Repairing The Chimes On A Bally Captain Fantastic Pinball Machine....

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Joe's Classic Video Games back with another cool pinball repair video for you this evening. We've been working on this Bally Captain Fantastic pinball machine for quite a while now. We've done about three videos on it and this is going to hopefully be our final one. We'll get it up and running for the gentleman and he can come pick it up and enjoy it in his house. We have a whole bunch of other games that are waiting on repair. They're coming up, but we got to get this one finished first. We like working on one at a time. You just get more done that way. If I start working on these other ones, then I'll never get this one finished. So this is the final video on this one. So in the first video, we kind of looked the thing over, put it together, saw what we were working with and basically what we ended up with was we've got a cabinet that's in fairly rough shape as far as the paint. It's nice and solid though. It's just the paint is kind of beat up on the front. The play field had some wear here and there and it had some little white pock marks all over the play field. And so in the second video, we cleaned through some stuff and figured out that there was a problem where it was burning up a coil. We figured all that out. And at the end of the second video, we started the game, but we had some major scoring issues going on. So in the third video, we reworked the whole play field, repainted a bunch of it to try to make it look a little more presentable, all new rubber rings, all of that. And then at the end of the third video, we played it again and it seems to be scoring much better now. You don't have coils locked on, you don't have score reels locked on, things like that. So if you didn't see those videos, go back and check them out. Even though I just gave you a summation of them, there was all kinds of cool things that happened in those videos. If you've got a Captain Fantastic or any Bali from the mid to late eighties, mid to late seventies, it'll be very similar. EM game, of course. So in this one, we need to finish this thing up. So the one thing that we haven't worked on yet is a lot of the stuff in the back box. Now we like doing preventative maintenance so that basically there's not going to be issues down the road, hopefully, or at least we can minimize that. So in a previous video, I cleaned these Jones plugs, but that was about it that we did back here. In the second video, whenever we had the problem, we couldn't get things to work. I cleaned the player unit, but that's all that we've messed with back here. This is the match unit. It hasn't been messed with. These are the over the top relays. If you score 100,000 points, Williams may have called them over the top. I can't remember. But when you score 100,000 points, that relay comes on because on the front of the machine, there's not 100,000 points worth of score reels. So whenever you roll all the way over, that relay comes on, turns on a light, and makes a buzzer go off. Of course, we've got four score reels for each player. We've got the credit unit, which basically tells you how many credits are on it, obviously. And then we've got the 10-point relay, the 100-point relay, the 1,000-point relay. There's also a 10,000-point reel, but there's no relay for it. You just get that if you roll over from 9,000 points, you get 10,000 points on that next reel. And then there are two reset relays here that reset all of the score reels. So the next thing that I need to do, and it's my least favorite thing, if you've watched my videos, you know what it is. I've got to clean all of these score reels. It's got to be done, folks. You can't leave them alone. If you don't service these, they will just bite you in the butt. So what does that entail? Well, basically, I need to take the score reel, the plastic reel off, and clean the board that's behind the reel on all of them that have one. This one here doesn't have one. So that we can get the high score where you were in a free game working and also the match working. So that's what those are for. And then I also need to clean these three switches right here. Now, if you see that, I don't know if I can reach that from here, but you see the three sets of switches. There's six switches. The game is on right now, by the way. Oh yeah, I can reach around here. Okay. So you see that it's at zero. See the zero on the front. When it's at zero on a bally, all of those switches should be open. When it moves to 10 or one, the top two will close. The bottom one is still open and it'll stay like that the entire time. When you get to nine, which is the next one. So we're on eight. Now watch when I go to nine. When you get to nine, all three of them are closed. So it has leaned down and closed the bottom one as well. And then when you get to zero, all three of them open again. Now, why in the world is that set up like that? Well, it's how they make this thing work on relays and switches and stepper units and a little motor in the bottom. It has no way of knowing because it's not digital, what that reel says. Technically there is a board back here, which does put a little wiper on it depending on where it's at. So in a, whenever it does the match, it uses that little board to kind of understand what number it's on in a way. But there's no