Gottlieb Grand Slam (Gottlieb, 1972) Help me out dudes!?

[teamhex]

Well Iv been for the last 2 weeks working on a pinball machine I bought from down the street. I'm going to post all the pics below in order as I took em. Well the basic story is, I played it when I bought it and everything seemed to work. Now the reels don't reset at the beginning of the game, that's not the main issue though. My dad was jacking with the power button(sounded like he turned it on and off to fast) now it wont turn on...at all. Also while I was playing my flippers felt a bit weak, and made a loud hum if I held the buttons down. Im 21 and dont know jack about this old technology. If this were a computer im sure I would be able to easily trouble shoot this.

Gottlieb Grand Slam 1972

 

[teamhex]

The Whole Cabinet

Spinney thing. Start up relay " I think " This is what I think got stuck.

Coin door with red button in center.

Contact switch for the red button(green wire is attached.

Picture of the relay where im pretty sure this green wire was attached.
If you look closely you can see excess solder on the wood below and a bit of green insulation on the contact. Im pretty sure this is for free play, what do you think? I need to set this bugger to free play so I don't break anything, iv looked at a site that showed you how to do it on a gottlieb, however it involved the head board. Im thinking that if I just solder that wire back on it should work eh? Maybe strip it and test it first?

 

[teamhex]

Well, I hooked that green wire up to a wire with an alligator clip on each end and a fuse in the middle so I don't break anything. It didn't do anything but make a loud buzz/hum in the back board.

 

[Meecro Hyperion]

Ill take a pic of it so maybe you can put a technical name to it..

'Spinney Thing' is an apt technical name!!! I suppose since it moves and controls something it's an actuator.

Wow it's in pretty good shape for 40 years....

The components seem to be laid out almost as they are positioned in the circuit diagram (or at least the Williams ones I've looked at). Easier to work on than a PCB...

Hard to tell which component to connect your free-play switch to without a schematic. Anyway if it was mine I'd get a stack of coins.....

 

[teamhex]

'Spinney Thing' is an apt technical name!!! I suppose since it moves and controls something it's an actuator.

Wow it's in pretty good shape for 40 years....

The components seem to be laid out almost as they are positioned in the circuit diagram (or at least the Williams ones I've looked at). Easier to work on than a PCB...

Hard to tell which component to connect your free-play switch to without a schematic. Anyway if it was mine I'd get a stack of coins.....

Yeah, but the slot where the coins drop doesn't start the game. Its the one to the right of it, I push a little lever down and it starts. Its got to have something to do with the back board. Maybe I can find that link im talking about.

 

[faralos]

sounds like it's set up for free play. the solder is from a repair person, (i've done it a few times using a soldering gun inside the cabinets, as long as it's not on any switches or wires you're okay). the ACTUATOR (that spinning thing) probably needs to be cleaned. see all those contacts? they all need to be cleaned LIGHTLY with sandpaper I'd wish you'd use at least an emery board though. It may have been stuck in 'tilt' mode thereby not letting the machine reset. your fidging with it, 'loosened' it up, so natch that first ball would have been the tilted (dead) ball. try to locate 'contact cleaner' to help you with it's cleanup (Blue Shower is one brand name, there are others) and if you are real careful a little squirt of silicone spray at the post in the actuators center will help to lube it, just keep that stuff off ANY contacts
Pretty damn clean for a 40 year old pin! I've seen 5 year old ones that were filthy inside!
for the contacts see those little white pegs? the contact arms next to those have little bumps on them these are the actual connection areas. that is what may need adjusting too, they should be close but not touching until the actuator rotates causing the connection to close,clean thiose little metal bumps not too much or they'll never make contact with each other, you have to get a feel as to how much sanding you can do to them, without wearing them down too much. Sometimes all that is needed is a piece of paper drawn between the two contacts, removing all the dirt buildup

 

[teamhex]

sounds like it's set up for free play. the solder is from a repair person, (i've done it a few times using a soldering gun inside the cabinets, as long as it's not on any switches or wires you're okay). the ACTUATOR (that spinning thing) probably needs to be cleaned. see all those contacts? they all need to be cleaned LIGHTLY with sandpaper I'd wish you'd use at least an emery board though. It may have been stuck in 'tilt' mode thereby not letting the machine reset. your fidging with it, 'loosened' it up, so natch that first ball would have been the tilted (dead) ball. try to locate 'contact cleaner' to help you with it's cleanup (Blue Shower is one brand name, there are others) and if you are real careful a little squirt of silicone spray at the post in the actuators center will help to lube it, just keep that stuff off ANY contacts
Pretty damn clean for a 40 year old pin! I've seen 5 year old ones that were filthy inside!
for the contacts see those little white pegs? the contact arms next to those have little bumps on them these are the actual connection areas. that is what may need adjusting too, they should be close but not touching until the actuator rotates causing the connection to close,clean thiose little metal bumps not too much or they'll never make contact with each other, you have to get a feel as to how much sanding you can do to them, without wearing them down too much. Sometimes all that is needed is a piece of paper drawn between the two contacts, removing all the dirt buildup

Well like I said man the button didnt do anything but make a weird buzz in the back board. I was reading on that pinrepair thing about setting free play on a gottlieb and they said a contact switch in the backboard or rigging up a wire to a "coin return" button.

