Picked up 2 complete games, but been sitting for 15+ years according to the seller. Anyways, picked the better of the 2 from all the components (cabinet, head, playfield, relay board) and made one good clean one. got it all plugged up and it's working...ish. aside from the small things, the first big things I noticed are as follows

1) ball count never ascends. it always stays lit at 1. if I go on the relay board and manually rotate the spider by hand, or even trigger the coils manually by finger; it works. both coils check above 2 ohms. When rotating by hand & it gets to ball 2 and it just keeps spinning the score motor and cam, resetting the playfield, and if I click it again to ball 3; it stops going bazerk.

2) when on single player for "number of players", it still advances to 2nd player, 3rd player, and 4th player on the head by the score reels, but stays lit as 1 player on the lower right for "number of players". play 1 ball through all players and once player 4 is done, it doesn't advance back to player 1; just stays on player 4, so player 4 could keep playing as many balls as they want.

3) each and any player only gets 1 ball to play before advancing to the next player.

any suggestions where to start or what area to work on first?

thanks mark,

that's pretty in depth; gonna have to re-read that a few times to follow along, but in any regards it sounds like i'll have to a) visually check some wires on those units, and b) do a continuity check on those wires between those units; as well as clean the contacts on those spiders and contact surfaces on both units.

will report back once I get to that part.

dug into this a little bit; if I manually trigger the coils on the coin unit; it advances players and lights up accordingly on the head; all the way up to 4 players if I click that many times. this tells me the wipers are making good contact for the circuit. also if I push the reset button on the front of the machine; it will follow along for the numher of players I am selecting; example hit the button 2 times, and it's 2 player.
say I have this on 4 players. go through player 1,2,3,and 4 and once player 4 looses their ball; it spits it back out again and just stays on player 4; never advancing the ball above 1, or going back to player 1.
checked all the wire solder points on the boards and none were broken either..

thanks. ill try and work on that. bare with me here, still learning. have a few questions and things I wanna make sure I understand. from the ball count unit step up coil to the player unit, we're tracing a red/white wire (r-w). but then from the player unit to the ball index relay it's a blue or brown/red wire (b-r), then the ball index relay to the extra ball relay through a (r-n-i) wire, and the extra ball relay to the outhole relay through a (r-g-4) wire, and then out to connect to a yellow wire? is that right?

you mentioned this path is for a 4 player system; where does it signify that?
i'm not the best at wiring diagrams

wanted to give an update on this. if i manually do it by hand as i stated, it lights up the head for number of players; and also if i push the reset button on the front of the cabinet, it will also advance to the number of players i select; which would tell us that the coils are working properly for the coin unit, correct? bare with me, still learning and trying to understand. would the coil that is advancing the players when i push the button, be the coil on that 25V circuit?

gotcha, thanks. be away till prolly sunday or Monday next week so will check it then. don't want ya to think i went silent. will go over your past posts and check the things you mentioned as long as i can understand. get back to you after that! thanks again, appreciate all the help and guidance here for a younger guy like me.

got into this finally; think the problem is in the player unit. followed the schematic and wires to all the relays and switches and all seemed ok when opening and closing the switches with a continuity check. one thing i noticed is (unless im looking at it wrong), the black/red and blue/red wires that are on the 1st cam, are actually on the second cam wheel. from the left side of the machine closest to the score motor for the cam, it's the second cam wheel in towards the center that had those wires on it. the first wheel closest to the left didn't have those color wires. could the drawing be wrong? second, what tells you that it's the 1st cam? saw it said "1-C", is that what's suppose to signify 1st cam?

anyway i went back to, what i believe is the blue/red wire in the head on the player unit and right beside that is a red/white wire, those have continuity at all times no matter what position the wheel is in. when comparing this to the second machine, there is only continuity between those wires at a certain position of the wheel. so, i'm assuming this means my issue is with the player unit in the back of the head?

big squares? on the player unit? squares meaning the bakelite pieces?

