I found Eddie's thread very entertaining and helpful about Moderns daily repairs. Figured I would start doing the same in hopes that anyone can benefit someday from these. Wish I started sooner as some real head scratchers have come along in the past year. I'm one of the co founders of The Sanctum at 290 pratt st. Meriden, CT and do a lot of the game maintenance here. We have close to 40 games set on freeplay and are open to the public every monday night for fun/league/tournaments and drinks. Please come by some week if you are ever around. Usually open by 6:30 and lock up around midnight. http://www.tothesanctum.com

Games don't get nearly as many plays as Modern does but we have around 40-50 people come every week and play the hell out of these games. I need to start some new Audit logs too and track them on here somwhere.

Log of repairs:

Gottlieb Rack 'em Up

System 80A boot/game startup issue: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-2494488

Gottlieb/Premier Genesis

Ramp Flap issue/Cliffy ramp enterance upgrade: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-2494508

Williams Space Shuttle

Catching on fire/fried transformer: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-2908710

Bally Fireball Classic

Ending ball in play prematurely after locking a ball: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-2914412

Weak/unresponsive pop bumper
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-3022117

Willliams Jack*Bot

Dead left flipper: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-2921005

Bally Medusa

Interment/non working upper right flipper: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-2921011

Bally Shadow

Non working battlefield kicker: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-2921013

Williams Congo

Upper 2 way saucer not kicking out the ball: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-2921015

Gottlieb/Premier TX-Sector

Right flipper not working: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-2921017

Williams High Speed

Weak Flippers:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-2996286

Gottlieb Title Fight

Drop Targets not resetting:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-2996295

Weak/sticking right flipper:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-2996324

Weak plunger not making skill shot:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-3007950

Stern Kiss

Non working right slingshot:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-2996322

Bally Bazaar

Intermittent right flipper:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-2996319

Bally Popeye

Sticking right flipper:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-2996303

Stern Meteor

Sticking right flipper:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-2996303

Dead/passive bumper broken
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-3022091

Williams Earthshaker

Ball hang up in skill shot area:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-3007897

Stern Seawitch

Player 3 display issue:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-3007911

Gottlieb Big Indian

Bonus collect issue/Score motor endjessky running:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-3007942

Stern Stars

Ball not being kicked out to shooter lane.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-3022078

Data East Star Wars

Weak flippers
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-sanctum-weekly-game-repair-log#post-3022106

This week I had two issues. One electrical and one mechanical from years of being played.

Rack Em' Up appeared to be in game when I walked up to it with ball in shooter lane. Game dead and no response. Would not start a fresh game. Rebooted game. Nothing but GI and all 4 displays showed straight 0's.

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This era of gottliebs was common to have slam tilt switch issues which this looks very similar too as the displays sort of have a wave to them:

This one was not a slam tilt issue but shows the same symptoms. It is actually the arm from the coin door lockout relay getting stuck in the credit switch causing a short.

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Remove the arm from the switch and the game boots as it should again.

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Second game on the list was Gottlieb Genesis. Game was aquired with NOS ramps but the posts for the entry were extremely out of alignment/bent and some were even drilled into new parts of the playfield. Ramp flaps also bent out of shape and even after hammering them flat a good hit would "pop" them back out of shape and balls frequently would catch on them.

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The best solution is a kit from Cliffy to the rescue. His kit includes 2 nice fresh new ramp flaps made just like his nice protectors. 4 new posts with locknuts to bolt through the playfield. 4 ramp protectors and 4 screws for the top of the posts to hold ramp protectors in place. You will have to remove t nuts from under playfield that hold old mini posts in. Simply unscrew the post 80 percent of the way and give a good tap with a hammer and free the the bite of them into the underside. Install new posts with new ramp flap underneath. Install post sleeve of choice, Cliff tells me he has some sweet hot pink ones for this game but we are currently switching games over to titan rings, and then place ramp protectors over the posts and secure with screws provided.

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Next on the list of issue to address for next week are:

Big Indian player not always advancing in multiplayer games

Weak autoplunger on Walking Dead

Bad sound board on Skateball causing the game to periodically reset

Time flies. We were busy moving into our new location so I failed to keep track of issues along the way.

We had space shuttle catch fire at about 3 AM during our 24 hour final battle.

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Opened it up and found this.

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Speaker was never secured. Landed on 50v transformer for the flippers. Cooked it.

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Found a new transformer and all is well.

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Nope. Mine was flawless

That pesky fireball classic someone dragged in is on the list.

So Fireball Classic, not the home version but the early bally SS version without zipper flippers and digital displays, has been acting very odd. We started noticing it during league play that sometimes when players locked a ball in the Wotan lock it would imediately count your bonus down and end the ball and move to the next player and shoot them out a fresh ball with the ball still in the lock the previous player put in the saucer. We checked a few settings and looked for bad switch caps in affected areas of activity but no issues there. I pulled the apron last night and discovered this.

