The Cool Spinner Units in Williams 1976 Grand Prix E.M. Pinball Machine

ladies and gentlemen this is Joe's Classic Video Games back with another cool pinball repair video for you this evening we have been working on this Grand Prix which is about the fifth or sixth Grand Prix that we fixed on this channel for uh a little while now and we did a video where we looked it all over checked it all out and worked in the bottom of the cabinet and then turned the thing on and guess what it still worked uh and then we did a video where we worked in the back box we found a bunch of interesting stuff back that back there and uh we cleaned all the score reels started the game and guess what they all reset this thing is cooperating it wants us to fix it now it already pretty much worked whenever we got it so we haven't done much but we're doing preventative maintenance getting it where hopefully it will last for quite a while longer one of the things that we still have to mess with is this chime unit which has seen better days for sure and we have to mess with the playfield so we removed the playfield uh in the first video so that we could get down here to all the stuff in the bottom of the cabinet what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go ahead and put it back in the cabinet this is a particularly heavy one because it's got two bonus units and a bunch of stuff hanging on it so let me uh get it and we will put it back in here and then we can look at all the little details of the bottom of the plate field all right so I lifted it up back up in there that thing's pretty heavy i wouldn't be surprised if it's I don't know 60 70 lbs something like that seems like it so like I said it's just loaded down it's got all kinds of things it not only has the two uh stepper units but it has four drop target assemblies and these are kind of the the large ones that they used um for Williams i don't even know if drop target is the best word for it because each one can be individually reset so I don't know i don't know what they called it so we've got those there are two um whatever light rows on each side what would you call that that are run by these two spinner units uh there are three kickout holes um the usual two kickers and two flippers um and the bonus units on these were like the the most complex ones really that they came out with they have an extra coil so you can completely reset the thing we've talked about that multiple times if you're watching this in our playlist we've got about 15 videos i think this might be the 16th Grand Prix video that we've made uh so we've got some more relays down here looks like the labels have fallen off of all of those so who knows what they actually do and then we've got some there behind that as well including a capacitor so the capacitor works with I think well it's attached to that one coil there we might have to look that up but there's also a capacitor up here with a bridge rectifier um because they're running some of the coils off of DC voltage just to make them a little more snazzy um so you've got these two pop bumpers here that might be what's running off of that i can't remember if it's that or if it's the actual flippers but whatever you you get the point so some of the some of the coils run off AC which was traditional and then they had at this point started running some of the stuff off of DC to make it a little stronger here's another random relay the 500point relay just attached to the bottom of the playfield you can see what they were doing they had ran out of space the entire bottom of the cabinet is full of relays i mean there's not room for one more relay down there you see that right it's full so now you start putting them on the bottom of the cabinet i mean the bottom of the playfield but then it's full so now you start hanging them off a board on the bottom of the playfield it's just this is one of the the the most overpop populated EM pinball machines ever i love it it's a great game okay so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to clean these um Jones plugs so we can go ahead and plug it in for the final time we'll probably never have to remove the playfield again right so I'm going to clean these off i I just use sandpaper you've seen me do all this a million times but here we are again we've got one more to do so I'm going to clean these off and clean the plugs where they plug in and then we can plug it in and be done with it so that's next so I cleaned those and put them back and I've removed this little board here and I can actually see the labels now they're underneath the relays and then the ones here too this one is the change relay we talked about that in the previous video so same thing as we always do i'm just going to clean all of the contacts and the one with the cap on it is the delay relay that's a strange little circuit that they made um to work along with the tilt relay so let me show you what that does really quick i'm incorrect this is not the the one I was thinking of this says the delay this relay operates on direct current it is pulsed by the left or right spinner relay that's interesting opens the circuits that energize the top eject relay the left and right bonus relays and the out hole relay so there's only one switch on it and it's right in the way of making uh the top eject the left eject and the right eject work just just as they said um and the out hole so it looks like the purpose of it is to make sure that the ball settles down in the the dish before it kicks the ball out that would be my guess so if the ball lands in the right eject hole oh and it's only if it's hit the spinner remember the spinner turns it on so maybe it's just to make sure that you get all of your points you know so maybe it would be easier for the ball to land in the top hole after you hit the spinner so you hit the spinner and the ball lands in the top hole on the top eject switch but since you just hit the spinner the delay relay switch is still open and it'll sit there in the top eject switch until that delay finishes then the power will connect and it will eject the ball so it it I suppose the whole purpose of it is just to make sure it doesn't steal points from you whenever you hit the switch it's kind of interesting that they felt the need to put that in so that's on a Williams this is a Bally uh so that's a Williams 197 1976 Grand Prix this is a Bally 1976 flip-flop and it also had a relay called the delay relay but it works completely differently so there's the delay relay the slam switch turns it on so when the delay relay comes on it opens the switch here and it kills power to you know like the coin switches um the credit relay all kinds of stuff like that it was like a security measure like I said it's similar to the like how the tilt works um so that's that's interesting i didn't realize that so there was a delay relay on the Williams games and a delay relay on the Ballet games but they