Greetings All,

A little history on this Friendship "7" I was gifted...
About 10 years ago my brother-in-law gave me a Gottlieb 'Home Run' that he had in storage 30ish years. I'm the "game guy" in the family and already had restored a few arcades and a pinball (Silverball Mania). The cabinet was rough and it was dirty and dusty but the playfield was gorgeous. It cleaned up very nicely and had a few small challenges with getting everything running correctly but that made it all the sweeter when it was done. It's been pretty maintenance free since.

So when he told me he was bringing me another old machine of his I was stoked. Unfortunately this one was not in the greatest of shape. Rodent nest, flaky playfield, crappy backglass, no legs...basically like a 40 year old barn find. Oh well, free pinball!

So, after a thorough cleaning, complete playfield tear down, rebuilding all pop bumpers, flippers and score reels, re-soldering a few dodgy looking connections I am getting very close. I don't really know the start-up sequence for this pin and after too many hours trying to figure out these last few issues I have come to ask for help.

There is no start button on this machine, game starts when dropping a dime. So, after engaging the coin switch here is what is happening:
-score motor continuously runs
-score reels go to zero and stay except for 100's. The 100's reel stops at zero but then moves in conjunction with the ball count step up coil
-the ball count step up and ball count reset coils continue to pulse (as noted above when the ball count S.U. pulses the 100's reel moves with it)
-reset relay & coin relay stay energized
-game over, game latch and tilt latch relays energize intermittently as the score motor runs

I've attached a few pics of the schematics and it seems the relevant part is in pic 2.

Also, someone has worked on this machine before at some point, including in the trouble area. I'll add a post below with pics on what I'm seeing here...
Thank you to anyone who can help me get this sorted out and if there is any info I need to provide let me know,
Robb

friendship 1 (resized).jpg

friendship 2 (resized).jpg

friendship 3 (resized).jpg

friendship score wheel (resized).jpg

Here is a bit more info on an obvious addition at some point in this pinball machines life.
There is an Orange-Green wire coming from the score motor to the splice shown (through the playfield/backbox pin connector).
From the splice, one wire goes to the ground screw on the 100's reel and the other goes to the ball count SU coil.

Meanwhile, the wire (white-green) that shares the post on the score motor with the orange-green goes to the ball count SU coil and game reset (latch).
As I'm writing this down this seems to jibe with the schematic (color 54 is white-green) except the orange wire seems unnecessary. A wire straight from the ball count SU coil to the 100's reel ground screw should be correct.

While this will be cleaner, I don't think that will change my issue.

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schematic 2 snip (resized).PNG

Thank you for the reply,

The reset relay is energized and that switch to the score motor is closed.
The target relay is not energized and that switch is open.
The B index switch is gapped well and engages properly.

In my original post I forgot to ask if anyone knows the startup sequence for this pin. Is the reset relay and coin relay supposed to be energized?

OK, that is good info. So I can assume that the coin and reset relays are not supposed to be energized? Without knowing the start-up sequence I wasn't sure about that part.
Since the coin relay is energized, that will be energizing the reset relay. I should concentrate on that area, yes?
I should be able to troubleshoot tomorrow so hopefully I can figure something out then...

Thank you,
Robb

I was just about to submit the post below when I had a Eureka! moment and I think this issue is fixed. I decided to submit it anyway since I spent too much time writing it.

So, here is where I am on this:
It looks like there are basically 3 ways the coin relay gets power.

1. Through the coin door switch. I was able to eliminate this as an issue pretty easily by de-soldering the switch. I can also unplug the coin door harness and the coin relay will continue to be energized.
2. Through a switch on the score motor B4.
3. Through a normally closed switch on the game latch relay.

For 2 & 3 there is a yellow-red wire (B-31) that goes from switches on the score motor>game latch>coin relay. I de-soldered this wire from the score motor and game latch switches so now it's basically just connected to the coin relay switch. I then used a jumper wire to test each switch individually.

When I jumper to the score motor switch and start a credit the machine will run until the score motor hits position 4, opening the switch and de-energizing the coin relay. That is correct according to the schematic.

Then I disconnect that jumper and connect it to the switch on the game latch relay. Starting a credit, the machine will run until the game latch relay is energized which opens the switch and de-energizes the coin relay. Again, that is correct according to the schematic.
Then, once I jumper both switches the the coin relay continues to be energized and we are back to square one.

So, am I correct in reading the schematic that in order for the coin relay to not get power the game latch relay needs to be energized at the same time that the score motor is in position 4? If so, then perhaps I should start focusing on the game latch circuit.

