Complete Ski Jump EM

[Biff]

Need to get this sorted ofr th Daventry event, not attending it will be at NLP later this year as well - so long as i get if finsieehd in time.

Noce stpory to this one. It was bough by a wife for husbnand over 30 years agao, from an operate near Dave Duttons neck of teh woods. The familt played it an d played it, eventualy the kids grew yp and flew the cop and it got palyed less and less. And the it staerted to malfunction, as yo do if yo ran EM and dont get played. It weas then left in theor barmn for many a yearuntil io saw it on Flea bay a few years back.

Ony just got around to doing it and t is my last project pin apart form a few tweeks hera na dthr on my other EMs.

Any wayu, just stayed stripping down: -

I touched up and triple thicked the back glass a few years back, this is a before shot: -



Cabs not too bad, some gloss drips on eth dside rail.



Very dust and lots of grease on the moving parts, lots of dry joints and uncoupled solder points i can see too :-(


Head almost stripped, better clean up the plastics with some warm water and washing up liquid, then see about sticking the metal work in the polisher.



How do you dare to take the switch stacks part? Easy i take loosen one of the screw, then take the other all the way out then loop through a bit a single core of telephone line cable through the stack screw hole and twist the ends together to keep the stack peaces in order and together ;-) As my old man would say. "You gotta be no C**t on a job like this..."

Post more pics as i work through..

JB

 

[BigIan]

Pulls up a chair. Must look at mine again
Pulls up chair for @David Day or @MuddyBoots or whatever he’s called now

 

[Biff]

Ok, bit of a delay, way too much going on. Nothing like a bit of last minute pressure to get you back into it. So the headbox is now done. I resolderd all the lamp connection to the center contact. I had a high rate of failure in the past with brand new lamps holders over time so decided to just clean the old ones in situ. Corrosion was not bad enough to warrent repelacment.

Everything was stripped, washed, tumbled, and all contacts put back together and gaped. I noticed there was a feed missing form the 1000 point coil relay, also noticed green paint covering one of the zeroes on the playfield - maybe a long standing issue just solved?

Did not replace the coil sleeves, all in good order just washed and degreased them with alcohol, hic!








Some real nasty ass corrosion in the pot on the left waiting to be rotary wire brushed then tumbled! Verses the tubs on the right which have already been done. , i guess it was stored with the back exposed to the weather for a long time - it was in a barn when i got to it.





The whipper contact fell apart on the ball stepper. This has happend before I have some plastic hair pins that are almost the right diameter that i shave and then shove in the hole then melt the ends over to hold it together

Anyway the cleaned head box belkow.





Now to start work on the playfiled. All ready snapped of 11 wood screw posts trying to remove them. Got some more on the way from the legend. I will have to drill them out (drill small hole right next to the busted fixing, then piggle the broken screw in to the whole and remove) and then rebuild the fixing area with wood glue and splinters of hardwood so that the new screw wont slop about in the funt shaped hole.

Another update soon.

JB

 

[Biff]

Oh and make sure that you do not drop the tub of bits on the garage floor, oh and if you do make sire the garage door is shut so none of the bits go down the fricking drain....

 

[BigIan]

Good to know i'm not the only one that does things like that

 

[Biff]

Ok so playfield stripped, above and below, and have also removed all the sheared screw post heads. Also dowelled the holes so that they will hold a new wood threadpost (thanks Legend)with thin strips of hard wood and lashings of Ambrosia Devon cream custard (PVA).


Got some touching up to do where the upper flipper has been dragging on the playfiled.


That there is one of those funt shaped holes i filled with hardwood and PVA. ill whip the top off with a sharp knife so it is flat then re drill a new small pilot hole.

Oh well , half a ton of metal work in the polisher. I need to sort the lamp holders out on the playfeild then may make a start om stripping the bottom panel down. May have to take that with me on holiday to stand a chance of getting done in time for the show. Not sure how i am going to get it all into a narrow boat though...

JB

 

[Biff]

Ok so all metal work tumbled, bottom panel striped as well as both sides of the playfield. Started to reassemble, got the two pop bumpers in, new bumper body plastics and bumper, also put in some earthing around the cab - also found earth wire being used as live (6Vac) conductor to the door...

Also touched up the tree that the upper flipper had worn to the wood - see earlier pics.








I am now away for a week on a narrow boat, needless to say i am already in the wifes bad books as i am taking a few bits to do on the boat...



Should have the bottom panel done while i am away, if Ii can find some where to stow it...

 

[Biff]

Just as well I bought my tools, had to refit the toilet lock, outside door lock and get the hooter working on the hired narrow boat. Bloody good fun though!

In between doing the locks and drinking beer I hope I have enough time for this:-

 

[Biff]

 

[Biff]

Done, need to do a bit of soldering but will do when I get home.

 

[carl lawrence]

Good god man it looks like brand new

 

[Biff]

Let’s hope it works, got loads left over... ?

 

[Biff]

Well i powered it up yesterday...


