Bally Playboy (Bally, 1978) flipper problem

[SteveAr]

I'm new to this forum and this is my first post looking for help.
Have a Bally playboy that has been in the basement for 25+ years.
Had some general repairs done on it 20 years ago but that repair
person is no longer around so I'm tinkering with it myself.

It has not been fired up for 5 or 6 years but when it was used last
everything was okay. Fired it up last night and right flipper would
not work. Left flipper works just fine. I'm not an electrical genius but
my first thought was to see if there was power to the right side button.
I used a screwdriver to short across the contacts at the bottom of the
switch and got nothing. I then did the same on the left side and it tripped
the flipper. So, I'm thinking there should be power going to the switch and
there is not. The two wires I shorted across go down into a wiring bundle
and off into oblivion.

Before I cut all the wire ties and trace these wires to wherever they go,
does anyone have any ideas as to anything else I can do?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Steve

 

[pinballdaveh]

Check for cracked solder connections on the back sides of the solenoid driver and fuse/rectifier boards. Jack pin connectors are always suspect. Reflow connections where needed.

 

[SteveAr]

Thanks for the reply Pinballdaveh,
I checked everything that I could see and found nothing that looked broken,
cracked, or disconnected. I guess I'm just going to find a professional to come
check it out. I'm afraid if I get into it any further I could mess it up even more.

Thanks again for trying to help. Steve

 

[pinballdaveh]

Are all the flipper coil connections attached and soldered correctly .maybe the coil or the diodes on the coil just went bad. Changing the coil would be next.

 

[Coil_Smoke]

Your schematic shows a relay in flipper enable circuit. If you can find that relay you might want to check it for proper operation and clean contacts. After some looking at the rather limited owners manual... Not a lot a relays in Playboy. 1 possibly 2 and they are on your solenoid driver board. It looks like the flipper switches complete the flipper coils circuits to ground(flipper return bus to power supply) connection. I appears the flipper relay sends juice to the flipper coils then on to the flipper switches. So yes there should be about 40 volts across your flipper switches if all circuits are good. That 43 volts from the flipper relay should be available at you flipper coils too. You can use the return side of your working flipper switch for your ground reference(Negative lead) of your meter. also check for continuity between those flipper returns and power supply.
The internet claims your flipper coil main winding @ 3.3 Ohms hold winding is 350 Ohm.

https://www.flippers.com/coil-resistance.html

http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=1823