead of sometimes shooting 5-6

I get the wire maybe breaking in transit, I’ll try to locate it tomorrow and fix it if it’s broken. I don’t see any good reason why it would burn out after being unplugged to move it and immediately upon plugging it back in - hopefully I’m right

Haha thanks! It’s gonna be a bit of a nightmare but I know I’ll love it once I’m done. I bought it having never played one before today - just heard great things and love the subject matter.

Any insight on why it plays that animation every time the flipper is pushed? I can try to get a video tomorrow but anyone who knows the game should know which animation I mean - the shuttle craft takes off from the center of the screen and heads away. It plays EVERY time a flipper button is pressed during play (I’m not sure if it’s doing it in the menu, because if not maybe it has something to do with the flopper’s movement causing a weird contact point?)

as of right now this sounds like a foreign language to me, but i will look into it tomorrow when I'm back at the machine - thank you lol

So I’m getting a top drop target error - the switch is fine but the lever mounting points on each side are worn off so the lever doesn’t stay on. Is this an appropriate replacement? Mine has a resistor soldered across two of the three contact points, do I need one?

https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/12-SMSB

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Yeah, I tried squeezing it a little tighter but there really isn’t much of any “nub” for it to attach to... my other thought was to drill it out and use a piece of paper clip or wooden toothpick (because conducting electricity is bad, probably) to act as the nubs.

Would this switch being bad cause the “buzz buzz buzz” that happens during play as the ball goes into that top hole?

its definitely SW46 messing up because sometimes when the ball is kicked out of the trough to the starting point it'll activate the "Command decision" rather than allowing me to choose between the ~5 initial options OR during play my rank will keep rising randomly and that switch is the same one that controls both of those things.

My subway is DISGUSTING - I swear i thought it was a metal subway until I started reading more about the game and realized they're all plastic. Its also cracked beneath the center hole so I am deciding if I want to replace it completely (another $120?!) or take it off to clean it and attempt a repair of some kind

that’s nuts! I definitely have 6 in there and I’ve ordered new ones because the previous owners never opened the machine in the years that they owned it so I’m sure they’ve never been replaced.

Okay so I got my new subway with protectors in the mail, got the old subway out and everything disconnected - the top diverter... what’s the easiest way to get that out of the old in and into the new one? It looked like pulling the set screws and shaft and then reinserting on the new one but that shaft is LOCKED in there. WD-40? Lighter fluid?

Also, now that it’s all apart and I’m cleaning the optos it looks like either the entire opto art or at least the LEDs on sw46 were replaced. All the other ones sit INSIDE their black or white plastic housing (I assume to protect the integrity of the beam) while in 46 they are sticking out a fairly significant amount(at least 2mm on each side) - can that be making the switch register as “open” sometimes because the “beam” isn’t as direct as it should be?

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that’s what I thought! I’ll do that before I put the subway back together. Still trying to get that top diverter shaft out

yeah, I see them disassembled in your photo but I can’t get that shaft out at all even after the set screws were removed. I ended up cutting away the old, broken subway but there’s no way to get it into the new subway without removing that top diverter shaft. I’m at work tonight but I’ll get pictures tomorrow or Monday when I go back to the shop to work on it. Just looking for ideas for penetrating lubricant I can use to help it slide out easier then I can clean it and put it back together afterwards

Ah, okay - I’ll try that when I get back over there.

I was trying to avoid breaking down the entire diverter, just trying to remove the diverter and shaft so I could re-attach everything to the new subway. So in reference to your photo imagine the entire mechanism is still attached - I removed those two black set screws and was trying to remove the diverter + shaft from that bushing with everything else intact

Thank you for all the help!

Pin_Guy Got it! taking it apart completely helped because then i could use a pry-bar to take out the diverter/shaft from the bushing. Its all back together now and seems to be running correctly, although since I've never played the game before I bought one I don't know all the little nuances so if something goes wrong I may not actually know.

I was able to get those LEDs on opto SW46 in a TINY bit (like 1/2mm) but they still stick out a decent amount. If i have any more issues with that sensor reading "open" when it shouldn't then I'll likely just replace that whole opto switch to make my life a little easier.

The U8 checksum error was gone while I was repairing and now will pop up on startup - the first ball of the first game has no audio and then when the second ball starts all the audio comes back in... It's quirky but it works for now so I'm tempted to leave it alone rather than trying to pull the chip and risk not being able to get it working at all again - eventually I'll just order a replacement set (or just U8) and replace it. I also plan to do the "tie back mod" for that 50V line eventually - as of now its freshly soldered in place and holding strong but I know it can cause huge issues if it ever disconnects so I'd rather take care of it before that happens.

I also had a random error for SW 83 (made left ramp) but checking it in the "test" shows it is working and then the error went away after that. I have a hard time getting it up that ramp in gameplay for the "Picard maneuver" - it'll go 90% up the ramp and then roll back down rather than completing the ramp and come down the wireframe... this machine didn't come with a bubble level so I bought one aftermarket and the pitch seems to be set appropriately for Williams machines of the era but maybe I still have it a touch too steep to make that ramp all the way around? anything else I should check for as to why it may be rolling backwards rather than completing that ramp? The diverter up top there appears to be out of the way when I look but maybe i should watch someone else hit a ball up there and make sure it is extending when it should (whenever the lock light isn't lit it should divert the ball to the wireframe, correct?)

Going over there now to put in the coin mech since nobody carries 500Lira anymore and I want people to pay to play it lol

Flipper rebuild for top right and left are on the list. Right had to be rebuilt because it was giving an EOS error, so i figured i should just rebuild it completely if I was gonna mess with it. I have the parts for the left and the top right ready to go, just need a couple hours to sit down and do it.

I don't know that I want to upgrade the coil from stock - I'd like the gameplay to be nostalgic (aka as original as possible) for people who have been playing it for the last 26 years, but I guess I'll see how it is after Ii rebuild it.

So playing tonight in “rescue” it keeps spitting balls out after a drain... like 10-20 balls...
Or more - it’s still going lol

Any ideas?

Edit: it’s happening outside rescue too. But it seems random. I played a whole game with no issues, next person hit 1.7billioj on ball one and then player two had unlimited balls so they had to reset the machine

It’s firing balls from the main launcher that starts the game. It doesn’t seem to have any level of predictability to it that I can see. Like I said, player 1 had a great normal ball then player two ended up with an endless supply of balls being launched after each drain

yeah... t18 is supposed to empty the lower playfield right? You just go to it and hit enter? Cuz mine doesn’t do shit. I have to just flip up the playfield and get the balls out of the top drop target if I want to empty the lower playfield.

Looked today and I had weird errors on like 36-38 and 41 I think. I didn’t have time to troubleshoot today cuz I had a friend with me but I’ll get to it in the next week