Hello all,
My father grew up in the late 1960's and early 1970's and loved playing the Williams Liberty Bell that was at his father's market when he was in junior high, I purchased a new Liberty Bell for my father as a Christmas present about 3 years back, it doesn't appear to have ever been shopped, and it was always a little "fickle" but has recently stopped playing completely.

The main problem now is that the machine, when you turn it on, turns on, all lights, but then doesn't seem to start its start-up cycle, it just sits there making a humming sound that leads me to believe that something is stuck in the on position inside the circuit and not allowing the cycle to begin so that play can begin.

The other problem that has existed with the machine since I purchased it is that the credit counter shows "1" instead of "0" when it has no credits remaining, and will roll up to "2" when you insert the first credit and so on, so when the machine is out of credits, the counter remains at "1". This is more of an annoyance than an actual problem; but, I would like it resolved so the machine works correctly, as it really does bother me. I've thought about simply removing the score wheel and turning it so that the "0" sits where the one does now; but, I'm a little hesitant to do this as I doubt that this is the origin of the problem (I don't know why anyone would have moved the wheel forwards by 1 or how it could have shifted to display the wrong number on its own) and I don't believe its the true solution and don't want to just "hide" the problem.

I talked to a local repair operation and they bill 150 hourly plus parts for the repair. I wouldn't mind paying them that but they were a little rude with me over email and I don't want to reward a poor attitude.

What would you all recommend I do? Any tips on how to start trouble shooting this? I'm handy with a soldering iron and good with electronics (I started out as an electrical engineering major); but, I admit that Liberty Bell really seems like a-lot to handle and all the wires scare me, I don't want to do more damage to it trying to fix it myself and creating more work later! But, if you all know what I should do with it and think its something relatively simple, I'm all ears! I have the original owners package for the machine as well, which has the schematics and parts list, so if thats useful, I can pull some scans and information from it!
Thanks for the help!
Alex