A small issue began to appear in my X-Files machine recently and I wanted to share its cause since it’s something that can easily be over looked and maybe is not something the occurs often. One of the playfield insert lamps was becoming intermittent. At the base of the playfield, where the ball drains, there are a set of 7 inserts which light up and animate during play. One of these would occasionally not light up as part of the sequence. Then it became more frequent, until eventually it stopped lighting up at all. Given I had changed all the bulbs to LEDs as part of my rebuild not too long ago, I figured it wasn’t as simple as a blown globe and a quick swap over to solve.
repair
All posts tagged repair
I must really love punishment, because here I am again fixing another EM pinball machine. I can’t help it though, their tendency for faults aside, EM’s are beautiful machines and every line up should contain at least one. This time I’m looking at another baseball themed machine by Gottlieb, appropriately (maybe boringly?) named “Baseball”. It was released in 1970 with around 2350 units shipped. It came out about a year before Playball (which I fixed up recently) and both machines share a very similar playfield layout and feature set. This isn’t my machine and I’m simply repairing it for someone else (the same guy owns the Playball I fixed up and documented recently). It’s not a restoration, just a fix up for the issues it’s having.
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.
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.
