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    🤖 Repair log: Transformers Limited Edition (Stern, 2011)

    2011 Repair log Stern Transformers

    Repair logs are quick summaries of workshop and on-site repairs. If your machine needs a service, 📬 Contact Us to discuss how we can help!


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    Minor service on a Transformers (Combo LE). A very popular theme but with only 500 of these LEs made, you don't see them very much!


    Slingshot rubbers were gone so they were replaced first up. Left slingshot was still not firing. Coil was working OK in test mode but the switch wasn't registering at all, so time to look at the assembly under the playfield. A broken diode on the switch was the cause.


    Next: ball hang-ups in Megatron. This is a common problem that was partially solved by code updates. Sometimes, a ball shot into the trough under Megatron won't be recognised. This trough is an odd design with only one entry and exit point, yet it must also be able to stack multiple balls for multiball. The fix here was to increase the pitch of the game a little so gravity helps the balls fall into line a little better. You can also put washers under the assembly to give it some more angle. In most cases the software should compensate by firing the trough coil weakly to "dislodge" any stuck balls. An odd mechanism design!


    The captive ball has a toy Bumblebee car in it instead of the captive ball. However the car was getting stuck halfway up the lane and would not roll down nicely. The main cause of this appeared to be the design of the car. The base has a Bumblebee design embossed into it, which creates ridges that bind on the switch actuator in this lane. Some tape over the base of the car helped smooth it out somewhat, but replacing it with a different car would be the best approach. Unfortunately I don't carry extra Bumblebees in my toolbox!


    Balls were occasionally getting stuck on the top of the left ramp. This is a poor ramp design with a huge lip on the metal ramp that doesn't quite fit into the "slot" on the plastics it joins with. I couldn't create any more space here so some Mylar over the lip was the best solution.


    Of course this is only the first Transformers machine made by Stern. They've just released another one (More than Meets the Eye). Hopefully it will be a while until I have to feature one of those on this blog!


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    🚚 Pinball delivery: Getaway (Williams, 1992)

    Pinball deliveries are made after a purchase or for a hire. If you're interested in pinball transportation or hire, 📬 Contact Us!

    

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    🚚 Getaway is out at a conference hire for the weekend! Adding to the retro look of an impressive conference stand. Amusement games are the best way to attract attention to your stand in a crowded room full of lame freebies and bad coffee. If you give attendees something interesting to do that breaks the boredom of the conference, they'll spend longer at your stand and maybe you'll make a sale. Simple!


    So next time you organise an expo stand for your company, you will have two choices.

    1. Hire a pinball or arcade machine and make your stand the coolest in the exhibition hall! 😎
    2. Go with the classic "two dickheads and a trestle table" approach and give away free pens. Yawn! 🥱


    Choose wisely!


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    🎣 Repair log: Fish Tales (Williams, 1992)

    1992 Fish Tales Repair log Williams

    Repair logs are quick summaries of workshop and on-site repairs. If your machine needs a service, 📬 Contact Us to discuss how we can help!

    

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    🎣 Who doesn't love Fish Tales? It's one of my favourite games to play, and one of my favourite to work on as well! This one started off as a service call to install new rubber rings, but turned into a bigger service to fix much more than that.


    First, a playfield teardown to get to all of the old rubbers and give everything a good clean. Plenty of broken lamps to replace while we're at it, too. This took a fair while due to the disassembly, but once it was back together it was looking much better!


    A cursory check of the backbox as the game was not retaining memory. The batteries expired in 2015, so that's no surprise! The original battery holder was still on the CPU board with a bit of corrosion on the lower terminals. Thankfully, no damage to the board itself, so a new lithium battery holder was installed.


    It was impossible to drop the volume down, or do much within the test menus, as one of the diagnostic switches wasn't working. No problem with the connectors or CPU board; the switch itself had died. Replaced it.


    Playtesting revealed a few more issues. The flap at the top of the playfield was taped in the up position. That's a weird mod! This gate is controlled by a coil which opens the gate on ball launch, and also when shooting the right orbit when long cast is lit. Otherwise it is meant to block balls so you can enter the pop bumpers from a right orbit shot. It appeared to be propped open because balls were not making it around the orbit on launch. But this was nothing to do with the gate. The balls were bouncing off the ball guide at the very top edge of the playfield, losing momentum, and falling into the LIE lanes. This was caused by the metal ball guide at the top right of the playfield. It needed bending to guide the ball properly towards the orbit lane. A very fiddly adjustment which needed multiple bends to get right.


    Next: the drop target was not working correctly. It has a secondary coil which pushes the target down to open the shot to the Caster's Club. This coil wasn't working. Taking a look at the assembly, I noticed the armature which pushes on the drop target to drop it was totally missing. Found it lying in the bottom of the cab. It needed a new extension spring and brass armature. Both were installed and the assembly was working as intended again.


    Lucky last. Balls landing in the eject hole at the top of the playfield were not coming back out. I could hear the coil trying to activate, but there was no movement at all in the assembly. I noticed the nylon link was broken. This is surely it! Nope, even with a new link it wouldn't move. I took it apart and realised the plunger was way too long; long enough that it was hitting the coil stop when at rest. Absolutely no space for movement of the plunger, and therefore no action from the mechanism. Replaced it with the correct size plunger and it came back to life.


