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I am confused by the bands on the resistor for my pop bumper switch. It looks like the first band is gold but what I am reading says that color codes don't start with gold. When I enter the color codes into a calculator app (I am unsure of how to do it manually), it says this is a 2kohm5% resistor. Is that right?
I think I found it on marco
http://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/5010-12465-00
2kohm1/2 watt, right?
Quoted from vid1900:I think that's a 100ohm 5% 1/2watt
I still don't get it. How did you come up with the 100ohm 5% 1/2watt? I thought I had it with the 2kohm 1/2watt based on appearance.
Aha - thank you. I think what looks brown on your phone might actually be red on my resistor. Thanks for the explanation!
Quoted from vid1900:If we can't figure out what the color codes are (like a burnt resistor, or a color blind owner), we can cheat and look at the schematic (click for readable size):
Here we see all 3 pop bumpers R3, R4 and R5 are 100ohm resistors
Thank you again. Is there a good beginners guide to reading schematics that you recommend? I truly want to understand the electronics side of pin repairs better but have yet to find tutorials which assume NO working knowledge of electronic components or diagnostics.
In the meantime I am truly grateful for the help I get here on Pinside from yourself and others. Without it, owning pins would be out of the question for me.
So the reason I am rebuilding the pops on my Pinbot is that the upper pop locked up at PAGG a couple weekends ago (melted coil sleeve, fried Q79, blown fuse F4). What I noticed when I started taking things apart was all this white dust in the bumper nest area. I have been finding this every time I go to clean and wax since my playfield swap which included new bumper bodies, skirts and rings. I always thought it was from a bad batch of white rubber rings. Turns out it is from the ring shafts rubbing on the white plastic bodies. It is worst on the bumper that seized up, which has actually worn all the way through the body. I am guessing this is the cause of the meltdown? I do not see how to eliminate the play in the ring to prevent future rubbing. Even if I hold the rings perfectly centered in the bodies the gap between the ring shaft and the channel on the body is 1/16" at most. Is that amount of clearance normal? Is it normal to have so much play on the ring that it hits the bumper body? How do I put this back together in a way that prevents this from continuing?
Quoted from headwedge63:ok, so I have not resolved the problem described above...after general pop bumper overall and switch adjustment did stop the weakness, I tries to start eliminating things...so first I borrowed an entire pop bumper assembly from another game...no luck. I then swapped the switches...same problem. Is I think my problem is further "upstream". Can anyone give some advice on where to look next?
Thanks for any help y'all can provide. -Paul
Is it possible that the pop is not getting full voltage due to corroded or out of adjustment switch(es) elsewhere in the circuit?
I just finished restoring a 1964 Williams San Francisco. I was doing a first "road test" today to make sure all the switches were adjusted optimally when....oops. Something happened. On the very first activation of one of the pop bumpers, the machine went into "game over" mode with an awful buzzing sound from the (locked on) game over relay. At first I thought there must be a short in the pop bumper circuit. After about an hour of scratching my head, reading and rereading the schematic diagram I just started looking REALLY SLOWLY and CAREFULLY at any and all components in the game over relay circuit. It was hard to see with my nearly 50 year-old eyes (and at first I thought it was an unusual wire connection) but I finally found the nut and the threaded end of rod from a pop bumper ring sitting on top of the ends of the switch blades for the "special" relay. I always tighten these nuts well because I don't want them working their way loose, but is it possible that I overdid it with this one? Or do you think that the ring rod was faulty? I am looking for opinions as to why the rod sheared off so that if it was a case of operator error I can adjust my approach and avoid something similar in the future.
Aaaaand then this: about a year ago I ordered a bunch of parts for three restoration projects including this one. Pictured here are 5 out of six ring/rod assemblies that are no good straight out of the box. They were all nested together and it never occurred to me that there could be anything wrong with a brand new ring/rod until I unpacked them last night. Five of the six had crappy attachments. The three on the left are really bad. See how much the rods can easily move out of parallel? The two on the right might not look bad but if you give the rods a gentle wiggle they move. In retrospect, it was probably play like that which caused the pops on a prior project to wear through the bumper bodies gradually over a period of six months, eventually causing a full pop lockup/blown transistor.
Quoted from vid1900:Drop them ring side up into your vise. Close the jaws until they almost grip the rods.
Re-peen the heads with one or two taps, install.
(remember, these are made from super soft steel so they don't chew up your balls. Handle with care, don't over-tighten, just snug them. )
Thanks Vid. That was an easy fix. They all seem snug now, but I must admit that I am concerned about their long term durability. It looks to me like the factory peen on my funky rods barely rolled over the hole in the ring. Time will tell, I suppose. Thanks as always for your help!
Interesting theory. Until now I had not questioned whether they were truly new. For the price it seems unlikely that they are refurbished (unless someone likes working basically for free). They came from Marco about a year ago.
Quoted from Elicash:This happened when I rebuilt my pops on BSD. The issue is with the quality of the after market pop bumper bodies. I would send a picture and a note back to the vendor you bought them from. I think I know where they came from.
After a hundred plays or so, the white dust will subside. It is just really annoying for awhile.
Or you could replace the bodies from a different vendor, but of course you will have to cut your lamp leads again which is a pain.
As mentioned by many earlier in this thread, quality of aftermarket parts has seemed to take a big hit in the past year or so. I think we as hobbyists need to be vocal to the vendors so they don't cut pennies on parts they are sourcing.
I had this issue and agree that body quality could be a contributing factor. My experience was that also replacing ALL of the other parts eliminated a bunch of little slop that when added together either created or exacerbated the problem. Getting rid of that slop helped. I can also say from experience that you absolutely cannot allow the rings to keep rubbing the bodies. On mine, the ring eventually wore all the way through the body, caught itself in the void it created and fried the associated transistor on the board.
Quoted from xsvtoys:I'm about to jump in and do 3 pops. For my convenience as a reference, I created a Word doc with Vid's guide, plus supplementary useful information as noted throughout the thread (Bally Vs Williams parts, Bally 1980s pop bumpers, coils stops, the lamp wires, and so on). Its all organized into sections with a table of contents. Basically, pretty much everything from the guide without the extra comments and such. The doc is 27 pages long and has all of the pictures in it.
I think I can attach here as a PDF, let's see if it works. EDIT - yes, looks like it worked, you can download PDF, enjoy.
[quoted image]
Nice work - thanks for posting this. I'm sure it'll be particularly helpful to folks wading into the project for their first time. Good refresher course to read through for more experienced folks, too.
Quoted from MintIndeed:On a game like TAF, going in there and soldering/unsoldering 5 pop bumpers (not to mention keeping track of the wires) is a real pain in the ass. I'm redoing a set now, and I'm thinking of using something like a Molex connector when I re-install them so I don't have to solder underneath the playfield each time - much easier to unpin/repin a connector IMO. Anyone done anything like this?
That’s become my standard practice for pretty much everything - pops, slings, flippers, drops, etc. It makes future maintenance SO much easier.
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