Monthly Archives: February 2012

Sega South Park Pinball Machine

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Symptom: It would shoot two balls into the shooter lane.

At first look, the playfield switch in front of the plunger was badly bent and not reliably sensing a ball.  I assumed this is why it was loading the shooter lane with two balls.  As I tried to straighten out the switch wire, it broke.  I repaired the switch with some piano wire (I guess it’s steel wire) that I obtained from McGuckin’s Hardware store, and epoxied the wire on to the switch lever.

As I investigated further, I discovered the reason the switch wire was bent was because the one-half of the fork was broken off the auto launch kicker (500-6091-00).  When ever the auto launch mechanism shot the ball, it would jam the ball sideways.

Broken Auto-Launch Kicker

Broken Auto-Launch Kicker

 

I found the broken piece down in the bottom of the cabinet. The owner took it to a nearby muffler shop and they welded it back together.  With the switch replaced, and the arm welded back on, I fired up the machine to find it still deposited two balls into the shooter lane.  The playfield switch was functioning correctly.  After another 15 minutes, I realized there were 6 balls loaded into the machine, when there should only be 5 balls.  It never is what you think.   The other stuff needed repairing even though it wasn’t the original problem.

Replaced many bulbs.

Location: Superior, Colorado

Wurlitzer 3110 Americana Jukebox

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Symptoms:  Would not trip at end of record.  When selecting B7, it would also play D7 and vice versa.

Checked the switch continuity with an ohm-meter and the switch was not reliable.  Since the prospect of getting a duplicate switch was slim, I opted to open it up and clean the contacts.  It solved that problem.

Observing the selector pins under the mechanism while the owner pressed the selector buttons on the front of the jukebox, I could see that two solenoids were activating at the same time.  With an ohm-meter, I verified that the B and D solenoids were shorted together. I unplugged the front selector switches and the short was still present.  I removed the selector mech and realized the box attached to the bottom of the selector mech was the stepper unit for remote boxes.  I unplugged the stepper unit from the selector mech and the short between the solenoids went away.  The problem was one of the stepper relays was gummed up with old grease and wasn’t resetting to zero.  It was stuck between B and D, shorting them out.   After consulting with the owner, I manually moved the stepper to the reset position, not repairing it and leaving it gummed up.  The owner was never going to use the stepper unit, and I couldn’t simply leave the stepper unplugged because, according to the service manual, there needed to be a jumper plug installed.

I replaced the needle, which improved the sound substantially.

Location: Boulder, Colorado