(Topic ID: 355727)

Williams Grand Prix game over relay not tripping when out of balls

By Phunt

4 months ago


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#1 4 months ago

Picked up my first pinball machine this weekend, when testing it out at the previous owners house everything was working fine, however some issues have popped up after transit and during setup. Pretty much everything is still working as intended, the biggest problem at the moment is that when the last ball drains, in this case after five balls, the "Balls in Play" on the backglass disappears and the ball is ejected back into the shooting lane. This effectively makes the game go on forever as the game over relay is never tripped. This happens no matter how many players are in the game and the player counter works as intended. If you manually trip the relay, the game over light comes on, and you can begin another game by pressing the start button and everything resets properly.

Here is a breakdown to recreate the issue starting from a fresh game:
Press start button > Scores reset > Ball ejected into shooting lane/Balls in Play goes to 1
Launch ball 1 > Drain ball > Ball ejected into shooting lane/Balls in play goes to 2
Repeat until ball 5 is shown on the backglass
Launch Ball 5 > Drain ball > Ball ejected into shooting lane/Balls in play lights go out
Repeat forever until game over relay is manually tripped

At this point under the playfield the ball count unit disc is in the position that is listed in the manual as "trips game over relay in 5 ball game" (Seen below in red). From what I can tell the BLU-R wires are intact and go to their listed positions at the Lock Relay and Game Over Relay. Does this sound like the coil somehow went bad during transit? I went ahead and cleaned both the disc and the arms to ensure there was contact, but that did nothing. I did not touch the 3/5 Ball Adjustment Jack as it was not touched during transit (also I don't know where it is). The head and playfield were both removed to make moving the machine easier, no pinched wires are visible, and the jones connectors were removed/replaced multiple times to ensure the connection was good.

Since I am new to owning pinball machines, maybe I'm missing something in the manual or schematics, but since everything else is working as intended, the only thing I can think of at this point is that the coil is dead as it does not appear to be activating at all when it's supposed to (no noise/heat). As a reminder, the game was acting normally the day before at the previous owners house. If any additional information or pictures are required to help diagnose the problem, let me know where to point the camera and I will supply them.

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#2 4 months ago

Does the game over light come on when you turn the machine off then on?

#3 4 months ago
Quoted from pinballdaveh:

Does the game over light come on when you turn the machine off then on?

No, the game will remain in whatever state it was in prior to turning the game off using the toggle switch.

#4 4 months ago

If you have an alligator jumper wire, connect one end to a yellow wire on one of the score motor first stack of switches. Touch the other end to the blue-red wire on the game over relay trip coil connection. Does the coil energize?

#5 4 months ago
Quoted from pinballdaveh:

If you have an alligator jumper wire, connect one end to a yellow wire on one of the score motor first stack of switches. Touch the other end to the blue-red wire on the game over relay trip coil connection. Does the coil energize?

I do not, I ordered a set and will report back tomorrow. Are there any other tools you'd recommend I have on hand for repairing machines? I have a multimeter and of course screwdrivers, socket wrenches, etc. Speaking of the multimeter, I did try to do an ohm test on the coil, however I couldn't get it to give me a reading, I was probably just doing it wrong though as I couldn't get it to work on any coil, including the known good ones.

#6 4 months ago
Quoted from Phunt:

other tools you'd recommend

Plastone and L Contact Adjuster
https://pbresource.com/tools.html

#7 4 months ago

The game over trip coil is suspected to be bad.
If you have basic soldering equipment, unsolder the wires connecting to the coil, and remove the coil from the frame. Visually inspect wires near the lugs for breaks. Inspect wire connections that wrap around the coil lugs and reflow connections if suspicious looking.
Re-install coil, resolder wire connections and test machine operation.

#8 4 months ago
Quoted from pinballdaveh:

The game over trip coil is suspected to be bad.

So not really familiar with Willaims EMs but on Gottlieb you would be able to go to the End of game coil relay, physically move the relay to see if it resets the game correctly, then that would basically tell you if the coil is dead. On a Got it would also probably be pretty torched and discolored.

#9 4 months ago

Sometimes gottlieb’s game over relay used a non-latching relay with a hold circuit or a part of latch in bank of relays that all relays reset with a single reset coil.
Williams and Bally will almost always use a stand alone latch-trip 2 coil relay for its game over relay.

#10 4 months ago
Quoted from pinballdaveh:

If you have an alligator jumper wire, connect one end to a yellow wire on one of the score motor first stack of switches. Touch the other end to the blue-red wire on the game over relay trip coil connection. Does the coil energize?

Okay so, got my alligator jumper wire and good news, the trip coil is not dead! It did activate when power was supplied. Bad news, that means it's something else. If I try touching the blue-red wire on the ball count unit with the jumper it does not trip the game over trip coil either. Not sure if that's intended because some other switches are not active, but it's something I tried.

#11 4 months ago

All 3 of the ball count unit wiper fingers get their power from a yellow common wire connected to the metal frame of the ball count unit.
Is this yellow wire still connected?

#12 4 months ago
Quoted from pinballdaveh:

All 3 of the ball count unit wiper fingers get their power from a yellow common wire connected to the metal frame of the ball count unit.
Is this yellow wire still connected?

I went through and gave every wire connected to the unit a tug, they're all solid including all yellow wires. Here are pictures of each side. From what I can tell everything is there.

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#13 4 months ago
Quoted from Phunt:

got my alligator jumper wire and good news, the trip coil is not dead! It did activate when power was supplied. Bad news, that means it's something else. If I try touching the blue-red wire on the ball count unit with the jumper it does not trip the game over trip coil either

Inspect and diagnose this circuit with Alligator clip jumper wires
pasted_image (resized).pngpasted_image (resized).png
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/gottlieb-big-shot-repair#post-6305153
http://www.planetimming.com/Pinball/troubleshooting/EM%20Troubleshooting.pdf
http://www.pinrepair.com/em/index3.htm#features
Example of a pinsider actually doing this https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/red-baron-tech-question#post-5858156

#14 4 months ago

So before I head to bed for the night, I was able to trace the wire and confirm continuity along the whole path after messing with the plugs a bit. When I tap the jumper along any point of the path it will trigger. However it's still not being triggered when the wiper arm reaches the final position. I'll fiddle with it some more tomorrow after work, just giving an update to the situation for record keeping.

#15 4 months ago

If the blue jumper is suspicious of having a intermittent break, then use the alligator jumper to jump it out and test.

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