This is most likely going to be the slowest repair/restore ever for a couple of reasons.
1) I work full time, game and have other hobbies so I don't have lots of time for it.
2) I know absolutely nothing about pinball machines. It took me quite awhile to figure out how to get the thing opened - who knew there was a secret bar inside the locked door in front? so I am sorry to report it won't be a fancy pro-style restore back to mint condition.

3 years ago I got the bug and found a non-working unit at a nearby business. They told me "we used to keep it for customers and then one day it stopped working so we just left it." It sounded like it might have something easy like a blown fuse and would be a great first experience so I bought it off them.

When I plugged it in and turned it on, nothing happened, no lights, no sounds, nothing.... seemed like a fuse!

However when I eventually got the coin door open and then the back board glass, although I had never looked inside a pinball machine, I was pretty sure the original unit was missing a board:harlemGlobetrotters (237).JPG I posted the question and it was confirmed. No repair possible on this thing, I had to purchase a replacement.

Checking the fuses showed they all were in good shape. Must be something else!

My power board was in pretty bad shape: harlemGlobetrotters (280).JPG and after reading Vids bulletproofing guide I opted to try and repair the board. I purchased a soldering iron and solder and sucker and went to work. It is significantly harder to desolder connectors than it sounds from reading the posts. My attempts destroyed the board:harlemGlobetrotters (261).JPG

Back to the store and I had to purchase a replacement board. But at least I knew the power had to be good!

2 years ago: The backbox was in moderately poor shape and seemed a good candidate for some woodworking:harlemGlobetrotters (133) (resized).JPGharlemGlobetrotters (131) (resized).JPG

Originally I had planned to scan the graphics:harlemGlobetrotters (106) (resized).JPG

and cut my own but the scanner didn't work and I tried using a camera but the fisheye made it so difficult that I ended up purchasing a set.

I started sanding it down:IMG_2202 (resized).JPG and setting some bondo to fix the cracks (boy does that stuff smell!): IMG_2426 (resized).JPG

Once I had it sanded down, I set up a portable paint booth:IMG_2429 (resized).JPG

and I was able to paint the pure white and get it set for the graphics.

Color matching the graphics was tricky, should I go with a match for the (probably) faded red/blue or go with a more vibrant color. I ended up with a more vibrant color, presumably the way it looked originally.

The stencils worked great and the box was done!

1 year ago: With the easy stuff out of the way - I dove in to electrical/electronic problems. The power issue was scary and complicated so I eased into it by redoing the light board. It wasn't that bad: harlemGlobetrotters (207) (resized).JPG

But it was grungy and the tiny, pooly laid out ground wire seemed ripe to be straightened out a bit: harlemGlobetrotters (29) (resized).JPG

I purchased a large size ground wire and that turned out to be a poor decision, with all the bends it was difficult to do, but I eventually got it set up: IMG_2157 (resized).JPG

And realized I could no longer put off working on the main problem - when the unit was turned on, nothing happened at all.

After the power board was replaced (and the MPU was replaced) when I turned the unit on, a couple of GI lights would come on but nothing happened. After reading through lots and lots of posts, mostly they talked about power board problems or MPU board problems - which I did not feel I had since they were brand new. The other issue that routinely was discussed was the C23 capacitor on the solenoid board.

I purchased and installed a replacement C23, without any success.

Diagnosing was difficult as every voltage was off by a little and it was difficult for a novice to know if that was ok or not. That the power board was brand new implied it was ok but it seemed strange that they would be off.

I finally got it to the point where the MPU board would boot partway (through 4 blinks) - supposedly that meant a problem with the chips on the board but it was a brand new board. I thought about sending it back for testing but eventually I purchased a replacement solenoid board.

Recently: With the replacement boards in place I turned it on with great hopes and the MPU board went all the way through to its "I am on" 7 blinks.. woohoo!

However, I had no sound, no game, and only a few lights.

The self-test button on the front door did nothing. Fortunately the new board has a self-test button and switching that made a couple of light flash.

Test 3 is the solenoid test and nothing happened at first. Then when I had my head down in the unit the bonus solenoid fired and scared the crap out of me. Several minutes of testing showed that only the one solenoid was firing....but hey, at least it was firing!

eventually I discovered a tiny 2-pin connector to the sound board had fallen into the hole, when I found it and plugged it in, the sound test started working!

According to the manual, the flippers can be tested as part of self-test 3 (solenoid test), by holding them in. When I did so they fired.

