At the end of my previous update, I was really close to having the repair work on Playball complete. I haven’t had as much time as I would like lately to look at the machine, so it dragged on a little longer than I had hoped. The time has come though to get the machine running 100% and returned to its owner. I had two issues on my plate to deal with. The first was the third base lamp occasionally not lighting up when it should and the second was the score motor continuing to run intermittently during play. The third base issue turned out to be a dirty shoe on the hit unit. I had somehow missed cleaning it along with the others in my last update. Nice and simple. That just leaves the dreaded score motor.
Pinball
Documenting my adventures into pinball repair and restoration
Playball has come along nicely since it was first dropped off for repair and it’s a satisfying feeling each time a forward step is made. Getting old machines back into a fully working state is what I love most about this hobby. I finished up my last update with an initial look at the three man on base relays. These are the interlock style relays, which have 2 coils to toggle its switches between state. In Playball, these control if a man is on the base or not. The specific problem I’m looking into is why the man on base relays do not reset as part of the game reset sequence. Currently, their state is carried between games.
One thing that is common to many X-Files pinball machines is they often have a broken filing cabinet plastic. The cabinet takes a real beating during play since it’s used to unlock one of the two multi ball modes. The plastic doesn’t have much protection and over time it begins to crack and shatter. Sadly, the part is almost impossible to replace. If you do manage to find one, they are often several hundred dollars. When I purchased my X-Files machine, it’s filing cabinet was broken in the lower section. It wasn’t too bad though and I was happy to live with it.
Having made some good progress on Playball in my last update, it’s time to continue the push forward and get this reset issue sorted out. I took a couple of days away from the machine to clear my head and (hopefully) prevent myself from making any assumptions on the machine. The fact I can play a game on it when manually pulling the control bank arm in tells me the game is close – something is just not quite right. There isn’t a lot on this game that has to be reset in order to start. My primary focus here is the control bank – and quite specifically, the SB armature switch.
Since the playfield swap, Pinbot has been running really well and been a joy to play. Recently though, an error appeared when the machine was switched on. The game detected there were errors with 3 of the switches, and reported them during the start up sequence. They are reported as “switch adjust” errors and the knocker fires off 4 – 5 times for each one. It’s an obnoxious sound, and certainly gets your attention that there is an error. The game reported that there was an error with switches 35, 36 and 37.
