South Park pinball repair ideas

TheRambo

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Hello everyone, I have a South Park pinball that has a couple of problems that I'd like to repair, but I'm new to the pinball community and I was hopeful that someone could offer advice on how to fix it.

The main problems relate to the pinballs getting stuck in one of the holes and not popping back up. This occurs with the Chef shot and the Cartman shot.

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks very much!
 
You failed to mention if the machine even makes an attempt to eject the ball. Regardless, if the ball sits there and does nothing it could be anything from a simple broken wire to the solenoid (solder let go), bad switch, bad solenoid or an actual PCB issue. Physically inspect the wiring to the solenoid.

Not familiar with that particular machine but most machines have a diagnostic you can run on them that checks both switch and solenoids. You could remove all the balls, and manually envoke the switch and see if the solenoid fires or not also. Even a diode solder joint could've let go on the switch causing it to be inoperable.
 
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The first thing would be to get the manual for the game, you can download it from ipdb.org, just look up south park and you'll find it there. Then follow the directions for the diagnostics as mentioned before. Start by testing the switch by dropping a ball in the hole and see if that's working, then go into the solenoid test and see if it will kick the ball out. That will give you an idea of what direction to go to find the problem. One thing to be aware of is the interlock switches, you'll see on the inside left of the open door some white switches. Those kill the power to the high power solenoids when the door is open, one of them can be pulled out a little to keep the power on.

Jerry
 
The manual will tell you which solenoid controls which coil. Once you know which coils you need to test, you connect an alligator clip to the cabinet ground braid, then touch the other end to the metal tab of the coil transistor. If you do this with the game powered on, the coil will fire. If it fires, you have a board problem. If it does not fire, you probably have a wiring/coil issue.
 
Thank you for the tips. I'll try these out.

The solenoid for the Cartman shot fires, but it often doesn't fire with enough force to push the ball all the way up/out. Once that happens, it gets stuck. Is there a way to adjust the solenoid?

The Chef shot just doesn't fire sometimes - like it isn't sensing the ball is there.

I have tried the diagnostics routine and it looks like both of these solenoids are firing during the diagnostics.

Thanks again for your advice.
 
The solenoid for the Cartman shot fires, but it often doesn't fire with enough force to push the ball all the way up/out. Once that happens, it gets stuck. Is there a way to adjust the solenoid?

Check the plunger link to see if it is broken. They are a common fail point. I had two of them broken on my Pirates of the Caribbean when I got it - a slingshot and the autoplunger.

Now on my Lethal Weapon, I had a hack cpu repair job on a kickout that was causing the coil to be weak. Once I repaired the traces and pads , installed SIP sockets, and ran jumpers it worked fine.

I'd bet money though that the plunger link is the issue on the weak firing one.
 
The Chef shot just doesn't fire sometimes - like it isn't sensing the ball is there.

That is probably the VUK switch being bad. They're a common fail point on Sega/Stern games. You can get the switch at Marco Specialties.
The SouthPark I used to play on route had this issue. Whenever you hit the Chef shot, you had to wait for a ball search routine to get the ball back in play.

Manually depress the switch in test mode to see if it registers. The switch metal form might just need adjusting.
 
I played this game just yesturday and the same thing. Cartman VUK would not fire hard enough to feed the right inlane. I was bumbed and told the attendant at the arcade i was in. it was actually kinda cool to see 4 pins in a small arcade. south park/star trek DE/last action hero/tales from the crypt
 
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