real thinking done by the logic of the thing. It's all just switches. So it's all ones and zeros. So the reason that you have those three switches, the top switch and the middle switch are home switches. Basically whenever the game starts or whenever the game resets, it needs to set all of these score reels back to zero. And so what it does is it has a power coming from the reset relays over to this reel and all the other reels, right? And if you look, there is a red and black wire running to the coil that moves the reel and that red and black wire also runs to the middle switch. So what happens is when you score 10 points and the 10 point relay comes in, you have a, I don't know which one's which, is that the 10 point relay? I think it is. Oh, it runs through the player unit. Okay. You have a, depending on where the player unit is, when the 10 point relay pulls in, it sends power up to the score reel, right? And it moves at 10 points and it comes in one time. And whenever this little coil comes back, it opens the switch. That kills the power to the 10 point relay. And that's how it knows that the thing pulled all the way in and you got your 10 points. Okay. So if you have a problem where the reel is sticking on, it could be that that switch is never opening, which means that the reel never turns off because the switch has locked in. I mean, the score relay is turned off because the switch is locked into place. But the purpose of these three switches is whenever it resets, this comes in and let's see if we can find the red and black on it. There's red and green. There it is. Red and black. When this pulls in, it sends a signal through this switch to here. Okay. And it will just keep pulsing it as the score motor turns around. So it's going to go and fire this thing over and over again. When it gets to zero, that middle switch will open up. So now it'll keep doing it. Click, click, click, click, click. But that reel won't turn because the switch has opened up and the power from the reset relay runs through that switch. So that's how it makes it go to zero and then stop at zero at the beginning of the game. The one above it does the exact same thing, but the purpose of it is they're all linked together. So you see how you have a yellow wire and then a green and black wire and a green and black wire, and it just goes on and on. Yellow wire, green and black, yellow wire, green and black, yellow wire, green and black. All of those are connected in a big string and all of those, any of those give power to the reset relay at the beginning of the game. So let's say that these start pulling in and they start resetting these score reels, but let's say this score reel is kind of sluggish and it's just going, eh, I don't want to move to one point. I don't really want to. And it moves one more point and it takes it freaking 30 seconds to reset or more realistic. Maybe it skips one or two numbers and it hangs for a second and then it resets. The reset relay has to stay on until all of them get back to zero. So they can't wire it up where the reset relay just stays on for two revolutions. Everything gets nine pulses or whatever, and they all should be back to zero. It can't do that. It has to make sure that they're all back to zero. And it can't use that switch to tell they're all back to zero, the middle one, because it's involved with this. So it's already using that switch to do its thing. You can't use it for something else. Maybe you could, but that's not how they designed it. So they put another switch right on top of it that also stays closed if it's not on zero. And if any of those switches are closed on any of the 16 reels, it will still power up the reset relay. When all of those reels get back to zero and all of those top switches are open, nothing is holding the reset relay on anymore, at least from the score reels, and the reset relay turns off and the game has finished resetting and it goes to the next step of the startup procedure. So you have to have those switches perfectly adjusted. They need to be closed when you're not on zero and they need to be open when you are at zero, every one of them, every set of them. And so that's the main thing that you're trying to clean. You also need to make sure that the thing, whenever the coil pulls in, that it moves that one number consistently. So a lot of times they get filthy and dirty and gunked up and somebody sprayed WD-40 on them or whatever. You got to clean all that crap up. Okay. So what's the bottom one do? The bottom one is the carryover switch. So we're on zero. We just went to one. So now they're all closed. They're going to be closed except for the bottom one. And we're on eight now. So when you get to nine, that bottom switch closes. Well, that bottom switch, if you look, let's see if we can tell by the colors. What are the colors? There's black and yellow, but I don't know that that's it. Well, the bottom switch is closed now. So the next time you get 10 points and the 10 point relay comes in, it's going to pull that in one more time and it's going to turn you over to zero. Well, you just went from nine to zero. That ain't that great. But because that bottom switch was closed, the power also went through it to turn this one one point. So you went from nine to 10 because this one turned to one and this one turned to zero. So that bottom switch only is activated when it's in the ninth