Need help with 1964 United Orbit shuffle alley

Rickmc

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This is my first post so hopefully it's posted in the correct forum.

I have a 1964 United Orbit shuffle alley puck bowler. I have removed every scoring reel and deseized the locked up ratchet arms and now have all scoring reels and frame indicator working properly with the exception that player 4's 1000 wheel always rotates 11 times on game startup, bypassing the 0 position. I have verified the 0 position leaf switch is clean and working properly in the 0 position. I placed my voltmeter on the wires leading from that switch and they do create a circuit at all positions except the 0 position where it opens and breaks the circuit. I have manually operated the reset leaf switch and verified it triggers the reel in every position including the 0 position where as the other reels do not trigger by the leaf switch when in 0 position, only in position 1-9. So at this point, I don't know where to look next. Wherever that 0 position for player 4 leads to is ignoring it or a broken wire somewhere is all I can come up with.

I do have additional problems that may or may not be indicative of whatever is causing this

1) In Regulation mode, most spares (but not all) get recorded as strikes. Sometimes I get 3 balls in a frame. Sometimes all pins are up and I have to throw the puck down the empty lane and back to get it to advance to the next frame.

2) In Bonus games, the 11th frame bonus award usually gives 500-800 more points than it should. I don't know if this is normal but I also have to throw the puck 3 or more times to get all the bonus. It's like it only gives 800-1000 or so bonus points at a time and then waits for you to throw another empty puck to award another 800 or so bonus points until 0 bonus is left.

All other game modes work correctly and record strikes/spares/open frames correctly.
Flash, dual flash, flash bonus, bonus, and advance.

I hope you can point me in the right direction and I thank you in advance for any help you are willing to provide.

Rick

p.s. I find myself addicted to EM machines now as I also have a Bonanza rifle game (with non-working sound) and so if there are shuffle bowlers, ball bowlers or rifle games for sale near Washington DC that are fully working, please let me know!
 
Hi Rick, I've got a 1964 United Tiger which I believe is identical to the orbit (aside from color scheme). If you would like me to test any scenarios on mine or get voltages, let me know.

I've only rebuilt a few steppers and repaired minor issues on mine so my knowledge is very limited
 
The schematics can be invaluable in cases like this. Read the schematics and see what else is involved in that circuit. If you don't have the schematic contact PBResource. They have a lot of schematics for old EM games.
 
Got in touch with PBResource and have purchased the schematics. That's beyond my expertise so I have my pinball repair guy coming this week to look at the schematics. He came by and decided he couldn't track it down without the schematics.

Fingers crossed.
 
fixed those but have new issue

An update and another request for help.

Got the schematics and my pinball repair tech was able to track down the problem to a hack someone had made by splicing in a wire to the reset relay to force some of the resetting without going through all the resets so the bonus steppers were always out of sync. That fixed the bonus not tallying correctly and the strike spare scoring incorrectly in regulation mode.

The flash motor does run as soon as you credit the game even if you are in regulation mode and he said that was not worth tracking down.

Now, the new problem seems to only happen in flash bonus game. Randomly, it will go to End Game after the 10th frame and not give you the 11th frame to collect your bonus. The entire game it does continue to tally the bonus on the backbox so you don't know if it will fail until it just doesn't give you an 11th frame.

Curiously, it is also jumping from frame 7 to frame 9 or frame 10 when it should go to frame 8. Not always but sometimes during the flash bonus game. Like it skips a frame even though the game stays in sync and lights up the "10 frame" section on the 10th frame (even though it may say frame 1 or frame 2 because of the skipping).

Because this is not consistently doing it, the pinball tech thinks it may very hard to track down.

Any knowledgeable shuffle alley guys out there have an idea where to look for this gremlin?

Thanks,
Rick
 
This is my first post so hopefully it's posted in the correct forum.

I have a 1964 United Orbit shuffle alley puck bowler. I have removed every scoring reel and deseized the locked up ratchet arms and now have all scoring reels and frame indicator working properly with the exception that player 4's 1000 wheel always rotates 11 times on game startup, bypassing the 0 position. I have verified the 0 position leaf switch is clean and working properly in the 0 position. I placed my voltmeter on the wires leading from that switch and they do create a circuit at all positions except the 0 position where it opens and breaks the circuit. I have manually operated the reset leaf switch and verified it triggers the reel in every position including the 0 position where as the other reels do not trigger by the leaf switch when in 0 position, only in position 1-9. So at this point, I don't know where to look next. Wherever that 0 position for player 4 leads to is ignoring it or a broken wire somewhere is all I can come up with.

I do have additional problems that may or may not be indicative of whatever is causing this

1) In Regulation mode, most spares (but not all) get recorded as strikes. Sometimes I get 3 balls in a frame. Sometimes all pins are up and I have to throw the puck down the empty lane and back to get it to advance to the next frame.

2) In Bonus games, the 11th frame bonus award usually gives 500-800 more points than it should. I don't know if this is normal but I also have to throw the puck 3 or more times to get all the bonus. It's like it only gives 800-1000 or so bonus points at a time and then waits for you to throw another empty puck to award another 800 or so bonus points until 0 bonus is left.

All other game modes work correctly and record strikes/spares/open frames correctly.
Flash, dual flash, flash bonus, bonus, and advance.

I hope you can point me in the right direction and I thank you in advance for any help you are willing to provide.

Rick

p.s. I find myself addicted to EM machines now as I also have a Bonanza rifle game (with non-working sound) and so if there are shuffle bowlers, ball bowlers or rifle games for sale near Washington DC that are fully working, please let me know!
I just bought the same game from a guy. It has a few issues though. Do you know of any repair manuals? Was working fine with just a few issues but now is tripping the breaker.
 
I'd suggest purchasing flex files (note: PLURAL, buy at least 10) and a contact adjusting tool. Then systematically go through every contact and clean it and adjust it.

These contacts tarnish and sometimes stick. Sometimes, well-intentioned goofs spray contact cleaner or even lube on parts, and that creates problems.

You sound like you have slayed 90 to 95% of the "dragon" problems in this game. I believe a through cleaning and adjustment of contacts will get you the rest of the way there.
 
Thank you for the advice. I have a 1964 united orbit shuffle alley, and would like to paint it with the original design and colors. Anyone have any pics they could share?
 
New to fixing a shuffle alley. I plug it in and the solenoid for the bank reset stated to smoke. Anyone that could steer me in a good direction would be greatly appreciated
 
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