Now that I've got my previous project up and running (thanks to all the help here), it's time to turn my attention to my next, more banged up project: Williams Swinger (1972). I fully expect to run into a bunch of issues on this one, but I'll start with that I've got now. I've already gone through the basics (switch cleaning/adjusting, jones plug cleaning and checking, etc). It was completely dead when I got it, but after going through the normal stuff, it's closer to working than not, so we're off to a good start.

The Good
- Power on the game, press left flipper GI comes on and Lock Relay pulls and stays pulling as it should
- Press start/reset, credit unit decrements as it should and game begins, ball kicks to shooting lane, swinging target starts to swing
- Flippers and move playfield targets work and score as they should. Post between flippers goes up and down as it should when various targets are hit.
- Game ends after proper number of balls played and goes to Game Over as it should

The Bad
Advance (Bonus) Unit is having issues. Based on videos of the game working, it looks like the Advance unit is supposed to constantly advance, every couple of seconds. Eventually, when one of the specified stand-up targets is hit, the Advance Unit stops on whatever Bonus value it was on when the target was hit, and the player can win that amount by hitting the center target (I think that's how it works).

- My first problem is the Advance Unit is not advancing properly. I have taken it apart and cleaned it, and found the armatures sticky. After cleaning/lubing, they work great. I was surprised to see the Unit still not advancing, but then I noticed something: The portion of the armature that sits in the cutout "groove" of the coil plunger appears to be partially broken. This means that the armature is not properly centered in the plunger cutout groove, and thus does not reach it's necessary position when the coil pulls to advance the unit. It appears there is a round "end" or cap piece on the armature that is supposed to fit in the plunger groove. Because mine is partially missing/broken, there's some wiggle room that causes issues. Attached is a pic, as well as a reference photo that will hopefully help clarify.

- Is there a known "fix" for this, or should I just order a new armature from PBR (assuming they have it)? I thought about jerry-rigging it to work, but figured I'd ask in case this is a common issue/fix that I couldn't find on the forums.

Swinger_Broken_Armature (resized).jpg

Advance_Armature_Example (resized).jpg

Thanks for confirmation. I don't have any spare parts, so I guess I'll have to order one. I'm going to need to place an order for this machine anyway... lots of messed up little things. Someone didn't like the chimes I guess. One chime bar is missing, the other two have been sabotaged so they just "click" and don't chime when hit by the plungers.

The crud you see is indicative of what the whole machine is like. I've vacuumed it and been cleaning it a ton. The outhole kicker stopped functioning after a handful of ball drains. It was gunked up too, but works well now. The Ball Count unit was struggling. I thought it was okay, but it turned out it got stuck on Ball 5 a lot, so you'd start a game and end after one ball. I took it apart, cleaned/lubed it, and it's working well now. I have to do the same with the Match Unit, it's a little sticky.

The pop bumpers are extremely weak, which needs some looking into. At first almost none of them even reacted to being hit, but some cleaning/adjustment of the switches has them at least firing, if weakly.

But hey... the backglass is a 9/10 easily, maybe 9.5, so there are silver linings.

Haven't had to do a complete pop rebuild yet, so that would be new. I'll start with a full cleanup though and see if that improves things. Some of them almost seem "loose," which is odd. I'll work on them and report back.

Amazingly, a lot of that stuff already works with just the basic cleanup. Up post works great, no issues with it thus far. I didn't even notice the left lane kickback until I was cleaning. It works as it should (after corresponding stand-up target is hit to turn it on). Swing reel kickout hole was stuck originally, but I fixed it. The swing reel counts as it should, which is great.

My major issues are the moving bonus (due to the busted advance unit armature end piece noted above) and some lighting/scoring I recently noted while testing. More on that below:

None of the alternating Bonus scoring lights are coming on, and neither are the lights or award for the various rollover switches around the playfield. The top two rollover lanes rarely score, and never light/alternate as they should. The left and right outlanes never light or score. Basically all of the "when lit" stuff seems to be non-functional.

Looking over my schematic, a lot of these run through the Match Unit, which I know needs work. It's gunked up, often not advancing at all, which could easily be part of the issues. So my next step is to completely take the Match Unit apart, clean it (moving parts, rivets, everything), lube where necessary, and see if that helps. Wiring on it all looks good, so hopefully the cleanup will do the trick.