position, because the next time you get a point, it's going to throw a point up to the next reel. So it carries it over to the next reel. So all of those have to work right or the thing ain't going to score right. And it's really common for those to have problems. A lot of times what you'll have too, this thing's kind of worn, but you'll have a wire that has broken off of the blade. The solder itself will just lift right off. I don't see one that's doing that right now, but just from old age, it'll just pop loose and needs to be soldered back on. So, and then of course too, it makes them look better cosmetically if you clean the little reel. So I go through each one, clean them all up, make sure all three of those switches are working right. Manually step it through multiple times just to make sure everything's cool. Everything closes. I clean those switches with a small little flat file that I've got. Nothing crazy. You don't want to grind the thing to death, but you just want to clean it all. And then I put that one back in and then I move on to the second one. And it takes two, three hours to do all 16 of them. So here we go. It's very monotonous and mundane. I usually don't film much of it because it's boring, but you got the basic gist of it. So we'll get all that adjusted and it's just the next thing that needs to be done on this machine. Okay. So I went through and cleaned all 16 reels. There was one over here where one of the top switches was bent up. There was one down here where one of the top switches was bent up. But other than that, everything seemed pretty cool. They seem to be moving well and I have set all of them on the number one. And whenever we start it, it's going to try to reset all 16 reels at the same time. And we'll see if it's able to get them all back to zero. That's good way of checking to just see if you've got any problems with any of them. I cleaned all of the other switches while I was at it. And on this match unit, I cleaned it and I ended up breaking a wire. So I got to solder this wire back. There was a little alternator switch there. See that switch? So every time this pulls in, that switch closes and opens. It'll be interesting to see why it does that. Probably to turn on maybe the alternator relay would be my guess, which will probably move lights back and forth on the playfield. And then also, remember our chime doesn't work. But when I was doing the points relays, look, this one has a blade broken off. So that switch is probably the switch that makes the chime coil pull in. So we got to mess with that. I haven't messed with the credit unit yet. Everything else seems cool. But it's time to try to reset it. We got so many games in here. I can't even move. Joey's been working on this. We're trying to get this one out of here. And we had two more dropped off. So we got two more machines in the other room. Okay. So when I turn it on, that may reset. Sometimes it'll do that. No. Okay, good. All right. So I'm going to hit start. We'll see if any of them hang or if I was able to get all 16 of them adjusted properly first try. Now that last one on each one that's a zero, that's a fake reel. It's just to make the score longer. Yep. They did that. They still do that. Okay. So that one is not working properly. And strangely, that's the last one I did. You'd think I would've got the last one. I must've been in a hurry. Oh man, is it Friday again? So these are the reset relays. So the problem could be that the switch that resets that coil isn't connecting very well. But I don't think that's it. I think, and it's this one. And remember, it's the middle switch. So I adjusted them all and I thought I had it right. But look at this. If I tap that top, it looks like they're touching. If I tap that top blade, can you see that it slightly moves before the bottom one does? So I think there's just the slightest gap. See how when I move that one, it doesn't make the top blade move. I think there is just the slightest gap between those two blades and it looks like they're touching, but they're not. And so it thinks it's back at zero because that switch is open. So what I need to do is adjust that a little tighter and then we'll try it again. I'm not going to reset all of them. We'll just try that one. All right. So let's see if that's any better. All right. I like that. That was better. Went quick, didn't it? Boy, it reset quick. Almost reset too quick. Okay. And it kicked the ball out. I think what I'll do next is let's go ahead and fix that wire that's broken on the alternator thing, because it's going to make it where half the lights don't work or whatever. And let's, yeah, it'll make it where the lights never move back and forth. We haven't done the lights under the play field yet, by the way. Let's also fix the chime switch. Okay. So I cleaned up the reel and I've got the switches working as they should. I've done videos on all of these Valleys so many times. If you have any specific stuff that you wish I would have shown, if you go on our channel, over on the right side of our channel is a little Sherlock Holmes looking spyglass, magnifying glass. If you click that, you can search just on our channel. And if you just search all of the Valley machines that we've done, we've covered all of this like 50 times. So I don't show every little part on every little video because frankly it gets monotonous. But what I do want to show