After some thinking i realized that everything NOT connected to the playfield was working. It seemed like it ought to be the fuse on the playfield, but I had checked it visually and with the meter several times and it looked good.

I started looking for cold solder joints around the fuse and one time, the meter showed the fuse as open. I thought at first I had simply tested it incorrectly, but pulling it from the holder I discovered the fuse was broken depending on which way it was tipped. I replaced the fuse and all the solenoids started firing in the self test!

I was still unable to do anything other than run the self-test as the front door did not do anything - no lights and pushing the start-game button did nothing. Looking inside, it appeared to be a mess of broken wires:IMG_2924 (resized).JPG

And I was thinking I would need to rewire the whole front door before I could see if anything would work on the table. However, after carefully unravelling the wiring, the previous owner had soldered together some wires and left them hanging, I suspect to allow him/her to add credits to the unit without having to actually put the coins in. I cut off the extra wires and checked that everything else looked ok, but still there were no lights or activity at the front door.

I checked the connector plug for the door itself and it seemed ok, plugs and sockets were tight and appeared to have good connectivity.

I decided to try something easy to start with. there are 3 always-on GI lights on the front panel. At first I thought the bulb/sockets might be bad (all 3!) but a test with the meter showed no power in the wires at all.

The schematics showed the the wires runs directly from the door connector to J2 on the motherboard. By wiggling and pushing on the connector I was able to get the lights to flicker on the front door. It appears the connectors on the MPU board were the issue, not the pins as it was a new board, but the plug itself.

I purchased a new connector and a set of .100 pins and pulled the wires out of the old 15-pin one, one at a time, cut the old end off, crimped on the new end, shoved it into the new connector - a very tedious process.IMG_8340 (resized).JPG

I also need to do the same for the other (16-pin one) as it is similarly very loose.

Which brings me up to date and my question - do I need to replace ALL the connectors or only the ones that seem loose? It is a very tedious process, does everyone replace them all?

While working on the electronics/power issue I took a good look around the cabinet. One of the things I was surprised about was how corroded the left flipper button was. The right was clean but the left was in bad shape:IMG_2862 (resized).JPG
Fortunately I had just finished reading NicoVolta's account of travelling around the country and repairing EM machines and his description of using the dremel with the wire wheel to polish/clean things. After cleaning it up and making sure the gap looked good I was feeling better about this tiny piece of the overall picture:IMG_2866 (resized).JPG

Next up was the flipper mechs themselves. Although they worked with the self-test, they were slow and the 3rd flipper was spinning aimlessly. Looking at the solenoids one was pretty toasty-looking and black and I thought I might need to purchase a replacement.

It actually took some time to figure out how to get the flipper off. I assumed it was a simple press-fit but I could not pry it out. Finally after digging around and looking hard, I found that there are tiny hex-tighteners on the side of the piece holding the flipper shaft and I was able to loosen them and get the flipper off: IMG_8303 (resized).JPG

After that it was relatively easy to unscrew it from the table and unsolder the wires to get it onto the bench:IMG_8305 (resized).JPG

Then dissemble: IMG_8312 (resized).JPG

After a good tumbling, polishing and cleaning: IMG_8313 (resized).JPG

It went back together and all the parts seemed to move smoothly. I put it back onto the playfield and it seemed to work ok. The other two were a little trickier as they are wired together and unless I wanted to unsolder them completely I had to do them together:IMG_8335 (resized).JPG

After disassembly I found as I suspected, both of them were gripping the sleeve VERY tightly. The multimeter showed ok but I worried about how well they would work and replaced them. I also purchased a flipper rebuild kit as the end-cap had bulged on one of them.

Last night I get the new solenoids in the mail, put them back together and screwed them into the table. Getting them set right is tricky as you have to hold the flipper at the right position on the top of the table while simultaneously tightening the tiny hex screws under the table, but I eventually got it working.

I will say it was with quit the feeling of accomplishment that all 3 flippers are working perfectly. It was time for a victory libation!

With things looking like I am getting close to actually being able to play a game on it. I decided to do what I could with the playfield itself. I do not have the ability or equipment to repaint or even touchup the playfield at this time, so I am going ahead with a simple cleaning and waxing.

I am sure there are worse but to me the playfield is massively dirty, here is a small shot. Note the ball swirls in the yellow. IMG_8416-crop (resized).jpg

So I pulled the playfield off and set it on some sawhorses. I really need to get a rotisserie!IMG_2967 (resized).JPG

After reading Vic's guide, my takeaway for cleaning the playfield:
1) use Naptha
2) in extreme cases use Novus 2
3) never ever ever use Magic Eraser as it will eat through the paint in the blink of an eye.