were completely different items that worked completely differently um H yeah I didn't know that oh and by the way the Ballet delay relay is the one that holds itself on with a light bulb so they have wired it with a flashlight inside the cabinet so when the delay relay pulls in it holds itself on through a flash lamp 455 when the 455 flash lamp uh heats up what it the the filament disconnects it cools off bends back and then reconnects and that's what makes the the 455 bulb blink but the way they're using it when it heats up after three four five seconds and opens back up it kills the power to the delay relay so that's that that's that weird one with the little light bulb inside the cabinet that you might see on your ballet machine this is the change relay look what a beautiful little contraption this thing is look at that so cool okay so the next thing we're going to mess with are these little spinner units here uh this is the same as the match unit in the back and there are two little discs on it but the problem is you can you can put that disc back on there four different ways see how that shaft is square so you can see where that little nylon piece has went on maybe what you think is it going to focus is it going to allow us to do it always a little too far uh so the nylon piece is square so in other words you can put this on four different ways now there's a little clip here that you squeeze to take off so if you look see how that switch blade is right in the middle of that board so the one on the inside just runs along a little track but the the one on the outside it lands on one of these little pads as it spins around right but look at this one the little blade is between two of the contacts look at that so that ain't right so when we were messing with the with the previous one we figured out that whenever you put it back uh they kind of have to be close to each other so it's kind of tricky to figure out but on this one see where the two screws are so if we're looking at from this angle one of them is at like six and one of them is at like three or something like that and then up here they're nowhere near that so it's just it's in the wrong spot if if you we were to move that one 90° and put it back on the shaft it would be probably in the middle of the traces again but it it's kind of hard to figure out does it need to go that way or that way so how would you ever figure that out well there's some little numbers here on the edge 67 890 and so if you look on the schematics you can actually track it down so I'm going to track it down so you got to pull that little thing off clean all of the the little board i put a little bit of uh synthetic grease on it and then put the thing back on but we need to figure out how to put it back on so there should be somewhere in the schematics you should be able to see what kind of the starting position is according to the schematics so like if on this one it's pointing at zero and this one's pointing at two or whatever that's the deal so so I'll I'll see if I can track that down in the schematics and then we'll we'll figure it out once I figure it out I'll tell you in this video and then forever more you'll know how to put one of these things back together okay so what that unit does is it lights up a light on the playfield a big strip of lights and so each position lights up a different light but also what it does is this part uh depending on what's connected so this is with it on position one whenever it gets to position three for instance if you're on three ball whenever it gets there power will connect through here and it will advance the bonus so it will advance the bonus at the third position the sixth position and the 10th position if you set it on five ball see how the five isn't connected to anything so on five ball it will advance the ball at the sixth position and the 10th position i mean advance the bonus at the six position and the 10th position so on three ball they make it a little bit easier of a game because you only get three balls you don't get to play as long but they draw these schematics u in their in a known state so however they're drawn you can use that to figure it out so one of the spinner units you know those two boards there's one on each one one of them will have nothing connected to pin one or pin two or four or five or seven or eight or nine so it'll just have a few wires so whenever that's at pin one on that board position one uh if we go up here to where the bulbs are so that's the left spinner unit you can see that they've drawn it at position one here as well and it should be pointing at a uh blue and black wire so we need to find the blue and black wire that's at the end and whenever that board is pointing at that wire the other board should be pointing at position one easy peasy okay so this is the left spinner unit so if you look see the blue and black wire down there that's going to the first position not to be confused with the zero position the first position i know that's confusing and if you look on the bottom here that is actually labeled with a one so the blue and black wires connected to one and then that position We have got the contact on that one right now so one of the contacts is on that little middle ring and one of the contacts is on position one right so on the top the contact on this one should be on the first position so once again it's labeled but if you look that end one is actually it says common right so uh position one doesn't have a connection on it position two doesn't three does four doesn't five doesn't six does 7 8 nine don't and 10 doesn't so I guess on that one I should be saying the same that's that first one is not the 10th position it's the common position so on this one clear as day the one is lined up on this one and it's lined up on this one so they still had this one in the correct spot but this one here can't be so let's see if we can figure it out it must be screwed up i think it's I think it's messed up what do you think Joe it's broke joey says it's broke let's see what's position one on this one orange and blue uh yeah okay so it's on position one right now so that's position one and the top is over here which is kind of in between six I mean eight and nine well that ain't right but you know it makes sense if there's 10 positions then each turn and there's four sides then one of them's going to be on two and a half and one of them's going to be on five one's going to be on seven and a half and one of them's going to be on 10 huh that's interesting okay yeah so half the time it would be in between the pads which is what it's doing right now okay so I need to take that off clean it up and then move it around to where it's on position one and that should fix the thing all right folks so I have started a game actually uh with the playfield lifted up now if you ever want to do that just because you're you know playing games um make sure you put something