I am experiencing an intermittent issue with my game. When you first coin up, the scores reset, the motors start, everything seems fine. Throw the first puck and no score, no player advance, no restart of the return belt motor, no nada. If I turn it off and back on a couple of times, it will eventually start working properly. Once it does it is golden. You can play any number of games with any number of players, it doesn't make a difference, everything works perfectly. It only happen on the initial power on and even that is not always consistent (meaning occassionally, it fires up fine).

It appears to me to be an issue with the lock relay. When you turn the game on, the coil is energized; although not locked, meaning the latch is not pulled in; however, if you press on the latch, it will hold it. Obviously, when the machine is off, the lock releases. So, I'm not sure if that coil should engage on turn on, coin up, or some other part in the initial reset, first throw process or if game over leaves it in some incomplete state that only becomes an issue when you turn the machine off. I've attached some pics of the schematic. Note that mine is the std version so it does not have all that fancy matching stuff in it. The lock relay is in the middle of the 1st pic 12th coil over.

As always, I appreciate any ideas/suggestions

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Thanks for the suggestion; however, the slam tilt switches are fine...(if they were to trigger, you'd get game over). In my situation, the machine freezes after the first throw. (It sometimes scores the throw, sometimes partially, some times not at all.)

Bump to the top. Again, when you first turn it on, it resets the scores properly, starts the puck return conveyor, sets to player 1. Throw puck, it may or may not score and then freezes. Turn off and back and try again. Once you get to the point where it works properly that first time, it never has any more issues even on subsequent games. Only first game, first throw.

Thanks. I checked those relays initially, but will check them again. (As you know, you check what you assume to be the problem and when that doesn't work, you go off in wild directions trying to find some bizarre set of interlocking/interdependent circumstances. It doesn't take too long before you are so far down the rabbithole, you are just spinning your wheels or breaking stuff that was working fine before. So, sounds like my initial thinking was sound and I need to go back to square one)

I think you may be onto something with the score motor. When I restored the game, I tightened everything down but I can see how an out of adjustment situation could cause this to occur. If the initial coin-up doesn't fully complete a score motor revolution, with all switches triggered in the correct sequence, it will reset everything as it should giving the illusion of all being fine; however, the 'state' of the game won't actually be ready for the first throw. Definitely worth investigating.

Well, I wish I could say this has been solved, alas not the case. With the exception of one brief period (2days), everytime you turn it on and start from cold, you need to cycle it off and on (usually twice) to get it to work properly. At this point, I've adjusted, tightened, cleaned, lubed, etc everything multiple times without success. The only difference I can see in the machine state is the lock relay coil being energized or not. After playing a game that coil stays energized.

One possible clue is that the previous owner bypassed the coin mech and put a button on the bottom to close the circuit. I get the same result if I manually trip the microswitch but is the coil on the coin mech playing into this somehow? (I'm not really sure what the purpose of that coil is anyhow).

Thanks. Yeah, checked the slam switches but will look at them again. I would think if the slam switch is closed, it's closed and restarting the game would not affect it. Really a bizarre issue so any ideas are worth trying.

Just amazing...I have no more hair left to turn gray. The truly bizarre thing is that it is so consistent and I can find absolutely no differences in the state of the machine when it doesn't work vs when it does. When it doesn't work, it will always work fine after the second restart. I'm about at the point of adopting the same philosphy we used in software when there was some mystery problem like this...called it a feature.

The Venus Targette came with a special feature whereby the first game costs 30 cents and every game thereafter was only a dime. It was later popularized when electronics became more sophisticated and games were 10 cents for one play, three plays for a quarter. In this case one play 30 cents, 5 plays for 70 cents!

So uless someone has something I haven't tried, I'm moving on (plus I have a gremlin that has appeared in my '59 Pinch Hitter)