I did quite a bit of scrubbing with Naptha, I think it got a layer of surface dirt off, but it did nothing for the ball swirls.
I finally went with Novus 2. I did a lot of scrubbing with it. A lot of scrubbing. But again, my wife couldn't even tell which parts I had done and which ones I didn't do.
Finally (and with great trepidation) I pulled out the Magic Eraser and Alcohol.

At first I lightly swept in the upper reaches where it would be covered by plastic. Then as I grew bolder and realized the ball swirls were STILL not coming out I worked it harder and harder.

I finally went through 2 complete ME pads just making some visible progress so the ball swirl was not as noticable. My expectation is that someday I will repaint/repair the surface, but for now it was enough.

Then on went the Carnuba wax:IMG_2968 (resized).JPG

I have to admit I was expecting the kind of glossy shine I see in the other threads, but obviously my surface is not like theirs and so it never got as shiny, even after 3 applications.

Nevertheless, the table is ready to be repopulated as I am heading toward my first game in the 2 years I have owned this table!

Thanks guys. Looking forward to my first game on it!

things are still going slowly - but they are going!
When this is your first attempt, the process can be slow. With the PF waxed and ready, I started putting the pieces back on. Step 1 was the pop-bumpers.

I used Vid's guide but really got stumped as they just would not go back on correctly. I mean I really struggled - for 2 weeks I tried to figure out how the pop bumpers would go back together. I would screw them all together and everything fit but just didn't seem right. There is a step that is not well documented in the guide on when and how the metal ring goes in when putting it all back together and I continued to put it in and solder the contacts but they were never long enough so I had to fashion an additional inch of length from a ground wire.

But it still did not look right, and the metal ring was always too far from the PF to work like it was supposed to. That was when I discovered that one of the rings was missing its screws - not missing, but actually snapped off! IMG_2981 (resized).JPG

So I had to wait while an extra ring arrived.

Then last night I finally.....finally! figured out what was wrong with the pop bumpers - it turns out it is possible to put the plastic base in backwards, so the leads go in the wrong holes and because of the spacers everything is off by about 1/4 of an inch. When I look at Vid's pictures its obvious once it is noticed but it took me a long time to find out what I was doing wrong.

So last night I put the pop bumpers back together ..... and managed to snap off two of the fin-shank screws... so now I wait for another order to arrive.

thanks guys. I have to say it is an astonishing feeling when something goes into place and works correctly. 2 of my 3 pop-bumpers are complete except for adjusting the contacts!

IMG_2985 (resized).JPG

IMG_2984 (resized).JPG

progress is being made, slowly, but progress is being made.

Last night I was able to get the 3rd pop bumper mounted to the playfield. After my fin-shank screws arrived, I had all the parts I needed to finish the job. I pushed out the pieces of the 2 broken screws and pushed the new ones in, then bolted on the solenoid assembly.

Then it was time to wrestle with the pop bumper assembly. holding the pieces together while simultaneously threading both the bolts and the light wires and the ring into their hole on one side of the playfield, while simultaneously pushing the ring guides through their holes requires far more hands than I possess but somehow I was able to get it all pushed in and held while I screwed the bolts down...

and screwed, and wiggled, and screwed, and adjusted, and screwed and they fell out, and the whole unit fell out time and time again, I simply could not get the bolts to catch on the nuts underneath the table.

Finally after about the 20th time of unsuccessfully trying to get them to catch, I turned the table over and started rooting around, it was obvious I had lined them up incorrectly somehow and I spent some time partially disassembling the two working ones to see what I had put in backwards.

Comparing them I eventually found the problem. IMG_2991 (resized).JPGIMG_2990 (resized).JPG the hole was missing a piece. The bracket with the bolts was not there.

I looked around inside the cabinet and in my parts area, no luck. How could it be missing? I thought it was there originally, but I wasn't really sure as they were missing pieces and parts had fallen off the bumpers before I got it.

Great, now I have to purchase another piece and wait for it to arrive.....

Fortunately, I tripped over my lamp cord and going to put it back into the wall, I found where I had placed the parts. For some reason I put them on the back side of my workbench behind a box:IMG_2992 (resized).JPG

After that it was easy to screw the part into the bottom of the playfield, re-asemble all the pieces and hold them together while screwing in the bolts (which held this time) - then carefully bending the lamp wire so it comes out from under the solenoid housing, and soldering the wires beack together.