between the spinner switches because what'll happen is the spinner hangs down and it gives you 100 points or whatever and since it stays stuck because of gravity it sticks on like the 100 point reel and the 100 point score relay and uh we'll burn stuff up so don't do that that'd be horrible that's how the stuff like the bell gets burned up okay so I've got those blocked so I've got them adjusted and I kind of just double checked it spins around in the same direction so if it's on number three the other one should be on three four the other one should be on four also these boards are backwards of each other so this one is a mirror of that one um so the one that's five over here is like six down here or whatever it's a little bit off because they they're made backwards right so here is our string of lights so when the way it works is when you hit the spinner these it it turns on the spin relay which advances the spin unit which moves the light one position and when it gets to the what was it the third position I don't remember if this one I think we've got it on three ball when it gets to the third position if it's on three ball uh it advances the bonus right so we should be able to test it yep it just advance the bonus and again and again but it does it real quick even quicker than that when the spinners hit good so that's how well they should work whenever you get the So I'm going to call that successfully adjusted and you can see that it when it gets to the right place it's making the bonus advance so 100% so I've done like three videos talking about these but these bonus units on these Grand Prix fascinate me because they have three coils it makes all the difference people this is like the king of bonus units this is the Cadillac of bonus units what's the new car Joe that's worth money that's not a Cadillac you know Cadillacs aren't really all that great anymore what would people say now i don't know everything's expensive what what do people drive that we see that we don't buy new cars folks we don't know everything I got is old and worn out it used to be when this came out the Cadillac was the big car right so So this is the Cadillac of bonus units so we've been moving it up and so since we're in game we can kind of see if all the lights are lighting up you could probably you might be able to do that when you're not in game play um so just like a traditional one one coil steps it up and the other coil resets it so as this goes in it moves it back the other way that's so at the end of the ball it can do it one at a time and count as it goes so that you get your thousand points or I think on this one it might even be 10,000 points right but it has this special third coil this is the magic coil so we're on position 10 so if the game pulls this coil in it makes this little bar come up here and that little bar holds this sucker out of the way so that it can't fall back down into the ratchet and so because that won't go down it won't catch it whenever whenever this goes down see how that moved and it caught the tooth right but if this is in there that can't go down so now whenever it does it resets it all the way to the beginning so um that's just cool I think so anyway whenever this is the very important part of these Grand Prix when it gets back to zero that switch has to open that switch has to open and then make that one closed you have got to get these adjusted right or this thing will never work right and you got to get it adjusted right on both bonus units there's two of them okay so whenever it steps up to position one this has to close this has to close and that has to be open and you see how close that all is it's just hard to get it just right but you got to get it just right or it won't work right um so and then on the other side oh I can show you up here it's just the typical board right so we're gonna clean that up with some sandpaper with some uh synthetic grease and dialectric of course and then that will be the two bonus units okay so we got both of those cleaned up and adjusted i think everything's good they were already working again um now we're up to the flippers i'm not going to replace anything on them yet but before we put the playfield back down I want to fix this so there is a wire here that they have uh just put a connector on instead of soldering it and then the middle one they did as well but it broke off so I'm going to solder those back we'll probably end up uh once you see the top we have to mess with the bushings it looks like we're going to have to do something with that so I don't want to get into that can of worms yet i do want to fix those wires while we're down here doing electronic stuff on the bottom or electrical stuff on the bottom so that's next all right she's ugly but she's on there it's a good solid connection it just looks like crap okay so uh we're ready to put the playfield down and it's time to call in Joe to do his magic work so uh we'll get Joe to clean it take it apart um and uh wax it put everything back on it all of that so while that happens I'll play some nice good relaxing music for you here we go [Music] heat hey Heat [Music] [Music] heat heat [Music] heat hey Heat [Music] hey don't [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey mhm [Music] wow [Music] wow wow [Music] oh yeah yeah yeah [Music] yeah [Music] oh hey [Music] daddy [Music] oh [Music] yeah oh yeah [Music] [Music] oh yeah oh yeah [Music] oh yeah yeah [Music] heat heat [Music] heat heat [Music] heat [Music] heat heat [Music] heat heat heat [Music] [Music] heat heat [Music] heat heat [Music] heat up here [Music] [Music] heat heat [Music] heat hey hey hey [Music] [Music] behalf hey [Music] Heat heat [Music] n heat heat n [Music] came out pretty good so the flippers have been dragging the playfield so we're going to have to mess with the bushings and maybe put a spacer in there because we don't want that to keep happening but uh other than that and a little bit of wear at the kickout holes there on the left and the right this thing is in really nice shape actually this stuff drives people crazy it doesn't really bother me it's just part of the history of it um and then the tax stickers up there we left those on i'm not sure what the customer I know he didn't really want it you know high-end he just wanted it working so we'll see apron still needs some work obviously we need new cards but very cool all right folks so that's about all we got time for tonight join us next time when we troubleshoot it we'll work on the flippers a little bit we still have to work on the cosmetic stuff on the score rails there clean the back glass um replace the bulbs back there and then um troubleshoot it and play it a little bit so I hope you've enjoyed it so far i think this is our 15th or 16th Grand Prix video we got one more coming so we'll see you then if you want to see any of those other Grand Prix videos I'll put the playlist up here see you on the next one