Bally Kick Off (Bally, 1977) Fuse problems

[Medford]

I have a 75 Bally Kick off and not much experience working on pinball machines. The machine has 3 pop bumpers and every time the bottom pop bumper gets hit it blows the fuse that controls the 3 pop bumpers. Rest of machine is working great. Any thoughts?

 

[Coil_Smoke]

Kick Off...Bally's Final EM

Have a close look at the switch blades and wires in the vicinity. Look for something causing a short. More likely the coil may be the problem. Do you have a ohm meter? The main winding may be shorting out. Does the coil look or smell burnt? Those coils have two windings. I don't think a short in the End Of Stroke winding would blow fuses. The EOS switch actually shorts that portion of the coil until the solenoid pulls in. When the EOS switch opens the current flows through both windings with lower amps. Use an ohm meter or test light. Check the windings with the power off and the EOS contacts opened. A reading of less than 4Ω ohms is a bad coil. Measure a known good coil for the actual good resistance. This should be fairly easy to track down and sounds like a great introduction to pinball repair. Here is a link to EM repair. AND GOOD LUCK...C_S

http://ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=1365

http://www.pinrepair.com/em/index1.htm#top

 

[Medford]

Actually released in '77

CS, thanks for your help. The coil was bad and have a new one ordered. Thanks again. Also the repair website will be a help.


Medford

 

[pinballdaveh]

i think kick off was put on hold because night rider was a big hit. with both freedom and night rider made in both em and ss versions why was kick off only made as an em? the problem is the thumper bumpers(pop bumper is a gottlieb term). bally was already using dc for their thumpers, so the fuse that blew was the under playfield bridge fuse. since the thumper coils work on dc a diode might be wired to the coil. before installing the new coil check the coils side by side to make sure that the cathode white bands on the diodes are wired in the same direction.

 

[Coil_Smoke]

CS, thanks for your help. The coil was bad and have a new one ordered. Thanks again. Also the repair website will be a help.Medford

Also even though it's only three conections make sure you know where those wires were. A little sketch with wire color/stripe or close up (Macro) photos. There are plenty folks been posting woes making mistakes with even simple repairs like switches. You may want to get extra fuses cause bypassing them is bound to cook something worse...C_S