The bugs: -

1000 point relay sticking in
Ball count start counting 2 balls instead of 3 and 4 instead of 5
Pop bumpers not popping
Electronic Chimes not chiming
Hole out kicker intermittent
Tilt lights not working
Permanent free vend!
Top right flipper very jittery
Drop targets dropped and not coming up

No fuses blown though

So what did i do and what have I left to do: -


Ball count start counting 2 balls instead of 3 and 4 instead of 5
Hole out kicker intermittent
Tilt lights not working



Oh boy, this lead me a merry chase. I always take loads of pics before a refurb and put back as per pics unless I see something a bit queer. The index switch stack on the score motor has been tampered with at some stage. The switches are somewhat bent out of shape and... The stack had been reinstalled too far forward (see image above stack on farthest right). This was the source of many issues, because it has the affect of advancing the timing of the Index stack, while retarding the timing of all of the other stacks (perspective dependent), since it is the index stack that mostly looks after the score motor start stop. Still need more soak time to check for other hidden or contributory issues though. The gaps were terrible on this stack also. Also Turns out I had a dry joint on a jones plug in teh head, because when i sorted this i then had a new issue of the score motor free running when ever a non Zepo score was achived. Again this dodgy stack because two contacts that were never supposed to touch were so bent out of shape they were shorting and created a path back through the Score DU EOS contacts for the score motor run. That too was fun...


Pop bumpers not popping
Poor gapping by me and way too much crudd still on the contacts. Re gaped, and filled the crudd off and they are fine now - need to fine tune as they need to be a little more sensitive. Blew a fuse though. Checked the fuse in place and it said 5A - should have been 10A! Serious bad on my part, you should always check ratings of all existing fuses in these games with the schematics. That could easily have been a 20 or a 50 A fuse and if a short occurred at a later date, a fire!

Electronic Chimes not chiming - not yet resolved
The electronic chime unit is fine it works on my other Zaccs no issues. Tried oneof my other chime units on this machine and it too does not work - cabling issue i guess - will look at today.


Permanent free vend!
Not sure if i have sorted this yet, didn't get done til late last night and i wanted to leave it on a high to save my brain doing overtime before sleepy sleep night night time. Some odd things about this game that i have either not noticed about other single player Zaccs or are peculiar to this game. Ball Index relay comes on and stays on when you score - this is the opposite to other games i have. Index relay allows the ball to drain and the player not loose a ball if they have not scored much / anything. Consequently having it this way it can buzz a lot and gets hot - you can see that the paper around the coil has darkened through constant use in the past - a $hit design in my opinion, no doubt to save wiring or other relay costs?. There is no tilt relay. It is worked somehow - still not fathomed it - with the ball count unit and game over relay. Answers on a post card please...

Top right flipper very jittery
Black magic area now. Had a bit of a ply but it is not great. I think it is related to the poor design of the EOS mechanism for this type of flipper, as they all seem to do it to a lesser or greater extent. I know i could convert to DC and that would probably cure it and make for stronger flippers too - not an EM game then though. My gut tells me that you have to get the gap, and quality of conductance (low resistance as possible) across the EOS spot on with the stroke. Funny how top right is worse though. Again i guess because it is being switched through two contact may be, the right flipper button, and the jocky switch on the right flipper EOS - maybe resistance is too high across both of these which reduces hold power at end of stroke, causing more bounce when being held by the hold part of the coil? Again answers on a post card please, would be really nice to solve this. And no a new flipper rebuild kit will not resolve this... I put a tenner on it!

Don't mind trying a few things out while at the show if anyone has any suggestions?

Drop targets dropped and not coming up
1000 point relay sticking in
Loads of shorted contracts on the back of the targets, also causing the 1k relay to stay pulled in. I never stripped this, mechanically it worked fine and i needed to prioritise time for the show. Will strip out after the show, but for now just regapped the switches and all works fine now

Anyway, this is what she looks like now.



Hoping to get all bugs resolved today. I still need to swap out and dee bodge a chime unit on My Wizard and also sort out the contacts for the maze on my PACman. Then a quick check of all the machines going to the show counting down the days

Cheers

JB

 

[Biff]

This is the switch stack after the adjustment...

 

[replicas]

Great to see these older machines getting the love they deserve John, keep up the good work.

 

[Biff]

cheers dude!
Not long now for NLP. You n yours going to Pinfest?

 

[replicas]

Yep, will see you guys at Pinfest.

 

[Biff]

Stick a fork in her she’s done!

So the free vend was done on purpose. Somrone who knew what they were doing solderd the replay zero contact wires together, so left that as is.

The audio issue was another Jones plug issue. Sorted that as well.

Will order some coil stops and contacts from the legend and see if I can sort the jittery flipper.

Cinderella will be at the ball. Onto Wizard tomorrow after a bit of off road mountain bike action.

May even have a lead on another EM pin.

I need to find a home for these two bottles...



Laters.

Jb