greyhound skill crane help please

[jazorf]

I hope someone can help out. I've had my crane for several years without a problem. The other night a friend's son was playing for a while and the claw developed a problem. It moves around fine with the joystick but when the button is pushed, it will drop about 8 inches, close, and return home. Any ideas from those of you with crane experience? What is my best approach to repair? I mostly tinker with EM pinballs so this is new to me. I thought I'd ask before I start digging around and making things worse. Thanks.

[SirPeale]

If memory serves me correctly, there's a mechanism to let the crane know when it's reached the end of its string.  Check the string for knots or kinks.

[Kevin Mullins]

Agreed, there should be a down limit switch telling the machine when it is done feeding it down so that it knows when to close the claw and return to home.
Something is causing to think it is down too early.

If you tinker with EM pinballs, this should be easy.

[jazorf]

Well, the string is fine. I lowered the crane by hand, spinning the fly-wheel by hand to the end of the string. After it re-rolled it had the same problem. I'm thinking that the switch in the spoll that senses when tension releases is stuck closed or burned out. Possibly the distance the crane drops is the minimum distance for the switch to be activated. Unless there are any other ideas, I guess I have to get deeper into disassembly

[Kevin Mullins]

Does your crane have two 2 digit displays?

Some of the older ones like mine have a dipswitch setting for testing the switches and such.
Which might tell you if the down limit switch is stuck or not without having to dig in too far.

I can tell you what the settings are for mine if I know whether or not they are running similar boards.
Any idea what the pcb board numbers are inside?
A picture would be great too if you can.

[jazorf]

Got it! Very simple once I looked a bit further. The string had jumped off of the guide roller that closes the tension switch. Just had to feed it back through and all is well. Thanks.

[Kevin Mullins]

Sweet .... figured it was something simple.