OMG that's it!! I was about to submit this post, but right after I typed that last sentence I made the connection that the game trip relay wasn't working properly to allow the game latch relay to stay in the open position. Traced the game trip relay back to the lock relay and then back to the stupid kick off switch. It looked fine but it must have had something blocking it since a little jiggle and Frankenstein's monster came alive!

Looks like I know what I'm going to be doing this weekend!

Thank you fredsmythson for the help in getting me on the right path. Hopefully I won't be needing another "help me" post but it's nice to know that there is help out there.

So stoked!!

friendship coin relay (resized).jpg

I'm still a bit mad that I didn't realize the lock relay wasn't functioning properly. I could have save myself time by noticing that earlier. I guess when you only do this stuff once every 10 years or so you're going to miss the easy stuff sometimes.

The only issue left to iron out is the ball count step up triggers every time the 100's relay is activated.

So the the latest issue where the ball count S.U. triggers every time the 100 pt relay activates is a bit odd to me. Looking at the schematic, the ball count SU shares the ground on the 100 point drum unit. As a test I removed the ground from the drum unit and set it up so the target relay would energize the ball count. It didn't work. The ball count SU doesn't energize unless the ground to the 100 DU is connected.
To me it looks like there is a clear path that doesn't need the 100 DU ground through the target relay > line-up relay > score motor (index pos) > ball count SU. I made sure the target & line-up relays were engaged and the score motor was in the correct position.
So it seems there is something wonky with the ground between the 100 drum unit and the ball count SU. I noted on an earlier post that this area had been worked on by someone in the past so that doesn't help matters. I guess my main question is what could be causing this behavior?
I'm going to start by undoing the wire bundle and tracing all wires in this problem area but I'm open to other suggestions.

friendship BALL COUNT SU (resized).jpg

Welp, I'm officially frustrated again. All the wiring in this area looks correct according to the schematic now, but the ball count SU always triggers with the 100 point relay (specifically the switch on the 100 pt relay that energizes the coil on the 100 pt DU).
I took the 100 pt score reel off and inspected the 100 pt DU to make sure there weren't any obvious shorts and it looks good.
Also, I don't know if the schematic is labeled wrong, but the ball count coil is called out as a B-26-800 but mine is an A-23-650.

So does anyone have any ideas on what is going on here or what the next troubleshooting step would be? Although it might be a pain to swap drum units I might be desperate enough to try that next...

Yeah, I unplugged those and no change.

I'm pretty sure I cleaned up the area that someone had repaired and figured out why it was done. There was a short green/white wire that connected switches on score motor "index" to score motor "c" that had come undone. It was pulled inside the wire bundle and not visible. Plus the switch it came off of still had a white/green wire going to the game latch relay so it wasn't visually obvious that something was wrong. I only figure it out because I've been staring at these wires so long and realized that one of those score motor switches should have 2 white/green wires to keep the circuit going.

Also, the thing about the white/green on the drum unit is that it terminates at a screw on the drum unit plate...no switch. So somehow when the drum unit coil is energized the circuit to the ball count coil becomes closed. I keep think there must be a short to the drum unit plate but I've taken the reel off the drum unit and inspected but it looks OK. But even with a short I should be able to activate the ball count coil through the target.

You're right, I need to make another effort to try and energize the ball count while the white/green is unscrewed from the drum unit. I detailed a few posts up that I tried this unsuccessfully through the target switch so I'll go through that again. I also didn't try the #1-#4 roll overs and that looks like it should award an extra ball as well.

Thanks again for the help,
Robb

I was able to look at this a bit this morning.
Disconnecting the white/green from the drum it now looks like the target switch works as expected to trigger the ball count SU. Maybe cleaning up some of the other things I found got this working. So that's good. The game actually seemed to play fine without the drum wire connected although I didn't have time to play too long.

I'll be able to continue troubleshooting later this evening...

Looks like I found the issue. A closer inspection revealed a switch on the 100 drum unit that was touching one of the metal levers. This was closing the circuit to the plate that the white/green wire was screwed in to. I'll play some tonight and see if any other issues come up.

Still left to do:
Replace 2-prong with 3-prong power cord
run grounding to coin door and maybe side rails (where do you connect the ground for the side rails?)
replace coin door lock, flipper button leaf switches and all backbox bulbs
probably replace the flipper EOS switches as well.

Nothing too hard there...just a small order from PBR and I might be ready to move on to other projects!

Thanks again,
Robb

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