The Getaway: High Speed II

The first issue was that the game would not boot. The issue was simple; one of the wires attached to the power switch in the filter box had a flaky connection. These wires are connected to the power switch and EMI filter via quick-connect terminals, which can be troublesome when not crimped properly. I soldered the wires directly to the power switch. After that, the game booted!

I actually mistakenly replaced the EMI filter first, thinking that this was the problem, but when that had no effect, I looked more closely at the terminals and found the problem. Most of the parts in this box are susceptible to damage from surges, and they need to be replaced when damaged. All are available locally including the EMI filter (Jaycar, PSPA), thermistor (PSPA, Mr Pinball), and varistor/MOV (Jaycar, PSPA, Mr Pinball). If using the Jaycar line filter, note that the case of the filter is plastic and you will need to run a separate wire to ground the line filter. Original line filters were metal and the case of the filter grounded it to the chassis without the need for a separate wire. Another important note about the Jaycar line filter. It is pinned oppositely to the original line filter. The LOAD side of the Jaycar line filter has three terminals, and the LINE side of the filter has two terminals. The LINE and LOAD sides are indicated on the schematic printed on the filter. So, you cannot simply insert the new line filter in the same orientation as the old one (the game will actually work in this configuration but the line filter will not be doing its job). Ensure the LINE side of the filter is connected to the incoming active and neutral, while the LOAD side (with three terminals) is connected to the power switch. The third terminal is the earth/ground, which must be connected to the metal box chassis. It's a bit weird that the earth is mounted on the load side of the filter, but that's how they designed it!

The varistor and thermistor are important parts of the game's surge protection circuit. Be careful if ordering these parts from US suppliers, as the EMI filter and varistor must be rated for 240v. Pinwiki had a good explanation of how to check them. Whenever working on this part of the game, make sure the power cord is unplugged! All components up until the power switch are live when plugged into a active power outlet and you don't want to be sticking your fingers in here until it's safe!

Unfortunately, the excitement from getting the game to boot was short lived. During the boot sequence, I heard an almighty POP! sound, followed by smoke in the backbox. Uh oh! I turned the machine off and followed the smoke and burning smell to the sound board. It took a while to finally see which component had failed, but the culprit was capacitor C47. This one was a pain to replace as it is wedged in adjacent to a heatsink in the corner of the sound board. These tantalum capacitors have a habit of failing catastrophically when first energised after a long period. So if you have a game that's been in storage for a while, check the capacitors and replace any that look dodgy. Note that the manual specifies tantalum capacitors with 'TANT' in the description, so they're easy to locate.

After successfully starting the machine and playing a few games, I was bummed by the sorry state of the supercharger. Balls were struggling to get through it and circled around the supercharger track relatively slowly. Time for a clean! The supercharger can be a pain to remove from the playfield because it's wire connector is rectangular in shape and has to squeeze through a circular hole in the top left corner of the playfield, which is also partially obstructed by a ball guide. It was a very tight fit on my machine, but it can be wiggled through with a bit of force. It helps to have something to rest the supercharger on, such as a plank of wood, or somebody to hold it for you, while you wrangle with the wires.

​The supercharger is the main playfield toy on the Getaway, so make sure you give it a proper clean. Wipe down the metal runway and guides, the three magnet assemblies, and service the coil assembly that controls the diverter (a good clean and a new coil sleeve at the very least). If you don't clean the coil assembly, you might find that the diverter is too slow to open or close, which makes balls skip the supercharger entry, or pushes them out too early. After a thorough clean the Supercharger was working like new again - balls were whizzing around faster than I had ever seen on any other machine! You need to pull the supercharger entirely apart to clean out the accelerator tray, which is where the magnets sit. Polish the supercharger as much as possible with a metal polish to really make it slick.

​Here's a video of the supercharger speed test once I got most of it back together. It was bottoming out at around 70 ms - super fast!

​One mistake I made when putting everything back together was not tightening the diverter shaft to the crank assembly. After a while it came loose, which resulted in the diverter refusing to open. Tightening it up again was all that was needed. Another potential problem to be aware of is that the diverter may sometimes close after the ball has completed only two or three loops in the supercharger. This is usually because the low power coil winding of the diverter coil has failed, or a wire has come loose from the coil lugs.  This causes the diverter to close straight after the high power coil winding is turned off (which is how long it takes for a couple of loops).