What you see is the ball trough with 3 balls sitting in there pre game start. When the game starts the ball release plunger activates and shoots a ball to the shooter lane. It does not recoil and the balls are still hung up in their starting position and triggering ball 2 and 3 switches still. This is confusing the game. When I take the ball and put it in the saucer you see its confused. The inserts for the lock strobe but no ball gets shot out. When i put the ball release back and settle the balls into the correct home position the game ends ball 1(Strobing of all the inserts) and then shoots out ball 2.

Pulled out the coil and replaced the sleeve and cleaned the plunger rod with some alcohol and it all operates smooth again.

So for the time being we have all the games intended to be running, running properly. We will see how many games go down this monday night and report back again.

We will try to start streaming some of these repairs on our Sanctum Live Stream. Will post here when we are and the link is tinyurl.com/thesanctum if you ever want to tune in or subscribe.

-Jim

Games were dropping last night like flies.

First jackbot left flipper stopped working. Completely unresponsive. First place I tend to look is broken wires on coil lugs. Quick look no broken wires. Next I checked the connectors on the cabinet button and opto board. All connectors solid. Check fuse F904 for lower left flipper on the fliptronics board. Fuse still good, tested with continuity test on my DMM

Pulled the playfield up to start testing voltages. Closer look at the flipper assembly and I found this

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The coil was operating properly and pulling in the plunger but the bolt had listen itself out of the prawl linkage and separated. Parts sitting in the coinbox. Reinstalled the bolt in the linkage and back to normal.

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Then Medusa. Upper right flipper dying sometimes. Other times fluttering. Also reports of the upper saucer not collecting lit value.

Saucer turned out to be an out bulb for the green arrow saying it is lit for collect. People were in fact collecting the value but didn't know they were.

The upper flippers on this game are not controlled by the cabinet flipper buttons. Single leaf switch on those. The lower flipper coils have two EOS switches on them. Normal one for killing high power and leaving hold coil. The other one is engaging to feed high power to upper flipper coil. The upper flipper coils then have two EOS switches themselves. One for killing high power and leaving hold coil. The other breaks contact to disengage the lights under the lower flippers when they are held up. Rather crazy wiring Setup. For the upper flipper not engaging properly I looked into that secondary EOS switch on the lower flipper. Here it with the flipper not engaged.

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Here it is with the flipper engaged.

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Very tiny gap not engaged but when engaged it still isn't enough to engage the switch to power the upper flipper. Proper adjustment of the lower EOS switch fixes this issue

Shadow battlefield kicker stopped working. Motor still moved it. Just not kicking. Switch test showed the opto triggering the kicker worked. Pulled up the battfield and found the wire on the coil lug broken.

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Reconnected the wire, good to go.

Congo upper saucer not kicking out the ball. Stuck in infinite ball search. This is an issue I had a good idea what the problem was. I've seen it on several different Congos, so I looked straight for this issue.

The upper saucer can actually fire in two different directions. On goes up and over the ramp into the pop bumper area. The other direction goes into the amy corner ramp feeding the upper flipper.

It does this with two different could during seperate plungers in opposite direction. Something odd happens where both coils must fire at the same time and actually get stuck together and can't recoil and firing the coil won't unstick them.

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Manually moving them apart takes care of this issue.

TX sector right flipper died next. Broken wire on the cabinet flipper button. Was connected with a metal connector. I chose to solder it directly to the leg for better reliability.

Shadow also lost all its settings. Batteries died. Replaced for now and good to go again. Looking at installing Nvram in most games that can take it. Many of our ballys have remote packs or memory capacitors already.

That's all I can remember for last night!

High speed will get its day. Maybe I will get a chance to look at it after I get Seawitch setup Monday night. Make an offer on high speed if you need one

It's been very busy. Didn't have time to document a lot of the fixes over the last couple weeks.

Finally got a look at High Speed. Left flipper coil sleeve mushroomed in the coil. Could not changed. Swapped out coil and did a complete flipper rebuild.

Gottlieb Title Fight. Drop targets not resetting.

Broken wire on the reset coil lug. Simple resoldering fixed that.

Stern Meteor and Williams Popeye both had sticking right flippers.

Another case where the coil sleeve could not be removed to be changed. Years and years of heat has mushroomed these coils. Both coils have been replaced and proper EOS adjustments have been checked and gapped appropriately to make sure the high powered coil does not stay energized when the flipper is held up.

Bally Bazaar intermittent right flipper.

Took a look at the flipper and found a loose wire on the EOS switch. Wire was resting on the lead blade making it work intermittently. Resoldering the wire back to the switch.

Stern Kiss right slingshot not firing.

Looked at the lead switches for the slingshot and found the switch twisted around itself. Straightened out the leafs of the switch.

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Gottlieb Title Fight right flipper sticking and weak.

Coil stop was only half on. Missing one of its screws holding it in place. Replaced missing screw and secured the stop.

Was not made aware of that one. Will look into it this weekend. Thanks Steve.

Lot more fixes this week but the list still grows longer!

Williams Earthshaker. Ball being hung up under the skill shot ramp. Switch was holding it in place. It had been bent up too high a over the playfield and holding the ball. No picture taken. Too rough of a place to work and see!

