I finally got around to soldering in my bonus unit on a Surfer I bought a little while ago and fired up the machine to see what gremlin lurk. It did start up but at first I had no playfield lights and after a quick search I found a thread about reseating a jones plug by the tilt bob on an old Bally and that saw I had something similar and gave it a shot. Now all the lights come on, but the machine still has a few quirks for the moment. After the first game the tilt got stuck but that seems better now. And the score reel need cleaning. I think I'm going to need to clean all the switches and start systematically going through things.

Big ones on the list:
- 5k gets added at game start and subsequent balls when launched to the shooting lane.
- bonus lights don't always come on when I think they should and sometimes I get extra lights on 1k, 2k, 3k after I reach 10k bonus (two lights are on). Not sure if that's due to my soldering skills or not. bonus goes up to 15k, nevermind
- Not sure if this is an issue but the bonus lights don't count down on ball end. I get the bonus added to the score but it seems like the lights should be part of the count down? After watching gameplay video again I think it just goes really fast and some of my sockets are flaky.
- Ball end doesn't always add 500 (sometimes more, sometimes less)
- ball count doesn't seem to be advancing/showing correctly sometimes (5 light used to be on constantly but now is working better) sometimes the game is over in 3 balls and sometimes you get more than 5 (on 5 ball setting)
- points get added randomly to player 2 sometimes too in a one player game

I think overall after I clean all the switches things might be a bit better. I don't know how long the machine actually sat nonfunctional but I'm going to guess it was a while. Now it has a good home though. I'm really excited to get this one up and running. I also need to clean it up and do some playfield touch up but overall I think I'm pretty close.

Time to start putting all of the good posts I've been reading to use.

I played yours when I visited about the Grand Prix and that had me start looking for one. So thanks again for the hospitality.

I'm really looking forward to cleaning this one up and getting it in the line up.

OK, so I've been playing with stuff and I have some issues.

- The 'Add Player' relay is triggering as the ball enters the shooting lane (with the rollover switch) and adds 5k points on each ball kick out or if I manually trigger the leaf switch. No idea what might be causing that. Not sure what I should be checking or adjusting.
- Ball count unit is acting funny too and often skipping player two in a two player game.
- Sometimes when playing 3 or 5 ball games after the last ball I loose ball count and keep feeding balls indefinitely. Guessing related to ball count unit?
- 500 bonus is flaky (both 500 relay and 500 with add bonus relay do it), sometimes 400, 500, 600, 700 points are awarded. Not sure what to adjust or look for.

What posts do I need to go read?

Got the score reel figured out from pinwiki but the player unit not advancing and 5k bonus on ball kickout is confusing me. I'm trying to read the score motor switch positions but not getting what the chart means.

I'm a picture person. These schematics drive me crazy, but I'm happy to learn.

I'm not sure how to read the grid and understand when switches should be open or closed or match it up with when something elsewhere in the schematic says 'Motor 1C' or something similar. I'm going to try and focus on the 5k ball trough issue on each ball and then move to the player unit issues.

surfer-score-motor-section.jpg

Thanks. Didn't know about the switch types before and that makes more sense. As I've been futsing with the game I noticed that the drop targets aren't resetting on startup or between balls but are if I drop them all and hit all the rollovers. I'm wondering if that might have something to do with the 5k issue. It also appears that the bonus rollovers in positions 2 and 4 are linked somehow because if I hit either one the other one goes at the same time. So much to learn.

OK, silly me. After reading the schematics I see that the rollovers are tied together in 3 ball setting. I think I'm going to set it back to 5 ball to make sure I work on things in what will be the normal play mode.

Well I got the drop targets resetting again after adjusting the reset relay but I still have the scoring issue and now my bonus hole kicker isn't triggering from the ball. It will trigger if I hold down the hole relay though.

Well I have progress and set backs. I was continuing to check connections and make sure I didn't have any solder joints touching each other and I ended up spotting a random nut that was touching my playfield jones plugs. I removed it and now my 5k point issue on each ball is gone! I'm still getting some random points on the player two score when advancing to the next ball but it's not as frequent.

The setback though is after removing the nut and going through some of the relays checking for shorts now my outhole isn't triggering and it was before so I messed that up somehow.

Two big problems remain now:

1. Bonus hole isn't kicking when the ball goes in it (it used to though). If I trigger the hole relay manually the kicker will trigger and score bonus but the leaf switch isn't starting the process. Not sure where that connects to but I did check continuity at the leaf and it is making contact.

2. Outhole isn't working now after first ball, but first ball does still kick out. Used to work but similar to the hole relay the leaf switch isn't triggering whatever it needs to now.

If I can get these two things fixed I think the game is pretty close.

Oh and mods can move this to the em-tech board if they wish.

Surfer is finally working! It's been incredibly frustrating but also a good learning experience. I adjusted the bonus relay, the 5000 bonus relay and the Q relay and got everything working. I think I'm starting to understand some of the schematics too. For a bit I was having an issue with the ball count and player lights and was able to fix that but then messed up the outhole. A quick adjustment to the game over relay finished off all of the problems and the game seems like it's all working.

I am still having a flaky 500 point score issue (on both players) but otherwise everything seems like it's set. I'm not sure if it might be the timing on the score motor or perhaps I just need some new coil sleeves. I'm pretty happy to tonight though. Now on to cleaning.