First Pin "Shopped" - a Little Frustrated

jeffsgames

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Donor 2011, 2015
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First Pin "Shopped" - a Little Frustrated

Well I just got done with my cleanup of my Earthshaker. I have about 20 hours in cleaning the playfield, pulling the mylar, rebuilding the flippers, rubber rings, lamps, and all the other little things needed to make this look and play great. Got it all back together and of course it doesn't all work like it should. I have a few bulbs not working which I expected. Found one loose wire on one of them so no biggie. The biggest issue is that my flippers don't work. I rebuilt them just like they were installed, piece at a time. I know my switches are adjusted properly and pretty sure the wiring is on the right posts. When I press the flipper buttons there are a couple lights in the playfield that flash. Weird. My Jet Bumpers also do not work, but register points when hit with the ball. They just don't pop. All the other coils work fine. Finally, the game seems to detect the ball out of play after a little while, with the ball still in play.

I know I've probably just got a wiring short or something crossed somewhere. Considering I did minimal soldering I wasn't really expecting this. Now step two of going through the entire wiring to make sure everything is hooked up right. Not looking forward to it! Of course I need to check fuses first, but when I got done last night I honestly didn't want to start digging into it yet. ARGH!!!

This is my first experience doing this, but I've restored vids for years. I knew it would be time consuming and I expected to have a few little issues to work out. Is this pretty normal for you guys too? I just had to vent for a minute!

Jeff
 
I have had similar issues. I just got done restoring my first pin a lethal weapon 3 and now a set of my drop targets doesn't work and same with on of the pop bumpers. It is extremely frustrating when you spend countless hours cleaning every plastic and polishing every piece of metal to then put the game back together and you are so excited because it looks amazing and then you plug it in to play it and everything doesn't work right.

So sadly I know how you feel :)
 
Doesn't this kind of sound like a ground thing and not fuses? I'm no expert, but have a couple of System 11 machines. On Taxi, the ground is looped all around the bottom of the playfield. That is the one thing that interconnects all the separate systems the OP is mentioning.

Is Earthshaker that way?
 
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I did see a ground strap not hooked up to the playfield yet. That would be sweet if that was it. I didn't have a pic of where it was hooked to yet, so I didn't hook it up. Was planning to do that right away when I got home.

Anyone have a shot of where it is supposed to attach to the playfield?
 
How fun was it taking Earthshaker apart?

Oh my gosh it was a chore! I had fun because it was the first time I've done it. It was really cool to see how everything functioned. I enjoyed doing my first cap kit years ago and it reminded me a lot of that time. I have a ton of cuts and bruises because it's not the easier assembly to take apart. I broke a TON of the double-ended bolts because they were so thin and 20 years old. Overall everything was in great shape so I didn't have to buy anything expensive to replace like ramps. The mylar adhesive sucked!

I can't wait to get this thing 100% because it's a great game to play!
 
I broke a TON of the double-ended bolts because they were so thin and 20 years old.


And in a move of extreme stupidity, Williams chose to use loctite on a lot of the Sys 11 games. That's why they snapped off.

If you ever face that situation again, sometimes if you touch a very hot soldering iron to the bolt for a few seconds, it will "melt" the loctite and you can get it out without breaking the bolt.

Back to your original problem - what are the coils doing when you run thru the diagnostic procedures? Anything?
 
You should have just sold it to me and saved yourseld the hassle :D

It sounds to me as if something was mis-wired SOMEWHERE. Fortunately, there aren't too many wires on pinball machines :)

Hope you can get it figured out.

Chris
 
You should have just sold it to me and saved yourseld the hassle :D

It sounds to me as if something was mis-wired SOMEWHERE. Fortunately, there aren't too many wires on pinball machines :)

Hope you can get it figured out.

Chris

Funny! :) This thing is a rats-nest of wires. I did end up fixing several really bad solder joints but none of those are in areas that may be suspect. The guy that repaired this machine last did some hacking.
 
Funny! :) This thing is a rats-nest of wires. I did end up fixing several really bad solder joints but none of those are in areas that may be suspect. The guy that repaired this machine last did some hacking.

Been there. Sometimes the hacks are covering up other stuff too. I had that on my Hyperball. The power supply was COMPLETELY hacked up. We fixed that (correctly) and then it let loose all the things the hacks were covering up and re-routing, and essentially screwed the pooch on the boards. Had to have them sent out to be fixed.

Hope that is not your situation.

Chris
 
Hacks or no hacks, if the game worked before tear down then it's obviously something you've added/changed that has caused the issue.

You've probably reversed the wires on the outer coil lugs. Don't feel bad - been there and done that.
 
Been there. Sometimes the hacks are covering up other stuff too. I had that on my Hyperball. The power supply was COMPLETELY hacked up. We fixed that (correctly) and then it let loose all the things the hacks were covering up and re-routing, and essentially screwed the pooch on the boards. Had to have them sent out to be fixed.

Hope that is not your situation.

Chris

Don't think so. The boards are testing fine and the game actually plays fine except for the false sensor and the flippers not working. Everything else works great. Even the Sinking Institute. I would have been ticked if that died!

Oh a couple of the lamps not working are the ones buried all the way in the back! ARGH!!!!!
 
Out of curiosity, does your new flipper coils have diodes?

IIRC, the flippers run off the interconnect board - I'd check that out also.
 
Out of curiosity, does your new flipper coils have diodes?

IIRC, the flippers run off the interconnect board - I'd check that out also.

I used the old coils. One of them is "backwards" so I will probably replace it because the sleeve was really tight and I probably won't get the new one out to turn it around. I didn't notice it was backwards until I got it all assembled. Don't think that is my problem though because it was that way and working before I started.
 
I had similiar problems with my BOP. There seemed to be a lot of cold solders that needed attention, I would look throughout and see if you see cracked soldering joints. It fixed the problem for me. welcome to the world of pinball :)
 
Ha! I just looked through ALL of those photos. Gotta love a desk job!

So, tell me this, so all Sys 11s come out of the factory fully mylared?
 
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