Stern Seawitch player 3 display showing odd characters.

Plugged display into player 4's spot. Symptoms followed. Means the issue is in the display itself. Looked at header pins first.

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You can see all the eyelets and traces are shot. Attempts to repair have been made but it's not good. Installed a rebuilt replacement 7 digit display. Glass will be removed from old display board and saved for future need. Not worth trying to salvage the display board. Too much effort to replace all those eyelets.

Gottlieb Big Indian. As I was entering scores I heard an EM firing coils away rapidly. My buddy Taxman went o we to check it out for me. Bonus was counting down after the player drained their ball. It wouldn't stop. Game kept rolling over the score. Newer player thought he had a hell of a ball. Turned the game off and back on. Stopped the bonus countdown but wouldn't start a new game. Usual Score motor running non stop issues now. All score reels reset to zero so no issue there.

Problem started with bonus collect so it makes me think it's an issue with the bonus count unit. When looking at playfield status as the score reel runs I see the 5000 bonus light is on. Second clue to finding the problem on the bonus count unit.

Pulled the playfield and found this:

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You can see the Bakelite end of the plunger is disconnected from the stepper arm. Game was counting bonus and firing the coil to reset unit to 0 but it wasn't moving, giving an endless bonus count. It was held on by an e clip. I found it in pieces in the cabinet. Constant vibration for 40+ years finally took its toll. Replacement with a new e clip is all it needed.

Gottlieb Title Fight.

Plunging the ball was not making it completely up to the "mini playfield"

All parts were clean and in good order. It's been an issues since the day it came in. Pulled the shooter spring. A brief spring was installed. Stepped it up to a green spring and it now has plenty of power to make it to the top. Guessing a wrong replacement was installed somewhere along the way.

Bally Shadow

Battlefield kicker not working again. Broken wire to the coil AGAIN. This movement of the coil is obviously fatiguing the wire. Might need to cut back and replace with a new piece of wire back to somewhere under the playfield where it doesn't move/is stressed.

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The rest of the Pingulps came in and will be on next week with the rest of the rubber feet. Terry's going to run out of pingulp stock if we add anymore games. Our number escalated quickly! 43 running games now....

That excess solder is bridging the gap where the trace is missing. Solder makes a great trace replacementUs plumbers get creative when it comes to soldering!

Before I could get to some back logged repairs this one popped up

Stern Stars would not kick out a ball on the last ball of a game.

Switch in pothole checked out and coil was firing but something wasn't right.

Pulled the apron to find this "fix"image_(resized).jpegimage_(resized).jpeg

Besides everything being filthy, a Sheetrock screw was installed as sort of an early stop for the ball launcher return. This screw wouldn't allow it to fully return and let the ball site properly. Somehow this worked fine for some time that we've had it.

Pulled the screw out and pulled the mech apart and cleaned everything. This is the coil sleeve that was in there. Guess it's never been changed in its life. image_(resized).jpeg

Reassembled everything after the cleaning with a new plastic sleeve. Everything worked nice and smooth after.

Stern Meteor dead or passive bumper was falling off. Body was cracked right off the base. A new body and base had to be installed.

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Data East Star Wars

Complaints of the ramp being too hard to hit. Neither flipper could make the ramp except for a rolling shot off the right flipper.

Started by going to change flipper coil sleeves. Neither flipper coil would the sleeves come out. Seized right in there. In the trash went the flipper coils. 2 new ones and sleeves installed. Ramp nice and easy to hit from either flipper now.

Bally Fireball Classic.

Right pop bumper weak/unresponsive.

Coil sleeve very dirty-Replaced. Switch/spoon for the skirt needed centering/adjusting to get proper response from ball hits.

Stern Iron Man Classic

Top two rollover lights and pop bumper playfield insert flasher were outimage_(resized).jpegimage_(resized).jpeg

This game was the stripped version sold at costco. Full size game. Different cabinet material. Blank coin door. No magnet on whiplash or monger. No yakov kicker.

Some things were actually a step to future stern designs. Start of the pro sale lockdown bar latches. Game also has fully LEDs on boards daisy chained by ribbon cables. The cables often rattle loose. They were put in with hot glue at the factory. It's the first thing I check with lamp issue on this game. image_(resized).jpeg

Gottlieb Rack em Up

Hitting the left flipper awards 10 points.

Random points for vibrations like flippers or other coils firing is usually an improperly gapped dummy switch behind a rubber ring somewhere. Looking around on this game there appears to be only one behind the left flipper lane guide. image_(resized).jpeg

This one was bent and touching itself too easily. Just needed to be straightened out.

Gottlieb/Premier Hoops

Issue is one of the top rollovers is lit to light lock. Hitting the switch does not light the lock but hitting the pop bumper below it does light lock. image_(resized).jpeg

Looking closely at the area the leaf switch for the roller was closed at all times. Hitting a pop bumper right below it made enough vibration to open the switch momentarily and then close again awarding the locks. Properly gapped the switch and all is well.