It took 1 hour and 18 minutes but the 3rd pop bumper is bolted on and ready for action!

Work is proceeding on putting everything back on to the playfield. I am doing the easy stuff first - the stuff that doesn't require any changes or repairs.
The pop bumpers went on (finally) and feel pretty good:IMG_3003 (resized).JPG

I got the flippers back together and they feel good:IMG_3002 (resized).JPG

The lower bumpers went well: IMG_3014 (resized).JPG

but the ball guides at the bottom of the playfield gave me a lot of trouble. I took some pictures of how it looked before I dissasembled them all, but when it came time to put it all back together, they were bluury and the wrong angle, so important decisions like "does this go on top of this or underneath that" took some trial and error. It was made considerably worse because I managed to bend the metal during the cleaning and polishing phase so nothing lined up with the holes on the playfield.

I think I finally go it, the ball kicker doesn't hit anything and rolling a ball through the track shows it doesn't bind up so I think I am good....whew!IMG_3013 (resized).JPG

I have to say the popup spray booth (I got the $50, model C900038) was minimally adequate. I found it difficult to work inside of and with the screen on one half it still let paint out and I had dust all over the garage. Its better than nothing but for the backbox it was pretty small and hard to maneuver around in. I would go with a bigger tent if you can.

Some progress was achieved. I replaced the flaky J2 connector on the MPU board and all solenoids now seem to fire correctly. I started looking at non-GI lights and checking each one.

Some of them were a simple burned out bulb, some are corroded and don't make good connections until cleaned with the Dremel. The "3 thousand" light on the PF was a different animal. I checked it and the bracket holding the lamp was loose and wobbly - aha! I thought, a simple fix. But after inserting a new bulb and a new bracket:IMG_3026 (resized).JPG

It still won't light. I now need to check the other end and see if it has a bad connector at the board. Anyone know the connection for the yellow with brown strip "3 thousand" light?HGplayfield (resized).jpg

The wire should be labeled as "36" (yellow with brown) but the only one I can find on the schematic that looks reasonable is a "3k bonus" on the lamp driver J3 pin 26 but it shows as colored "38" which is yellow with black... is that it and the black has faded?

link to schematic, see page 43: http://www.ipdb.org/files/1125/Bally_1979_Harlem_Globetrotters_On_Tour_Manual.pdf

thanks for the confirmation. I think I will do some wiggling of the lamp driver connectors and see if the lights will flicker, something tells me its time to purchase some 28 pin connectors!

A lot of work and very little results.

Since the lights are so weird - most work just fine, a few don't work at all and a few flicker weirdly - I really thought it was the connectors. I've put the meter on the wires to the bulbs and confirmed no power, so its not a poor bulb housing problem (I replaced one of them too, just in case)

So I purchased connectors and pins and and a crimper. Naturally the 28 pin connectors which run most of the various wires are out of stock by everyone and I spend quite a bit of time writing and asking them. Finally I decided to go with a 20 and an 8 pin connector together and started in.
IMG_3087 (resized).JPG

It was with very high hopes I plugged the new connectors in and turned on the self-test and it was a considerable disappointment to find that nothing had changed, not a single light acted differently (though at least I didn't seem to have introduced any new problems)

So i have to admit, I am pretty deflated at this point. I had pinned a lot of hope on the connectors. The lamp board is the last original board (I purchased replacements for all the others) as was mentioned above is it time to start looking at board problems?

I have a video of what it looks like on the lamp self-test where they are all supposed to flash: https://butlerfam.smugmug.com/PublicPics/i-rbNMRNm/A

note the "E" in Globe at top center, the flickering lights in the saucers, the weird flickering ones up that left side spinner and finally at the bottom left of the playfield, below the flippers. Its hard to tell since it is flashing but it is also flickering.

I think I forgot to mention - My new little icy cold beauty came in recently - she is a little rough around the outside but thats only skin deep, she plays great and a little paint-and-polish will have her looking like new in no time.

Ice Revue when it arrived (resized).JPG

thanks - posted to the wrong thread...oh well.
At least it works - unlike my globetrotters!

So last night I started in on the lamp board. I took a look at it very critically and found one of the connectors, where it connects to the board, looked pretty bad. A good candidate for reflowing the solder.

