Williams Heat Wave (1964) is sluggish / doesn’t want to step between 8 & 9 on some of the reels. Weak springs?

Is this the part where I take it all apart & clean? Seems suspect that the other clicks are pretty good, and they are sluggish in one spot.

If you take out the reel unit and manually advance it, it feels sluggish but only between the 8 & 9. Like it doesn’t want to pull back all the way. That's why I was thinking weak spring or something.

I got that, and I am going to check the switches. But because they feel sluggish when manually advancing, it seemed to me the issue might not be electrical.

.

Another question... even when the scores reset [by manually working the score reset relay] , the game doesn’t move on the the next task.

So, the score reset relay isn’t getting a signal to work, and even when the scores are reset, the next task doesn’t happen. The motor in the bottom of the cabinet runs continuously.

Should I continue checking the switches on the reels or check for a problem elsewhere? It’s not the score reset relay coil, because it was working before I messed with the scores.

What’s the next thing to check?

(Schematic has been ordered. Trying to do why I can in the meantime.)

currieddog Thank you very much. No manual for this era Williams. I'll start tinkering with the start switch and the coin door, I guess.

'doh!

There are credits on the wheel, but pressing the start button does nothing. Manually actuating the coin relay seems to work. The start button is making good contact, but there's no power there. No spark.

Would swear the button worked the other day.

Time to start resoldering?

I figured it had to be something to do with the credit reel, because I was messing with it.

The replay unit switch was open. Closing it fixed it. Noob Error: I'd looked at that the other day, thought I knew how it worked and decided it should be open. Go Figure.

Closing the coin trip switch racks up 5 games.

Pressing the credit button uses up all the credits and starts the game. If I max it out (12 credits), pressing start brought it down to 2 games, but it seems ify. What is my next step on that, please. (I see that the coil in the back of the unit resets to zero games. When would that ever be needed?)

currieddog The credit real now works great. Although I labeled the wires so I could solder them back to the right lugs, naturally one wire came loose and I had to figure out where it went.

It was a green wire going from the step up coil to the step down coil. I poured over the schematic, but could not figure out where it shows that a short green wire (color 4) goes from one particular lug on a coil to a particular lug on the other. Would you please show me that part on the schematic so I'll understand that sort of thing next time?

Thanks in advance!

-undrdog