    Back to catching fish and telling tales! 🤥


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    🦅 Repair log: Raven (Premier/Gottlieb, 1986)

    Repair logs are quick summaries of workshop and on-site repairs. If your machine needs a service, 📬 Contact Us to discuss how we can help!

    

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    😬 Ugh, System 80 games. A pain to repair sometimes. But if people gave up every time pinball repair got hard, pinball just wouldn't exist anymore. One of the very reasons I do what I do. Because if I don't, nobody will!


    This Raven had been pulled out of storage so it could be sold. A few issues presented. First, it wouldn't start up. Nothing except for a few lamps on the playfield. Gottlieb made things hard by not installing any indicator LEDs (or any form of visual output for that matter) on any of their circuit boards. So the first step is figuring out if you even have power. The CPU only needs 5 volts to run, and this was getting to the board, so the basics were definitely OK. System 80b games have a "reset board" attached the CPU board which helps detect a CPU lock-up. This was the issue, and was preventing the CPU from starting up. Left this one disconnected for now, as you only need these reset boards if the game is to be left unattended for an extended time.


    Although it was now booting up, it was having issues staying or and working normally. The game would crash occasionally, the displays and lamps were acting a bit weird, and some of the solenoids would turn on and off during attract mode. Whenever you have weird oddness on a System 1 or System 80 game, think grounding. None of the ground mods had been done to this game yet, and I discovered that one of the ground straps connecting the backbox to the main cab wasn't even connected. So, let's fix that. I attached a new ground wire to each of the boards in the backbox, and connected them to a single grounding point. With the ground mods installed, the game seemed to boot and stay powered up fairly reliably, plus the sound board began to boot and work as well. Bonus!


    As soon as the game powered up, the ramp lifted up. This is not normal behaviour; it should only raise when a game is started. The coil itself tested fine in terms of resistance. Next item up the chain is the driving transistor. This is one of the coils which is driven by a lamp output, with an under-playfield transistor being the last step before the coil. This transistor had failed, with a short between the collector and emitter. New transistor (MJ2955 is a reasonable replacement) was installed. Ramp fixed!


    Let's set the game to free play. There is no native way to do this on a System 80 game. Instead, you can "hack" one of the initial buttons on the front of the cabinet to work as a credit button as well. Easiest way to do this is to install a jumper between the two switches on the diode board in the cabinet. Done!


    Getting some random slam tilts occurring during gameplay. On any other game system I would investigate this further, but slam tilts are such a nuisance on System 1/80 games, I just disable them. Easily accomplished by adding a small jumper above Z26 on the CPU board. Problem solved!


    Getting there. The left bottom "sniper" drop target would not drop properly. These sniper targets are a cool feature, and are meant to go up and down at set intervals. This one wasn't dropping. The coils which trip these targets are tiny coils mounted to the top of the drop target assembly. You need to remove the assembly to get to them. In this case, the steel plate actuator on top of the trip coil was adjusted to make it a easier for the tiny coil to pull it in, therefore pushing the drop target off its ledge. Working consistently now.


    Suddenly noticed that the speaker in the backbox wasn't producing any sound. Weird. Wiggling the wires at the speaker got the sound to cut in and out. The terminals were pretty crusty and corroded, so they were re-pinned with new crimp terminals. Sound is nice and crisp now!


    One last issue. After a few minutes powered up, the display would exhibit a fault. All of the top segments of each character would lock on, which made it difficult to read the scores. This was a problem with the display itself; one of the caps on the display board was starting to fail under load. New capacitors in and display is working well again.


    Phew! A day-long session to get this one up and going but now it's ready to go. Most people dismiss Raven as a cheesy attempt to capitalise on the Rambo franchise without paying the licencing fees. But the sniper target feature is quite cool, and implemented well. Plus, it's basically a budget Firepower in terms of the playfield layout, so it's quite fun to shoot! 🔫


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    🎉 Repair log: The Party Zone (Bally, 1991)

    Repair logs are quick summaries of workshop and on-site repairs. If your machine needs a service, 📬 Contact Us to discuss how we can help!

    

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    This game had sat for several years without being played, so there were a few issues to fix up. First, the display was garbled and you couldn't make anything out. The text could actually be read if you knew what it was trying to display, but only some parts of the characters were being lit. This pointed to a data issue; the ribbon cable turned out to be faulty. New ribbon cable in and the display worked fine.


    Next, balls weren't getting kicked out of the trough. The armature which pushes them out of the trough was bent at a weird angle. Bent it to make better contact when striking the ball, and it started working consistently again.


    A couple of switches were being dodgy on the coin door. Specifically, the diagnostic switches. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't. A quick look at the schematics. These switches are all directly connected to the CPU board rather than going through the matrix. And they are all controlled by U16 on the CPU board. Surprise, surprise, U16 had been nuked by battery corrosion. Refurbed CPU board was swapped in, and the switches responded normally.


    Captain B-Zarr is a cool feature on Party Zone. But on this game, he wasn't "talking". His mouth is meant to move up and down in sync with the speech effects. Took the assembly apart and found the wire that connects the mouth solenoid to the mouth flap was broken. Fashioned a new one out of heavy gauge wire and he was back to his chatty self.


    Finally, a good clean of the playfield with new rubber rings to replace the broken ones. Night and day difference! Ready to party again! 💃🕺