I cleaned it with a wire brush and started in on heating each pin and reflowing solder. Everything worked fine until I got to the 4th from the end. For some reason the solder would not flow. It melted into a BB-sized ball that sat on the pin and made long strings when I pulled the iron away.

A little more heat.....

and the pad pulled away from the board.....

Maybe I can hold the tiny pad down with a pointer and flow enough solder to stick it all together....

eh, I think its working - on to the next one.....and it does the same thing.
IMG_3091 (resized).JPG

Turning it over, I can see that although I never got the pins hot enough to melt solder, they did get hot enough to melt the pin-holder.
IMG_3092 (resized).JPG

And so my record stands at:

connectors: 3, me: 0

Soldering is an art that I have NOT mastered...and a new lamp board is on order.

So while I am waiting for the lamp board to arrive, I thought I would tackle another issue, the dropdown targets were pretty sticky, push one and it kind of half-way comes down. Looking at the unit it was pretty dirty and grungy:
teardown3 (resized).JPG

I took it apart:
teardown2 (resized).JPG

Pretty much as far as I could go:
teardown1 (resized).jpg

cleaned, tumbled and polished....plus a new set of plastics:
cleanup1 (resized).JPG

it went back together and looks great...

but...

I'm not sure its going to work. It seems like its backwards. When I push the solenoid to reset it, everything works correctly, but then the side spring pulls the bar down onto the rods preventing the dropdowns from dropping.

If I hold the bottom bar away with my hand (stretching the side spring) then the targets drop perfectly.. but it doesn't seem right. When resting with the power turned off, shouldn't the drop targets come down and stay down?

Got my new lamp driver board in. Plugged it in and now it won't boot, stops at 5 flashes

Perfect. A new mpu board, a new lamp board and a new power board and it won't even boot up enough to run a self test. Why don't I just spend another $100 and get a new solenoid board. It's the only thing left. Or maybe it's time to throw this thing in the dumpster right now.

thanks guys, I will spend some more time this weekend. Its possible the new board is bad but not likely. I may have to redo the connectors again.. anyone know where you can get 28-pin connectors? Marcos is always out of stock

Thanks to you guys I have gone from the depths to despair to the pinnacle of exhilaration!

Based on your recommendation, I unsoldered the drop-target solenoid.... and with great hopes turned it on...it still would not boot up.
So I looked carefully at my rebuilt connectors, found one that looked suspect and redid it...still would not boot up.
In desperation, I put the old board back in. At least things kind of halfway worked when it was in.... still would not boot up.

Now I was hurting in a big way. But at least I knew the new board was not the issue.

In desperation, I turned to the manual that came with my alltek mpu board. I was hoping it would give me some ideas for testing voltages or what it thinks might be the problem so I could work backward from it.

It essentialy said: if you only get 5 flashes (which is my problem) then the power is bad. Check the power supply, fuses or the connectors. The fuses were the easiest, I checked them and one of them was blown! I replaced it and the table booted up!!!!!!!

I have to confess I took a considerable amount of liquid libation in celebration at that point.

Obviously my board and new connector were working ok, so I soldered the drop-target solenoid back in... and pop went the fuse. triple-checking the wires compared to my source showed they matched, but thanks to cudabee I decided to reverse them.

voila! it worked. My drop-targets come down correctly (and stay down) and pop back up and everything is going great. Quite frankly I still do not understand, as it appears that my wires are backwards from the reference pics.. but it works great!

I spent the rest of the evening getting all the lights working. I now have 100% of the playfield lights working...woohoo.

I still have a couple of switches failing the self-test but after 3 years of work, I am close to actually being able to play this game.

I looked at switch 30 last night - its the one that shows up as a problem in the switch test. It looks good from a physical point of view, I didn't reflow the wires but the contacts look good, its open and not touching, closing when i push on it.

I am wondering if the tiny diode or capacitor on the switch could be bad. Does anyone know what parts they are? I can't find them in the manual at all. it just says "all switch assemblies consist of leaf springs, contacts, separators, plastic tubing and screws to hold them to the mounting surface."

Haha. I snipped the diode off but now the switch doesn’t work at all. My guess is that one of the connectors I replaced was done poorly - it seems like 99% of the problems are connector-related. I need to do some work with the meter but I’ve been working on my new rescue 911 instead (https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/rescuing-a-rescue-911)

In re-checking out the globetrotter I realized how far I have come. It looks more like a “before” pin than an “after” pin. It’s going back into the workroom after I get my target pool finished. Then perhaps I can really say the slowest restore is done