Arcade Collecting > Miscellaneous Arcade Talk
Am I in over my head? Repair EM pinball?
drunkatuw:
My father-in-law recently gave me his old 1977 Gottlieb Super Spin Pinball machine. He told me it was in need of repair and that it didn't work. It wasn't until I had it loaded in my car that he told me he hasn't powered it on in over 15 years!
So I get it home and plug it in. When I hit the power switch, the main motor in the middle just spins and nothing seems to happen.
I'm a computer engineer, so I've used a multimeter before, but I'm really clueless where to start. I noticed that the lights to the scoreboard do not turn on when the game is set to 3-ball mode. When I switch to 5-ball mode, player 2 lights up, but not player 1.
I think the motor is spinning because it's trying to reset the score to all zeros, but with no power it never gets there. Do I just need to trace every wire to make sure that there are no broken wires?
Is there a site which has common problems with EM pins and how to fix them? I've got the schematic, but it doesn't seem to help much.
Any advice would be appreciated. I've wanted a pinball machine since I was like 5 and 20 years later, this is the closest I've been.
Buddabing:
--- Quote from: drunkatuw on April 01, 2005, 07:37:36 pm ---My father-in-law recently gave me his old 1977 Gottlieb Super Spin Pinball machine. He told me it was in need of repair and that it didn't work. It wasn't until I had it loaded in my car that he told me he hasn't powered it on in over 15 years!
So I get it home and plug it in. When I hit the power switch, the main motor in the middle just spins and nothing seems to happen.
I'm a computer engineer, so I've used a multimeter before, but I'm really clueless where to start. I noticed that the lights to the scoreboard do not turn on when the game is set to 3-ball mode. When I switch to 5-ball mode, player 2 lights up, but not player 1.
I think the motor is spinning because it's trying to reset the score to all zeros, but with no power it never gets there. Do I just need to trace every wire to make sure that there are no broken wires?
Is there a site which has common problems with EM pins and how to fix them? I've got the schematic, but it doesn't seem to help much.
Any advice would be appreciated. I've wanted a pinball machine since I was like 5 and 20 years later, this is the closest I've been.
--- End quote ---
Try this site
drunkatuw:
--- Quote from: Buddabing on April 01, 2005, 09:19:28 pm ---Try this site
--- End quote ---
I've been reading that site all night, it's got a ton of information. After about an hour of reading, I'm to the point where I realized that this thing is really going to test my patience! But I'm not giving up.
Thanks for the link.
ChadTower:
Buy the This Old Pinball vid on restoring EM pins.
APFelon:
Super Spin is an EM?
Ah, yes. The site I just looked at says it was one of the last electromechanicals ever made. You should be in for a treat. :)
I would like to suggest looking for the obvious and work your way down. Look for burned connectors, etc. Look for toasted relays and such...
But first of all, try to get the machine to "reset" when you switch it on. Some EMs will seem to be "dead" if it can't complete the reset sequence. If you have a bad gear on the motor and the scores can't reset to zero, drop targets can't reset, or that spinning wheel in the upper left can't spin (or some such) the machine may have a failsafe that refuses to let the game go into its "attract mode" (for what they were on EMs). You can even attempt to "reset" the mechanics by hand to see if the sequence progresses further... IE turning the gears on the scoring by hand, ETC.
The good news is that if the machine was stored in a reasonably decent place and was home owned for so long, the problem shold be pretty simple. Relays are still pretty cheap, and unless you have a "custom" part that has failed, repairs should be pretty inexpensive.
Good luck and let us know how it goes!
APf
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