​There's one other problem that seems to plague most Getaway owners and robs the supercharger of a lot of speed. The diverter (part no. A-15801 on most supplier websites, but listed as A-15586 in the manual) was originally riveted together with two rivets. The bottom rivet was recessed into the diverter face, allowing it to sink into the diverter and not protrude. This allowed the balls to whizz past at full speed. The diverters commonly break at these rivets and are often fixed using screws and nuts. This holds everything together, but often the screw head will stick out and will nick the ball as it comes past. This will rob the ball of some speed, depending on how much of an obstruction the screw head is. My diverter was repaired in this way and the top screw head was sticking out so far that it impacted the ball's speed. Screwing it back in tightly gave enough clearance for the ball to pass cleanly. If your diverter is beyond repair and you aren't able to rivet it together, brand new ones are available (PSPA).

Even after speeding up the supercharger and tightening the diverter up, I found that it would sometimes push the ball out of the supercharger just as it was exiting the supercharger loop. The ball would then fall onto the playfield plastic or bumper cap below, which is a fair drop. The diverter seemed to be a bit sluggish even after the rebuild. I replaced the compression spring in the diverter assembly and made sure the plunger moved back and forth smoothly. There is a bit of leeway in how the mounting bracket (part no. 01-10225) can be reinstalled for this assembly, so make sure it don't cause the plunger to bind during it's stroke. This rebuild made the diverter much snappier, and balls stopped running into it and falling out of the supercharger.

Almost all of the game's plastics were intact, except for the supercharger ramp entry plastic. This piece gets a hammering from balls entering the supercharger, vibration from the ramp, and air balls. I haven't bought a replacement for it yet, but have reinforced it in the meantime with a support bracket (Homepin). This extra bit of reinforcement is a must-buy if you have an intact ramp entry plastic!

I was curious as to how this plastic could get broken as I never seemed to see balls hitting it. I set up a slow motion camera (actually an iPhone 8) and recorded the area to see what would happen. Sure enough, after a few hits to the standup targets, I saw exactly how this piece gets broken. Airballs from these targets get sent right into the side of the supercharger ramp where this plastic sits. No wonder it got smashed!

To stop the airballs, I bent the supporting brackets behind each of the standup targets downwards slightly. This deflected balls downwards towards the playfield instead of upwards like before. The airballs stopped after that.

​The tunnel saucer was worn from repeated ball impacts. I filled this with wood putty/filler and then protected it with a Cliffy protector. Unfortunately, the filler I used started to chip away over time, and probably wasn't the best product to use. I now use Selley's Knead It for these kinds of repairs, which sets hard and can be sanded to shape. Below are images before repair, after repair, and after the restoration was completed.

The inserts around the tachometer in the centre of the playfield are usually all slightly raised on the Getaway as there are a lot of lamps in this area that create a lot of heat. Mine were no different, and some of these inserts were worn slightly at the edges. Fixing the insert decals was easy enough with black paint and they turned out nicely. The slight raises in these inserts were annoying, but would be levelled easily by a playfield protector. ​The worst affected inserts seemed to be those in the right orbit. The freeway insert here was raised about 1 mm above the playfield surface. With the playfield protector on, you could hardly tell it was raised at all.

I have no idea how some games lose parts like wire ball guides. There's rarely a reason to remove them from the machine and they are an important part so you'd want to replace them. On my machine, I was missing the ball guide to the left of the supercharger and the two guides alongside the right freeway orbit. I ended up using thick paperclips temporarily, but this was not a long term solution.

​Luckily, I found two of the ball guides for sale by two retailers in the US. I grabbed these while Fiona was visiting family in the US and she brought them back in her luggage. Saved a bunch on postage! However, I was still missing one ball guide for the right freeway orbit. I found a few miscellaneous ball guides in a bunch of used parts I ordered from Pinball Spare Parts Australia, including one that was approximately the right size. It was a tiny bit too short, but with a little bending with pliers, it inserted into the holes on the playfield just fine.

If you find that ball guides are being pushed out of their mounting holes, use a dab of glue on the ends of the guides as you insert them into the playfield. Often, the wood is damaged when the guides are removed from the playfield, so the glue helps secure them in place.

​Another issue I encountered was a ball hangup in the left freeway orbit. About a third of the time, a ball shot up this orbit would snag something in the top left corner of the playfield and come dribbling back down the left orbit instead of completing the loop. At first I thought that the rollover switches needed adjustment. I adjusted them but saw no improvement. I noticed that the diverter assembly coil lugs were pointing downwards towards the ball. Perhaps they were snagging it, so I rearranged the assembly so the coil lugs pointed sideways. No effect.

