Problem with Meteor Slingshot not working

riddler

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I am having a problem with a Meteor Pinball machine. I have a little experience with arcade games, but pinball Im totally in the dark. It was blowing the main playfield fuse before and I was told by somebody that was visiting my house that Q14 was bad. I replaced that and now my playfied fuse does not blow but the right slingshot does not kick. I was also shown how to use a aligator clip and to momentarily ground the tab on Q14 and it would make it kick which it does now after replacing tip 122 @ Q14. It just does not kick when playing. The two leaf switches on the slingshot both score points so they are working as far as I know. Where do I go from here?

Jim
 
Thank you for the reply! I saw U3 on the board. It is a chip. Is there any way to test if it is good with a multimeter? or should I just buy another chip?
 
Cool will just replace the chip. Mine has a part number of CA3081F. Bob Roberts has a CA3081N in stock. Marco Specialties has a CA3081. Are all of these the same?
 
I have ordered and replaced the chip at U3 with a CA3081F. The same kind that was in there. The slingshot on the right side still does not fire. Any other ideas where to test or replace from here?
 
I would recommend checking for a possible broken trace between the TIP 122 and the chip. Normally when chips go bad, more than one switch is affected.
 
Thank you Tom for the info. I visually checked the traces and ohmed a few out and from what I could see nothing cracked or broken. I did notice R16 was burnt on the SDU board. I replaced it with a 330 ohm 1/4 watt resistor (The same that was in there) and put everything back in and within seconds of powering up the pinball and starting a game I could smell R16 burning again. I shut the pinball down immediatly and checked and sure enough R16 was burned again. Could this be why my right slingshot is not working, or is this just another problem?
 
I'm not sure why R16 is burning up. It seems something would have to be shorted. Have you Ohmed out the slingshot coil to make sure that it is not shorted? Check the working slingshot coil, then the not working coil. They should Ohm out about the same.
 
How do I go about testing the coils. Do I put it on Diode and test the two end connections and not the middle. I did it that way and I am reading .06 on both
 
Set your DMM to Ohms and place one lead on one coil lug and place the other lead on the other lug. The coils should be 12 to 15 Ohms if memory serves. Flipper Coils are around 4 to 5 ohms. Compare the reading of the working coil to the not working/problem coil. Anything less that 1 ohm is a dead short.
 
Also make sure you are testing the slingshot coils and not the flipper coils. To test the flipper coils, you would need to "open" the EOS switch.
 
Like an idiot I was testing the flipper coils. When I ground a wire to the frame and touch Q14 the right slingshot kicks.
When I measured ohms across the two slingshot coils I get different readings. Both coils are different though. Here is the readings from both.
CL00109 23-800 Right slingshot coil reads 3.9 Ohms.
J-27 1700 Left slingshot coil reads 19.9 Ohms
 
The ohm reading on the right sling shot seems low. Check the manual to see if that is the correct coil. I don't think it is.

The wrong coil will take out TIP122's. I don't know if it is the cause of your resistor problem though. When it comes to boards, I am not the best person to ask. I know just enough to be dangerous (LOL). I'm much better at playfield stuff.

Tom
 
J-27-1700 is correct for the slingshot coils.

The 23-800 is a playfield coil for a 24 volt game. It doesn't belong there.
 
Thank you both for the info. Do you know if having this wrong coil there would cause R16 to burn up right away? I figured if I am ordering parts I might as well try to get everything in one shot.
 
Honestly, I don't know if the coil is causing the resistor to go bad. But, it would not surprise me. The coil in the game does not have enough resistance (ohms) in it, and that will cause premature failure of parts. Again, I don't know, but it kind of makes sense that it would stress the resistor.
 
I will replace the coil and replace the resistor. Hopefully this solves this problem.
 
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