 

[teamhex]

Im such a goon, man lol. Theres a metal tab in there, all I had to do was bend it over and to the other side of the contact switch and BOOM. The coin return button on the right is now the start game button. This is the picture on the pinrepair site. Mines alot like that with out that elongated peice on the bottom.

 

[Meecro Hyperion]

Nice work! See, my sig works - never give up (or 'don't let the bastards grind you down').

...so natch that first ball would have been the tilted (dead) ball...

Of COURSE! Damn it's been so long since I actually tilted a real pinnie. Good thinking faralos.

teamhex, thanks. It's been fun following your pinball mystery adventure tour!

 

[teamhex]

Nice work! See, my sig works - never give up (or 'don't let the bastards grind you down').


Of COURSE! Damn it's been so long since I actually tilted a real pinnie. Good thinking faralos.

teamhex, thanks. It's been fun following your pinball mystery adventure tour!

Iv got the schematic back I can take a pic, but this camera isn't to great. So if its not great great quality....its the best I can do.

 

[teamhex]

For high quality I broke it up into like 3 pics man. That way you'll be able to read whats going on.
Give me a second, let me see if I can flip them and make them post together so it looks like one pic.
You should be able to save those and zoom it, the top isn't lined up with the middle one. Its a bit off :). Best I can do mate. Thanks for all the help man.

Also I own the domain for www.teamhexonline.com(Not being hosted right now, im a noob)
and I was thinking of stealing this dudes image :)

 

[panootz]

It has been interesting reading about fixing a pinball machine, I would love to have a Family Guy someday, but it will probably never happen. No money and no room in the house, thats why i love virtual pinball. When i was in my 20's i worked for a Dream Machine arcade and i would usually clean the two pinball machines we had. They were High Speed and Fire! and they always said i did a good job at cleaning them, ialso fixed the rubbers on some of the bouncers on the bottom, and iwould always unjam the tokens that would get stuck in the coin mech, Thats about it for me with repairs on pinball and video games. I would have fun giving little kids and some adults free games, like Outrun had a service switch so i would give out free games sometimes not all the time, because i was afraid of getting in trouble you never know. I broke the glass on over the playfield on fire! once, they told me it was okay we wont fire you, but it cost about one thousand dollars just for that glass so becarefull when you clean your playfield. That glass is hard to comeby i was told. Well that is my story i'm 40 now so that was about 20 years ago, i loved working their it was a lot of fun and having the keys to the machines made me feel like Mr. Arcade. Dave P.

 

[teamhex]

It has been interesting reading about fixing a pinball machine, I would love to have a Family Guy someday, but it will probably never happen. No money and no room in the house, thats why i love virtual pinball. When i was in my 20's i worked for a Dream Machine arcade and i would usually clean the two pinball machines we had. They were High Speed and Fire! and they always said i did a good job at cleaning them, ialso fixed the rubbers on some of the bouncers on the bottom, and iwould always unjam the tokens that would get stuck in the coin mech, Thats about it for me with repairs on pinball and video games. I would have fun giving little kids and some adults free games, like Outrun had a service switch so i would give out free games sometimes not all the time, because i was afraid of getting in trouble you never know. I broke the glass on over the playfield on fire! once, they told me it was okay we wont fire you, but it cost about one thousand dollars just for that glass so becarefull when you clean your playfield. That glass is hard to comeby i was told. Well that is my story i'm 40 now so that was about 20 years ago, i loved working their it was a lot of fun and having the keys to the machines made me feel like Mr. Arcade. Dave P.

I cant figure out how to make that virtual pinball to even work man...I just cant figure it out...which is really saying something because iv got a MAME setup in my game room that I put together. The glass that covers the play field is 1k? I don't know if I can believe that I can get another brand new one for 70 bux on Pinball resource. They were probably jacking with you. 1k sounds like a general number, lol. Pretty cool though man. I always enjoy hearing peoples storys. I'd like to work at an arcade, that would be sweet. Aside from picking crap up and fixing the machines what else is there to really do, lol.