The only other thing in that area is a small screw that holds the metal ball guide to the back panel. I removed it completely and the hangups stopped.  Turns out, the ball was going airborne after it came around this loop, bringing it into the path of the screw head.

Funnily enough, I then had this exact same issue in the right freeway orbit. Balls coming from the left orbit at speed were getting launched into the air, hitting another screw that fastened the ball guide to the cabinet, and coming to a halt. This screw was in a position amenable to filming so I brought out the trusty slow motion camera again to see exactly what was happening. Like before, removing the screw fixed the issue.

Ball plunges from the shooter lane, and kickouts from the tunnel saucer, should hit the lower right flipper if allowed to roll past the upper flipper. However, balls on my game were hitting the post at the bottom of the shooter lane exit, bumping it towards the left flipper or slingshot. Fixing this required adjustment of two things: the metal ball guide above the upper flipper and the upper flipper itself. Pushing the ball guide as far out (towards the centre of the playfield) as possible helps to push the ball past the post. Adjusting the flipper so that, in the rest position, it pushes the ball away from the post will also help. In fact, the upper flipper is not meant to be in contact with the metal ball guide behind it at all; it should be offset. After making those adjustments, the ball started to return to the lower flipper consistently. The video below shows the issue before adjustments were made.

One of the freeway switches was not registering properly, so I tried to adjust the switch actuator. I failed miserably, and snapped the wire in half. The annoying thing about this switch assembly (part no. A-12688R) is that it is not a typical, straight rollover switch. It has a longer switch wire that protrudes out at an angle due to its position under the playfield. I only had basic rollover switches on hand, so I installed one of those until I could replace the damaged switch wire. This was a huge pain in the ass, as this spot under the playfield is not designed for a normal rollover switch. Using a normal rollover switch means you need to shave off a part of the switch bracket so it can fit closer to the playfield slide assembly. This is why the original switch has a protrusion. Not only that, but you need to make two new holes in the playfield to mount the switch bracket in a position closer to the switch cutout in the playfield. Long story short, the switch did not sit nicely and did not actuate reliably either.

Thankfully, a friend of mine was able to fashion a new switch wire and attach it to the switch. Then it simply needed to be bent into shape and installed. It worked great! Thanks Daz!

​After playing the machine for some time I noticed that the ball would sometimes get trapped underneath the up/down ramp at the very back of the playfield. This wasn't a big issue, as it would get released after a few moments. However, it started to bug me when I would be in the "zone" and I'd have to wait 10 seconds for the ball to be freed. The ramp is clearly not meant to be snagging balls, so I lifted the playfield to see what was going on.

The up/down ramp causes a lot of issues on many Getaway machines. A search on Google shows heaps of forum topics asking for help with it. I found a great video on Youtube that explains how the up/down ramp works and the components in the ramp assemblies; well worth a watch if you haven't worked on this assembly before.

The important thing to note about this assembly is that the lift crank assembly (part no. A-12577) that lifts and lowers the ramp is held in place by a lift crank lock armature (part no. 01-8390) which "grabs" the lever underneath the playfield when the ramp is raised. The issue on my machine was that the crank assembly was raising the ramp, but then falling back down slightly before coming to rest. Balls would snag the ramp whenever they passed underneath, so I had to raise the ramp a tiny bit. I tried adjusting the bar that holds the ramp, wedging rubber or tape under the ramp to give it some lift, and rebuilding the coil assembly underneath the playfield, but nothing seemed to give the ramp the extra bit of lift it needed.

I determined that there was just too much slop between the lift crank assembly and the crank lock. I had to reduce this gap somehow. I resorted to sticking some plastic to the crank lock, effectively thickening it. The lift crank would therefore stop a little earlier, holding the ramp slightly higher. This adjustment worked for a little while, but I found that the piece of plastic would keep coming off. So my good friend Daz made up a new crank lock part, making it thicker. This worked well, and now the ball flies under the ramp with no contact at all. For such an important assembly, I was surprised there was so much slop in its movement. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Getaways actually have this issue, but it goes unnoticed.

