My only working pin just died, help!

supafraud

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First of all, hello! I'm Steve and I've recently expanded my retro gaming to compulsively buying broken pinball machines headed for the landfill in the hopes of fixing them up. At any rate my only working machine (which seemed solid up until it stopped giving me new games) was a 1974 William Skylab.

Problem:
Basically it powers on when you press the left flipper, I hear the buzz of the lock relay and all the lights come on. It refuses to start a new game however. The Tilt lights up in the backglass but I don't remember if this is normal.

What I've tried:
There is a loose wire behind the coin door, however at some point before I owned it somebody rigged this up for free play and I don't know if it was always like that.

(I have photos but I don't see where I can attach them so I hosted pics here:)
http://supafraud.com/newtemp/pin fix pics/010.jpg
http://supafraud.com/newtemp/pin fix pics/013.jpg

So next thing I did was I made sure the tilt mechanism wasn't... ..tilted, that seemed ok.

I manually advanced the credit wheel to see if that would help, but nothing changed.


I'm a total noob but I intend on making the preservation of EMs part of what I do. I hope this forum helps out with that. From the posts I've seen there are some knowledgeable people on here. Glad to be a new member!
 
thanks, I've read through all the guides at pinrepair - really good stuff, it's a lot to take in and will have to re-read several times before it all sinks in. Thanks for the resources!

I still hope it's just something easy (it never is) and that someone here might have an idea, please let me know if anything comes to mind!
 
You need to get the schematics out (pinball resource would have them if you don't). The tilt light should not be on. the white/blue wire on the coin door _might_ be for a tilt switch... worth checking.. there are normally 2 or 3 different tilt switches in the cab.

cheers
/Tim
 
Solution

So this is strange but it turns out that when I manually actuated the coin relay (advice given to me by Kerry Imming on rec.games.pinball) the machine sprang back into action and has been working perfectly ever since. So I'm still not sure what caused the issue, but there's a fix that might work for people
 
You have a contact issue on the coin relay. You'll need to clean up the contacts with a flex file, and then re-gap them with a contact tool.

I'd also check the Reset relay. It's another one that can cause headaches.

If the loose wire is on the slam switch (to the right of the coin mechs on the door), that can also cause a non-start by breaking the power connection to the Tilt relay.
 
Hey thanks, is there a good place to pickup a EM pinball toolkit? I have some tools, but not a contact tool or a flex file. I'm guessing the contact tool is that fork type thing for bending the leaf switches?
 
Try The Pinball Resource. He sells the flex files and contact adjustment tool you need. Steve is a great guy. He stocks most of what you'll need to fix the oldest of pinballs.
 
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