is that wire that I re-soldered on that match unit there. So I want to show what that's for. And I was able to replace the missing switch, the broken switch, I've got a bunch of Valley coils off of another machine, some other machines that were parted out. I didn't part them out, believe it or not. And so I had that exact switch I could put in there. Okay. So let's look in the schematics. I want to show you what that switch is for. Okay. So it's a really simple circuit. This is the alternator relay. It's attached to, I think that's the hot AC. And then this side, I guess, is the common. And to turn on the alternator relay, there is a switch. That's that switch we were just messing with on the zero to 90 unit, they call it, which is what I always call the match unit. So if it's in the position where the switch is closed, the alternator relay is on. If it moves up one position, it will open that switch and then the alternator relay will be off. So here are the match lights at the end of the game. The match light that lights up depends on what position you're at on the zero to 90 unit. That's just what they call that unit. It's called a match unit in other machines. Okay. Now here is the alternator relay. So a switch on that alternator relay will move back and forth depending on if the relay is on or off. So by you scoring 10 points to advance that zero to 90 unit, you get your 10 points on the score reel, but it also moves that little unit, which makes it where you can't keep up with what match number is going to light up at the end of the game. I don't think it goes at an even thing. It doesn't go 10, 20, 30 on the match. I don't believe. I think it jumps around a little bit. But if the alternator relay is not on, then there's a lane adjustment here for the target number one sequence that either works or is either always on or is on only whenever the alternator relay is on or is off. I'm sorry. And then the top left, right rollover buttons will be lit and the top left and right rollover lane will be lit and the center thumper bumper will be lit. Okay. Now if the alternator relay has pulled in, then this would be connected here. And so then you would have the target number two sequence relay, whatever that is connecting through here. The other ones we just mentioned would be off and the top center lane would be lit as opposed to the left and right lanes. And the top two thumper bumpers would be lit as opposed to the center thumper bumper. So it would make those lights change. Now, if you think about it though, it's more complicated than that because if the light comes on for the center thumper bumper, then you need to make sure that the center thumper bumper scores whatever it's supposed to score when it's lit. So the alternator relay can't just move lights around because it's also got to move the scoring around. So there are also a couple more switches on the alternator relay that would make the difference between the top thumper bumper, for instance, scoring 10 points or the top thumper bumper, if the alternator relay is on, scoring a hundred points. And you saw that it did some other rollover lanes and stuff too. I assume there's a switch for that as well. So that's basically what that, that one little switch they just added on there to where there's a little cam that'll hit it as that one reel turns around, that's giving you the match number, which is like a pseudo random number. It's not really random because it's in a pattern, but it's not easy to memorize the pattern. You would have to look at where the match unit was before, and then know exactly how many times the 10 point relay had been hit, like as in 38 times, something like that. And then how many times it had been hit by the second player because it's cumulative and have it all figured out just so you can win a 25 cent game. Most people weren't going to do that. I'm sure some people probably did figure it out because it's possible, but I wouldn't spend my time doing it. Okay. So here's the actual alternator relay. You can see right now it's actually in and the center rollover lane is lit. The rollover buttons are off and the two outside lanes are off. And then the two top pop bumpers are on. So if we hit a switch that gives us 10 points, it is turned off the alternator relay. And now the center lane is no longer lit, but the other two are, and all of the rollover buttons are lit and the bottom pop bumpers lit. So it's just designed to wig wag that back and forth. Really cool little feature, but you see all the extra switches because it has to make the math work too. So it has to switch the scoring from the 10 point related to the hundred point relay and back and forth on whatever's lit up. Here is the chime unit. So it just unplugs out of the bottom and there's two little wing nuts that hold it on. It actually sounds pretty good because the rubber grommets haven't completely deteriorated. So basically you don't want these metal bars hitting metal. If they hit metal, it muffles it and makes it sound bad. So this rubber is used to isolate them from the metal posts. The metal posts are attached to this metal bar. So you want them kind of floating and they don't have to be tight. That one's a little tighter than the other ones. Sounds fun. But two of the coils are burnt slap up. Now, if you watched the first video, I mentioned in the video that there is a little piece of plastic laying in the bottom of the game that appears to be the end of one of these plungers. This one's still on there, so it's probably the end of this plunger. I think this one is still working because we've been hearing one chime. So I'm going to take those coils out of there and we'll see what we can do with that. I guess it could go either way, but the length of it, it looks like this was probably the red wire. This was probably the blue wire or that was. It's just a shame. I don't know if I've got any of those in stock, those coils. 