I noticed that the shooter lane switch actuator seemed to be a thicker wire than all of the other switch actuators on the playfield. Looking under the playfield I found that the regular microswitch and bracket had been removed and replaced with an older style leaf switch and lever actuator assembly. I guess this was just an in-field repair by someone who didn't have the correct parts. It was obvious that this was an unoriginal switch as the screw holes from the original microswitch mounting bracket were underneath it! I replaced the entire assembly with the correct microswitch and bracket (part no. A-12688). The result was much neater and the switch activated more reliably than the old one.

​I was pretty happy with how the beacon reflector came up after a clean and tumble polish. Shiny! However, I made a serious mistake when reassembling the topper. The beacon reflector attaches to the motor shaft and is held in place by a grub screw. Be careful with the positioning (height) of the reflector. I originally reinstalled the reflector too low, and not thinking anything about it, I turned the machine on to have a game. When the beacon motor turned on, it spun for a fraction of a second before seizing up. It only took me a second to turn off the machine, but I already could smell the motor burning. Uh oh! Thankfully, the motor still works, but I am surprised a fuse didn't blow before I turned off the machine.

​When I took the dome off to have a look at what happened, I saw that the reflector assembly was hitting the motor plate and lamp assembly as it had been fastened too low on the motor shaft. So I loosened the grub screw and raised it slightly. But be careful - if you secure the reflector too high on the motor shaft, it will hit the lamp support at the top, too! So install the reflector and move it manually through its full range of motion before tightening the grub screw. You might just save your beacon motor! If you do ever destroy the beacon motor, replacements are available (Marco).

This was one of the easier things to address with this machine! I managed to pick up a set of legs from a fellow on Aussie Arcade. The legs that came with the machine cleaned up pretty nicely themselves.

There were two wood screws screwed into the playfield with washers on either side of the ball trough eject assembly. It looked like they were holding the eject assembly in place, but it was already screwed into the playfield using the screw holes on the mounting bracket. I didn't see a need to have these screws when they weren't meant to be there so I took them out. The assembly was still securely attached to the playfield and I could never figure out why the extra screws were there. It remains a mystery to this day!

While looking under the playfield I noticed a couple of holes with dimples adjacent to them. This is pretty typical of how a playfield is prepared for lamp installation - a hole is cut for the lamp socket and a dimple is made to guide the screw that holds the socket. For whatever reason, Williams decided to do nothing with these holes, which are above the upper right flipper. This is pretty common and a lot of games have holes drilled into the playfields for features that were then removed from the game. So I decided that, as the holes and screw dimples were already there, I may as well install a couple of lamps to light the area up! I already had a bunch of old lamp sockets from other games that  I could use, and I just needed to hook the sockets up to a nearby general illumination socket to get power. As I was installing LEDs, I wasn't worried about overtaxing the general illumination circuit as LEDs consume very little power.

The wiring was a little fiddly as I was daisy chaining both sockets from a socket above, past a flasher socket. I had to cut one of the socket brackets down slightly so it would fit next to the flasher socket without shorting against it. Then it was just a matter of soldering leads to the sockets themselves and the socket tabs. Unfortunately, I did not clean the surfaces of the sockets well enough and the solder didn't grab onto one of the socket bodies. So I soldered the leads to an old alligator clip instead and clipped that to the socket bracket. This setup works well and lights the area above the upper flipper nicely. Definitely not the most significant improvement I've made to the game, but a good way to use otherwise empty playfield holes!

This was one of those issues caused by my own stupidity, but it was actually a good problem to have as it showed how thorough troubleshooting can be helpful despite errors in the game manual.

After reinstalling the power driver board after checking it for issues, I reconnected everything and started a game. However, the plunger didn't work. I checked the usual suspects including transistors and fuses, but they were all good. So I dove into the manual to see where to go next. I checked for power at the coil lugs and got no reading. Definitely a wiring problem, then. So I started to check for continuity from the power driver board to the plunger.

According to the manual, the plunger is supplied power through J107-2 and the transistor is connected to the coil via J127-5. I had good continuity from J127, but none from J107. I checked all of the other coils connected to J107-2 and all of them were getting power and working normally. This is weird, because all of the coils are daisy-chained together and the plunger sits right in the middle of the group. So a non-working plunger coil should knock out others in the chain.

The wiring for the plunger coil has been a source of confusion for many and there are plenty of threads on Pinside that discuss it. The problem is that the solenoid wiring diagram in the manual is actually incorrect. The plunger is not supplied power by J107-2. Instead, 50 volts is supplied via J109-7; the only wire on that connector. It seems that this wiring change was done at the factory and went undocumented in the manual. References online to J109 made me go back and recheck my work. Sure enough, I had forgotten to plug J109 back into the power driver board as it had gotten stuck behind the board. This explained why the plunger did not have continuity to other coils in the same group; it is serviced by a different circuit entirely. The fact that the plunger was the only coil not working also indicated this. This was a stupid problem to have really, but it was good for forcing me to learn more about solenoid wiring in the game.

