My latest report:
Upon replacing the IC's at locations IC32 and IC37, I was able to hear the coin counter activate when I would take the white wire of the red-white-blue coin switch trio and touch it to the red wire first, and then to the blue wire 2nd. However, a game would not begin.
At the time I did not know that what I was hearing clicking was the coin counter, so I scouted around and found my way to the back door where the coin bucket is located. I opened it up, and realized that the coin counter was what I was hearing click. I did nothing other than take out the coin bucket, check it out, and put it back into the slot where it is located. However, after doing that, and going back up to the wiring in the console, the first time I touched the white wire to the red wire again, it allowed me to begin a game. The 'START' logo was on the screen, and, as it should be, hitting the gas pedal allowed the game to begin and the timer to start counting down from 90. The only problem is, the car is stuck in a 'wrecked' status, spinning around down in the corner of the screen.
I pulled the control panel out to see if it was a problem with the steering wheel, but moving the wheel is prompting the recognition LED's to light when you move the wheel in either direction so, that is functioning as it should.
Instead of messing around with anything else at that point, I simply let the timer run down from 90 to 0 to see what would happen- when it reached 0, the game did as it should, and went back to attract mode. I hit the white wire to the red wire again in the console, and another game began. The problems were the same with the controls, but hey at least a game was starting now, right?
After doing this about 10x and trying to troubleshoot why the controls weren't responding, I decided to go around to the back and see if maybe the pot for the gas pedal wasn't working as it should. At this point I powered down the game, and went around to the back of the game to check some things out. After doing my checks, I powered the game back up and attempted to start another game. At this point however, the game was right back to where it was when I started testing it tonight: meaning, I would hear the coin counter clicking upon making contact of the white wire to the red and blue wires, but another game would not begin.
What is it that I'm missing here that's preventing that game to begin every time? Is it an earth ground that's not good? Is it a tilt switch that's doing this? It's totally crazy.
I did notice on one of the wire diagrams in the manual that it reads "Earth Ground: accelerator pedal unit, handle unit, coin chute bracket, control bracket" Currently the coin chute isn't in the game at all. I have it, but it's not installed in the game (I'd removed it at some point while trying to troubleshoot). Could that be having any effect?
I also looked around by the coin bucket to see if there was an interconnect switch or trigger of some type that needed to be pressed in order for the game to allow you to start it up again, and found nothing.
This is so blasted frustrating because I thought I'd finally gotten closer, and yet I'm still chasing gremlins for some reason. I just can't put my finger on what's preventing the startup. Everyone else who has this game says that the only wires that are connected to their coin switch are the red, white, and blue wires. And from the results of my testing, it appeared that should be all that I need as well, since my game would coin up for some time doing that. Does anyone have any theories on what is happening to me? The service switch button in the back of the game still does not work, and the wiring for the service switch in the console DID work for a time, but only after the red white and blue wire combo was allowing me to start the game. After the power down and restart, those wires no longer allowed me to begin a new game (same as the red white and blue wires).
I guess the good thing from all of this is, I DID see some progress, and, I've learned now how to officially start swapping chips on PCBs! Woot!