Hi all, I am brand new to pinball repair. I am learning to solder. I have a multimeter, aand am learning how to use it (though I am much more familiar with mechanical work than electrical).

I bought my first ever pinball machine a few months ago - Xenon, my favorite game in college. A friend who deals in arcade games found it for me. The playfield is in excellent condition, and it played fine when I first got it. But after a couple of weeks, one of the targets stopped working. I ran the diagnostics, and everything was fine except the solenoid associated with that target (#13).

I raised the PF to investigate, and found a broken wire to the solenoid (not the one between the 4 target solenoids). I also had been reading about owning an older pin, and decided my machine probably needed a good cleaning. I stripped everything off the PF, cleaned everything, replaced all the rubber and a number of posts, removed the mylar (there was a chunk missing, and the rest was cloudy). I waxed the heck out of it. And I kept reading more articles about restoration, repair, etc.

I built myself a rotisserie, and tackled the underside of the PF. I took components apart one by one, taking hundreds of photos along the way, so I could put things back together again. I soldered the broken wire to the solenoid, replaced all the coil sleeves, and cleaned all the mechanical parts. There was one coil sleeve I couldn't get out - the same solenoid with the broken/repaired wire. So I replaced the solenoid.

When I got the PF installed and ran diagnostics, I still got an error on solenoid #13. I tried playing the game, and it sometimes worked - but sometimes the target did not pop up when it should. I've been playing off and of for a couple of weeks - and tonight, for the first time, I saw smoke coming from the targets! Game unplugged until I fix this!

So I've reached the end of my limited knowledge, and hope someone can help me figure out what I might have done wrong, and how I can make it right. Thanks!

Ann

Apparently I got complacent with the camera, and didn't take pictures after I put things back together (at least not underneath the PF). I'll tear into it tomorrow to get some photos of the solenoid in question. I do have some photos of the playfield, after I cleaned it up.

I

DSC_0559 - Copy (resized).JPG

DSC_0561 - 2 (resized).JPG

DSC_0562 - 2 (resized).JPG

Thanks, everyone - I'm still new at this, and in spite of all my reading here, my terminology needs work.

When I ran the diagnostics, Coil #13 did not fire (that's what I meant by an error). But it seemed to work during game play, except for a few times when it didn't drop all the way. It wasn't consistent enough for me to get video or a photo of the problem.

So I mentioned that I am learning to solder - I successfully replaced all 4 pop bumpers. But I'm not sure I'm ready to tackle board work!

How do I tell if the transistor is bad?

I have a few other minor issues as well, but I'll tackle them one at a time. This is the most important.