This was an intermittent issue which caused various insert lamps to light up and stay lit. It was always the same lamps that would light, including the yellow light on the traffic light, a couple of inserts on the tachometer, the 6X multiplier insert, and a couple of others. Strangely, when the lamps were lit, there would also be a quiet, but noticeable hum from the speakers.

I noticed that the issue would come and go during the same game and that moving the machine slightly could make it come and go. So I suspected some kind of connectivity issue. Looking under the playfield, I couldn't see anything amiss, and started to probe around with the affected lamps and sockets. All of the lamps were working properly; they were just lighting up at the wrong time. While inspecting some lamps near the bottom of the playfield, I realised that moving the wiring loom would cause the issue to start and stop. I followed the wiring loom around and traced some of the controlled lamp wires to find the issue.

The wire for one return row of controlled lamps had been rubbing against the service rail under the playfield. The wire insulation had been worn through so that the bare conductors were in intermittent contact with the service rail. This was grounded, so whenever the wire touched it, the connected lamps would light. Neat, huh! Some electrical tape on the wire and the service rail in the location that they were rubbing put an end to the issue. I'll cut the wires and heatshrink them properly at some point.

The display on Getaway seemed to be working fine, but as a matter of course I tested the voltages being produced by the display driver board to check they were OK. I'm glad I did, because they were way out of line! The anode at pin 1 was hovering around 140 volts instead of 110! Way out of spec. So, it was time to rebuild the high voltage section of the board. Check out the separate blog post about rebuilding the high voltage section. Once that was done, voltages returned to normal and the display worked fine.

This is an exceedingly common problem on WPC era games. The general illumination circuit with the original incandescent globes installed draws a fair amount of current. Over time, this current load begins to stress the connectors for the general illumination as these lamps are always on. Eventually, the connectors in the backbox start to char and burn. On this machine, the connector at J115 had started to brown. Now that I was installing LEDs in the game, it was time to replace the connector and header pins (hopefully for the last time ever!). It helps to unravel the wire harness for this connector a little so you have plenty of space to work on it. I used some trifurcon crimp terminals (RTBB) and a new Molex housing (RTBB) for the new connections. The issue with repinning this connector is that some of the wires are looped through multiple pins. Not a problem when using an IDC connector, but a difficult thing to replicate when installing Molex housings. Clay's repair guide suggests either looping wires between multiple terminals using the larger diameter crimp to secure the bare conductors, so that's what I did. It can be fiddly to get a proper crimp, but once you practice a few times, you can actually get a very strong connection. Plus, this method is much simpler than cutting Y sections into the wires. After I finished repinning J115, I went the whole way and also repinned J120 and J121, including the header pins on the board, as these connectors are also in the general illumination circuit and subjected to heat stress. No more crispy connectors anymore!

This was some additional work I did on the cabinet in 2021, when we moved house. The Getaway had been moved around (to various shows and events) and bashed around a fair bit since the original restoration, and one of the things I had not yet done was attend to some broken seams and cracks in the cabinet. The wood tends to spit a little at the joins after so many decades of abuse. Most cabinets need a little patchwork or glue to keep them as strong as possible. 
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These splits were simple enough to fix with some liberal application of Selley's Liquid Nails Heavy Duty. I like the heavy duty stuff as the cabinet needs to be strong to withstand the shoves and tilts it usually sustains during play. The stronger the adhesive, the better! Squeeze it as far as possible into the split joins and pack it in with a craft stick as tightly as you can. You want to clear out any bubbles and air gaps to ensure the bond is strong.

​Then, some clamps around the cabinet to secure it in place as the glue sets. I use ratcheting straps (Bunnings) for this, as you can tighten them around the entire cabinet and clamp several joins at once. Leave the clamps in place for a day or two until the glue is set, and voila, all done! 
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There was also some extra clamping to be done around the rear right corner, where the cabinet seam had split slightly where the leg mounts. This area got another squirt of adhesive and was again clamped for a day to set. 
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Once all of that adhesive was cured, the cabinet was back to full strength again. Ready to be used and abused for another few decades, hopefully!
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