29, 1600. So it needs to be 29 gauge wire and 1600 RPMs or something similar. And it's a little tiny coil, much smaller than most of the other coils. Well, I looked around and I did have some. Now these are not Valley. It just says quality coils and that's the part number. But if you look under it, 29, 1600, it's the same one, 29 gauge wire, 1600 RPMs, or it shouldn't be RPMs, 1600 windings, revolutions. You get my point. So I need to change out the sleeve to put the type that works for those kinds of plungers. And I'm going to test them just to make sure they're not shorted or anything and to make sure that they measure similar to that one. And then we'll put them back in. The little plastic piece that's inside the machine doesn't go on any of these three plungers. I guess I should check the knocker in the back to make sure it doesn't go on that. This one was all freaking melted and bent. So I freaking cleaned it up a little bit and made the top flat again and it should be just fine. So I'm going to smooth those out to make sure they move through the coils right. And then we'll clean it up a little bit and put it all back together and hopefully we'll have three working chimes. Okay, well they all measure out to 28 ohms. Everything's good. Got it all wired back together. Got the three plungers back in. Got new coil sleeves on it. Cleaned it up a little bit. Now we're ready to test it. Just in time to test all of the scoring. Now people, this is a pinball machine. They ring, there's bells, there's chimes. So it's going to make a bunch of noise. Just warning you, I've had people complain before that the pinball machine was making too much noise in the videos. All right, so we tested a little bit earlier. I don't know if it's on this video or not. They all run together people. So most of the stuff works. The chimes are working. The thing that isn't working though is 300 and three bonus advances. I can't, let's see if the bonus advances works. I heard doom doom like it, I got two, I got 200 points. I got three that time, two that time, two that time. So you can see on the score, 17,660. So what's the 660? Only got 200. 200. Why would that be? That's strange, isn't it? Let's collect the bonus. Let me go get a new pinball. We'll collect the bonus and then we'll try it with it fresh to see if it's stepping three bonuses or just two. So it's a double bonus and it's 15,000 points we should get. So it should go to 33,360. Did I count that right? I don't know if I counted that right. No, we'll try it again. Okay, so let's see if this goes up three points. So it should go to 400 because it's already, or 4,000, it's already lit on 1,000. Three, okay, three. So maybe the two wasn't lit. Well, I love it when they fix themselves. If you hit this one, it should open the gate and it does, which now makes this one 303 and it gave me 300. That's interesting. Oh, and it would have shut the gate, but I had my hand on the wall. All right, so everything, 100, that's 10. So the one that's out is 10. So that's 10 and now it's 100. So since it didn't give you 10, it didn't change, right? So if I hit this one, that gave me 10 points, which advanced that little stepper, which changed it, that light bulb's loose. Okay, everything seems to be scoring right, except that 300 when lit sometimes does two instead of three. So we've got to keep our eye on that. And I haven't checked the special yet, but other than that, everything's scoring right. I'm going to clean up these drop targets a little bit. That's next. And then we're going to do a little bit more cosmetic stuff. Main thing being, we're going to calm down Elton. Elton, you've gone too far, buddy. We've got to calm you down a little bit. So the customer, whenever they brought me this, they hadn't plugged it in or anything, I don't believe. They just bought it and brought it straight to me to work on. And of course, I still need to check the scoring on all four players, but there's all kinds of flash bulbs in the back glass and it don't really need all that, folks. You're overdoing it. When you put that mini in there, it takes away from it. You just want a couple in there. It's designed to have like 20. And it's a little strain on the lights. They'll dim and stuff because the other ones are blinking and changing the voltage a little bit, the current a little bit. So I'm going to pull some of those out and put just regular bulbs in. So this is what's going on. So here is the back glass. It's in very nice shape, pretty much perfect shape. It's a little dirty. I'm not going to clean it off just because you can take some of the paint off sometimes, depending on the condition of it. I mean, it's in pretty good shape, but I'm going to leave it on. I might actually, I'll probably try to clean the score windows just a little bit, but very minor. So yeah, there's just a ton of blinking lights. It really