Yea, when I say "lubed" I'm primarily referring to the Super Lube application on things like stepper rivets. Very light application is recommended, so I always go with that and it works great. I'd say 99% of the time when it comes to metal-on-metal situations like a cog 'axle' being sticky, a solid cleaning gets it back up and spinning in no time. Often because someone put grease on it haha. Someone definitely greased up various things in this machine, but I've corrected a lot of that so far.

Back on topic - I cleaned the Match Unit, and now it moves great, advancing as it should. I also cleaned the 1000-Point relay and corresponding score reel switches in the head, because it was acting a bit odd sometimes (not rolling over when it should). Here's the interesting result of the Match Unit and 1000-point cleaning:

- Pop Bumpers now appear to be firing with appropriate force. This seems strange, as I don't think it should be related... but they're working better so I'll just take that as a stroke of good fortune (but I'll still check/clean/etc. as planned)

- Sadly, still no lights for a bunch of the insert/targets, including the Bonus/Advance stuff. Basically anything that says "When Lit" is never lighting. BUT - now it's scoring. It wasn't before, so any of the rollover switches or lanes wouldn't score. Now they score, but don't light still. I have a feeling there's some break in the line along the way that I need to track down. When I run jumpers to working lights, the bulbs come on, so it's not the socket or bulbs. Clearly something is goofed up along the way... so it's schematic time.

Hi Frank - yep I did that first thing, those should be all set. Thank you though!

So I fixed the lights... but just broke a bunch of other stuff, which is weird. Here's what happened:

Ball 4 Light has always worked, but none of the others. Checking the schematic, I saw that it had a different feed than all the Ball in Play lights. The rest all share the "White" incoming line, while Ball in Play 4 light came from BR-Y-W. Guessing this is due to 3 Ball vs. 5 Ball settings.

So I followed the WHITE wire on the schematic for the lights section, tracing back to where I do have lights vs. don't. I found that the WHITE wire goes to the Tilt relay within the Lights schematic area. Sure enough, everything BEFORE the Tilt Relay was working, light-wise. But nothing after from what I could tell. I jumpered from a known working pre-Tilt relay section, and sure enough all the lights started working. In fact everything was working. Excellent... but then...

I turned everything off, re-cleaned the Tilt relay. Made sure all the switches are making good contact. I turned the game on and see all the lights that weren't working seem to be good now. I press Start/Reset, game resets, ball kicks to shooting lane and... NOTHING. Flippers are dead, targets don't work, scoring doesn't work. Lights are all on now, but I've lost playfield/scoring all of a sudden.

Not sure what the heck happened... frustrating. Looking through the schematics. I touched nothing else... very weird.

EDIT/UPDATE - I have corrected the above issue. I re-cleaned the Tilt relay, and also cleaned the Outhole and Game Over relays again just in case. Sure enough, when I turned the game back on, everything worked! Guessing it was the Tilt Relay and perhaps my initial cleaning nudged something out of whack.

So the game appears to be working, aside from the mechanical issues mentioned originally (Broken Advance Unit armature piece). There's still plenty of cleaning and tweaking to do, but I'm getting close. Next step: un-stick the right outlane gate. It opens, but won't close half the time. More gunk I'm sure.

Outhole kicker is still not 100% working. It's a little weak, so it misfires about 25% of the time and the ball doesn't make it up the trough. I cleaned it once already (it wasn't working at all originally), I'll do it again and see if that helps.

Thanks all, as always. More to come as this progresses!

Got the outhole kicker fixed (for now). It was already kind of dirty again, so clearly I need to give it a solid overhaul. As soon as I gave it a quick cleaning, it worked again. I think all the dust/gunk build up in the machine has really affected most of the coils/plungers. I'll get them sorted. EMs aren't that tough to maintain, so it's annoying when they're messy like this one.

Right outlane gate is struggling because someone overstretched the spring. There's a small relay associated with it, with a coil that pulls while the gate is open. When a ball goes through the gate (or drains elsewhere) the coil releases and relay lets go. Because the spring on the relay is stretched out, there's not enough tension on it to pull the gate closed sometimes. If the gate doesn't close quickly enough, the relay will re-fire and open the gate again.

I remove a couple turns of the spring and reattached it, now the gate is about 80% working. I think if I knock another turn or two off, should be good to go.

Starting to work on my PBR order, looking forward to fixing that advance unit.