1978 Bally KISS pinball machine

[KissPinball]

KISS logo, some of the playfield lights, & sounds will go out randomly during play and also when not in play.  When machine is turned off for a few minutes sound, lights, & logo will come back on. Help!

[ChadTower]

Bad connectors.  Everywhere.

[KissPinball]

Not really too sure what you mean.....

[Le Chuck]

He means that you will need to go over the boards, the cables, the fixtures, everything, everything very methodically and find all the loose wiring.  You need nice tight clean connections.  Once you've got it wired securely that should eliminate a lot of your issues and allow you to focus and start systematically addressing any remaining. 

[ChadTower]

Yep, sorry about that.  I was really pressed for time when I made that post.

You need to refurb every connector in that game.  There is no shortcut for this.  Connectors are notoriously problematic in pinball machines once they are past the intended lifespan.  All of the issues you mentioned are symptoms of intermittent electronic/electrical connections.

If you don't know how to refurb connectors, don't sweat it, it's not that hard.  It requires a couple of specialized but inexpensive tools and the parts are cheap.  Go to a site like pinwiki.com and read up on how to do it.  It is time consuming but simple once you get the hang of it.  It is not worth troubleshooting a game like Kiss until you are sure the connectors are solid.

Here is a good Bally repair guide.

[Toadie]

That repair guide is awesome, my issues are also on a Bally's machine

[KissPinball]

Thanks for the link! We are checking it out now & it is pretty awesome

[Silverball84]

Cold solder joints at header pins. Check all the .156" header pins for cracked solder joints. Very common on Bally games of this era. Re pin connectors with trifurcon terminals too.

[ChadTower]

Also replace the headers if you're going to repin the connectors.  No sense sticking a fresh tin contact against an old partly corroded one.

[KissPinball]

We are so totally confused......Trying to find one of our friends that knows how to read the schematics and understands what everyone is telling us to do on here. We sincerely appreciate all of the input; you all are great

[smartbomb2084]

Where are you located?

[Toadie]

Hey Kiss,

Here's some advice from another newb... and how it all started for me.

I started trying to figure out why backboard lights wouldn't work and I ended up at the rectifier board.  I read a ton of manuals and repair guides and ended up also at the rectifier lol.  My advice would be to pick one thing that's easy and believe it or not the schematics come.  For example, I started on GI for the back board and that gave me a green and and orange wire.  So from there I looked at where it took me on the rectifier board, found the 20 pin on the schematic, changed the color to a pin number, and found the voltage.  Like Chad said, follow the chain and as you do, stop at each item and verify the connections.

Does that help?  If not, let me know and I can just call you and walk through how I learned the schematic piece.