EM Heaven!

ArcadeTechGW

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Donor 5 years: 2012, 2022-2025
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I spent 5.5 hours working on a customer's EM games this afternoon.

A Gottlieb Surfer was stuck in tilt. It turned out to be the BX relay had a glitch - several invididual switch sheaves had "jumped ship" and shifted. I had to re-do it, and get it working.

Symptoms: would go to Game over after 1 ball. Also, was showing Player 1 and 4 in play.

I worked on a Mad World that had an interesting glitch - it wouldn't start. I found one fuse holder with a broken clip, and temporarily bridged that with an aligator clip to hold the fuse to the second clip. From there, it was trying to figure out why the game wouldn't start (needed credits -duh!) and then why the left flipper was buzzing - turns out the two stage coil was dying, so the person who "shopped" the game for the customer pushed the EOS switch out so the Hi coil stays on when energized. I tried to adjust the EOS into the circuit, but then the flipper would flop around, so I moved it back out, and advised the customer that he needs a new coil.

This game had 4 clips that held the playfield down.

Then I worked on an EM Soccer that wouldn't start. When you hit the start button, you could hear it trying to reset, but the Player 1 Tens wouldn't move off 1. I checked, and a spring was missing from the solenoid return, so I replaced that with a rubber band (didn't have the spring in stock) and told the customer where he could get the spring.

This one had two "twist-locks" on the playfield - they would have to be turned to unlock the playfield to allow the underside to be serviced.

The last one was a Chicago Coin Baseball - I played this game as a kid, and I sucked at it.

When you hit the "home run" target in the middle of the playfield, the game would just sit there and run up runs, and would hang. After a lot of fiddling around (and cleaning out the mouse dirt under the playfield, which was held down by 4 screws), I found two wires broken off a switch on the Home Run Relay. I re-soldered those down, and then played a few games. One of the 10's score switches hung, and the game stuck in reset mode until I found it, and tweaked it into shape.

I also found the relay sub-board on the inside right side of the head (looking in) which should have been mounted on stand off springs, held up by the two bottom springs and a tie wrap (that was pulling the wires down from the loom it was tied to! Ack!). The customer provided nuts for the screws, and I re-tied the relay sub-board to the backplane, so it wasn't hanging on the wire loom.

4 wounded EMs - all returned to service. 5.5 hours if you include the work on the Xenon I did. Not a bad day's work!
 
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ur a lucky man, all i get here to repair are corroded pieces of crap that require more pulling and cleaning corrosion than the machine is worth lol
was on a call last nite on a gottlieb dragon pin
the pcb pins were so corroded u couldnt see any gold...the green blended right into the pcb and the customer thought thats how it was....
not till i cleaned it that is...
i spent 2.5 hours doing a playfield shop and pulling boards to clean corrosion off them...
damn
 
Maybe not so lucky.

The last three EM projects before this were:

Bally Monte Carlo - Basket Case - the coin lamp worked on the game, everything else was dead. That took around 10 hours to sort out - there were multiple problems.

Williams Shangri-La - The lamp on the Lock relay worked - that's it. That took around 20 hours to sort out - there were five distinct problems.

Williams Jubilee - This one lit up fine, but would not play. Turns out a mis-adjusted limit switch cooked off the solder on a solenoid, which fell right into one of the relays, and messed up the switches. I eventually had to pull and replace the switches, but this was so subtle, I had to fiddle with it for a while before I bit the bullet and just tore it apart and replaced individual switches.

So, karma wise, I was due to get some "easy beans." And fortunately, I did get some.

The next one up is a Williams Skylab (very similar to Jubilee) that was sitting in someone's basement. I ordered a shooter kit and flipper kit - they are both toasted, as well as a new power cord as the one on the game had multiple splices and tape jobs. EMs are enough of a risk, I won't put power to a game without a good, grounded cord attached.
 
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