tell me if im wrong, but looking at your schematic now from reply 7 as you mentioned...if i wanted to change it to a 2, 3, or 4 player game; i'd have to change the setting for the spider in the coin unit; meaning advance the spider up so it's connecting a red/yellow to the red/white for a 2 player game as an example. if this is true,i'll have to double check the coin unit was on 1 player; and if so...my last step would be to check the coin unit for a blue/red connecting to a red/white, and then make sure that red/white goes all the way down to the ball count unit coil....i think

looking at reply 5, a 4 player game is bypassing the coin unit and connecting the blue/red wire to the red/white wire, correct? this is the same thing that's happening for a 1 player game too though, no? i think where im wrong is that 1 player games don't go through the player unit. so in my post above, when i said the blue/red and red/white wires had continuity in the player unit, regardless of what location the "spider" was in....it must have meant the coin unit was in the 4 player position.

is there a diagram or pictures somewhere that shows the Williams steppers and "spiders" and what position is for what players and so on so forth? i need to make sure i understand what position these things are really in

looking at the instruction manual on p. 16, the player unit. the "blu-r" & "r-w" wires I referred to in the above posts, are shown at the very top left of the page in the instruction manual. located on the upper terminal strip. back to the original chase; the coin unit is in the reset mode with the middle spider directly at 12 o clock position, assuming this is 1 player...go back to player unit and continuity check the blue/red and red/white wires I mentioned, they have continuity. now give 1 click to advance the coin unit, the middle finger moves counter clockwise from 12 o clock (assuming this is 2 player), now the blue/red and red/white wires on the player unit do NOT have continuity. move it all the way to the end, assuming that's 4 players and it has no continuity which I thought It should as we're joining those wires together then for 1 and 4 players?

going back to reply 7 and following the troubleshooting circuit again, the red/white wire coming out of the player unit should do directly to the ball count step up solenoid, it does and those have continuity. this same red/white wire also is on the coin unit (p. 15 shown on the left of the unit), it also has continuity with the red/white wire on the player unit and the red/white wire on the step up solenoid on the ball count unit.

visually lookin at the bakelite pieces on the player unit, they looks to be straight and will NOT move by hand when I try to turn or adjust

what am I missing here? seems like everything is ok or connected? the step up solenoid has 2.8 ohms

**UPDATE**

while I was checking things I had a hard time with the leaf stack switches in the cam area, I cleaned them really good to make sure I was getting an accurate continuity test; maybe this helped. anyway now it seems that after the credited number of players finishes and it's time to go back to player 1 for their 2nd ball, it does it's reset thing and just keeps spinning the cam and resetting the playfield. the head does NOT reset the player scores though, seems it only does this for the 2nd ball in play. while it's doing this going bazerk, if I manually kick up the solenoid on the ball count unit to the 3rd ball, it stops.

that's basically what we just did so far. on a 1 player game for example it will drain that ball and the step up coil on the ball count unit DOES step up, I watched the spider rotate, and the head illuminates "2" ball in play. but when this happens is when it starts going nuts with resetting the playfield and spinning the cam non stop, continuously. if I manually click the step up coil again on the ball count unit (so now we're at "3" ball in play, it will stop and let you play

issue the games having is with the ball count unit it seems. all the fingers look like they're making good contact and when I probe the solder joint to the finger that aligns with it, I have continuity. everything seems to play ok but it's when it changes to ball number 2 is where the issue comes. I restarted the machine so it was all reset, even going down and triggering the step up coil on the ball count (to ball number 2) the problem exists. kick it again to ball number 3 and it stops.

to me, it's saying that somewhere in the "ball number 2" circuit, is making everything on the playfield keep resetting and score motor cam continuously spin.

wanted to give another update for more guidance. when ball count unit advances to ball 2 in play and the score motor starts spinning and the playfield continuously resets, we have 2 points of contact on the spider on the ball count unit; the left and the right arms. the left arm is on a black/yellow wire, and the right arm is on a green jumper wire that essentially is a green/red wire. if I gently lift the right arm on the spider and break that circuit, the resetting stops....tells me my problem is somewhere from the ball count unit to wherever that green/red wire goes!

GAMES FIXED!

the playfield resetting and score motor spinning is fixed. followed the green/red wire off the ball count unit and it went to the alternator relay. this relay had 1 contact leaf that looked "funny". I tweaked it a little bit because as the relay pulled in and created/broke contacts, this one leaf was making contact on another one that it wasn't suppose to. the slight tweak and all is gold now. cycles through all players, allows a choice of however many players, ball count steps up accordingly, cycles through a game and game over! seems all set and ready for a deep cleaning and cosmetic/rubber work!

thanks to all here who helped out with this post