 

[panootz]

Your right their isn't much to do in an arcade, but one of the other things that we had to do is constintly walk around and make sure people weren't banging on the machines and cursing, because we did have kids their. If their was too much rough house we would throw those kids out of the arcade and they couldn't come back. About the visual pinball do the install pack that Pheonixx put together it's quite easy and the instructions on how to do it are also pretty easy give it a try. I did mine when i found a pinball dvd on ebay and it did all the instaling for me, all i had to do was update the pinmame i'm using VP 8.1 and i had to download all the new tables because the dvd only had the older tables. But pheonixxes program has everything you need except tables and roms which are quite easy to find either on this site (pinball nirvana) or vpforums.org and believe me you will have a blast playing those games the people who made these table are incredible. Check out JP Salases tables and JP and Groni's games when they worked together. Have fun with them. Dave P.

 

[Meecro Hyperion]

I cant figure out how to make that virtual pinball to even work man

Luckily you don't have to. Phoenixx has written an automatic installer called VIP which you can get from the front page of nirvana. It installs Visual Pinball plus PinMAME and does all the registry stuff for you. All you have to do after that is run PinMAME setup and load the Tables folder with Tables and theh ROMs folder with ROMs and you're away!!

Give it a try.

 

[teamhex]

Thanks guys. Meecro are those pictures going to work for you? Or did you want me to email you the originals?


Could someone link me to that installer? I cant seem to find it
Also enjoy the new avatar :) made it myself :)

 

[panootz]

I like your new avatar it's real cool, i like the death scenes neat. and about the installer go to the home page and it's right their you'll see pheonixxes black and red lights flashing like a pinball DMD graphics that the 90's pinball machines had. So just click on that red and black flashing icon type thing and it will ask you were to save it. Like i said check the front page of pinbal nirvana it's the first thing on that page. Like i said before have fun playing those tables i like pinbales from the late 80's up till 24 which is brand new. i got into pinball machines in the 90's and i loved all the music, voices and graphics on the DMD, and some of the crazy ramps some tables had. Dave P.

 

[Meecro Hyperion]

Pics are a bit fuzzy but good enough to see that Gottlieb didn't lay out their schematics nearly as nicely as Williams in 1972!

re VPinMAME installer: what Panootz said.

Nice avatar - very funny!

 

[teamhex]

Alright woot! I figured out why the score doesn't reset and I think the solenoid for that relay is getting stuck or something. I can manually hit the relay and the score will reset. Also sometimes it will work when you put a coin in. So I need to figure out why thats not working perfectly and thats it. The game should be in nearly 100% working condition. For some reason I have 2 lights on my playfield dont work.

 

[teamhex]

I like your new avatar it's real cool, i like the death scenes neat. and about the installer go to the home page and it's right their you'll see pheonixxes black and red lights flashing like a pinball DMD graphics that the 90's pinball machines had. So just click on that red and black flashing icon type thing and it will ask you were to save it. Like i said check the front page of pinbal nirvana it's the first thing on that page. Like i said before have fun playing those tables i like pinbales from the late 80's up till 24 which is brand new. i got into pinball machines in the 90's and i loved all the music, voices and graphics on the DMD, and some of the crazy ramps some tables had. Dave P.

Lol, im assuming it doesn't work with vista, because it crashes everytime I try to play a table.

 

[mattstryker25]

How awesome to have a classic old table like that , I was looking for a VP or VPM of that table when I first saw it in the IPBD but up to this day I don't think anyone's made it For all you table geniouses that would be an easy EM wouldn't it ?
Good luck Teamhex, hope you get it up and running perfectly :D

Matt :)

 

[sleepy]

Did you install/play as Administrator? I haven't tried Vista, but others who use it report that it works when run as Admin.

Maybe VIP needs a Vista check in the installer?

 

[teamhex]

Did you install/play as Administrator? I haven't tried Vista, but others who use it report that it works when run as Admin.

Maybe VIP needs a Vista check in the installer?

Lol, yeah im a computer guy so I pretty much can tell you its an incompatibility issue. Ill just test it out a bit more on my Xp machines.

 

[sleepy]

Have you tried Compatibility Mode (XP or NT or 98SE)? Some users with 64-bit systems find that it works by forcing 32-bit operation.

 

[teamhex]

Have you tried Compatibility Mode (XP or NT or 98SE)? Some users with 64-bit systems find that it works by forcing 32-bit operation.

Doesn't work, thats a different type of compatibility. It wont solve issues with drivers and other things.

 

[sleepy]

Does the VP Editor crash or is it when you click Play?
What error messages are you getting?

What happens when you open VP and click File > New and then click Play?
Does it crash then?

The older VP versions will crash on Vista, so make sure to download the latest version of it or VIP.