shouldn't have that many. See these little divots here. If the socket has a divot around it, that's your clue that it takes a round bulb and the 455 blinking bulbs are round bulbs. So that's where you put them. So there's only supposed to be four of them and the four are behind the pinball machine. So that's what should be blinking. It's basically Elton's name is blinking. So they've got a little too much going on. It'll just look better without all those. And so I was thinking, well, they probably got a box of 10 and just put them all in there. But if you look, there's more than 10. There's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. I count. So yeah, we're going to get rid of some of those. Okay. So that's how it looks with just a few of the flashers on it. I'm going to do a led rant. Okay. So they make new ones that are led reproductions, which that would be better, right? They're digital or whatever. So look at this. So there are four in there, 1, 2, 3, 4, and they're analog. It's the old school bulbs. Now the way they work is they come on, the little filament is connected. They light up like a regular bulb. As they heat up, one of the pieces of the filament is like a spring and it goes clink and the heat makes it disconnect. When it disconnects, it turns off and then it starts cooling off, touches again, it turns back on, heats back up, clink. And so it makes a blinking bulb. It's all analog and mechanical, right? So look at this one. Look at the tempo that that is repeating it. See how it changes? Sometimes it's faster, sometimes it's slower. And notice how long it's on. Okay. Now look at this one. Completely different. Exact same bulb, just completely different. Now look at this one. Off, on, off, on, off, on, off, on, off. Completely different. And look at this one. Much faster blink. The light's on less time than the other ones. Okay. So all four of them are completely different. So it just gives a different look. So you can put the LED ones in, but they, they blink at a more steady rate. They probably have something now where it makes it a little more random or something, but they can't come close to matching that look. It just, they don't look right. But you do what you want to. By the way, let me point out, this is a 1976 pinball machine that's been played to death. The back glass is in perfect shape. So a lot of times people say, oh, the bulbs are destroying the back glass. No, no, it's not that. It's if you leave the damn thing out in your, out in your shed for the last 35 years, that destroys the back glass. The bulbs themselves don't destroy the back glass. Rant off. Okay. So yeah, I like that a lot better. We've still got scoring issues though. Basically what's going on is it's playing more than a one player game. So whenever you start after ball one, it might play a ball on player two. One time it even played a ball on player three. So it's not resetting back to the beginning each time and moving the ball and play up every time. So we got to mess with that a little bit. One to four can play ball and play one and we'll let it play itself a little bit. Still got to mess with that light bulb. I think our alternator switch is stuck too. We've got to look at that. One to four can play ball and play one still. Still ball and play one. We're on player three. That last ball was on player two. See there's only a one player game started. They caught our drop target over there. It reset and the drop target didn't reset. We're back to player one. Let's get player four and we're still on ball two and still on player one. So we still got some issues with the player unit, the coin unit, and the ball count unit. Okay player one ball three now. And the match unit is not alternating. So now we're on player two and on and on. So you get the point. So we still got issues we need to check out. It's hard to do one of these machines without doing like... Something's locking on. What would that be? What am I hearing? Oh here we go. Ten point relay. Come on you sucker. All right we'll turn it off before we burn it up. So we got something locked on still. It's hard to do one of these machines in just a few videos. It just, you know, I could just show you the highlights of it but I like to try to explain why it's doing what it's doing. I could just say, oh that switch is stuck. I'll unstick it. I found another stuck switch that was causing a problem. I'll unstick it. Here you go. And if I was like the TikTok generation I'd probably do that but I'm very long-winded. So this is video number four. I thought this was going to be the last one but there's just... I can't rush it. I got to fix the thing right. So I've got to figure all of that out. I got to make sure that it works all the time right. So some of this is stuff that we've already worked on. Like I don't know if Joe replaced the pop bumper lights but probably. But there's something going on there and the 10 points sticking on. It's been doing that for a while but we couldn't figure out why. The drop target not resetting. We haven't really messed with those yet so we got to mess with that. The player unit, the coin unit, and the ball count unit all not working properly. We got to figure that out. It's going to be something simple but we got to figure out why it's doing that. So all that to say folks there's going to be one more video. I hope you enjoyed this one. We will see you next time.