• Same problem again with the kickout not happening. The score motor was once again not advancing all the way on one half of the wheel. Adjusted the second-from-top switch to be just right. But it’s a narrow range between spinning forever and not going far enough. If this happens again worth asking on internet forums for ideas. Maybe the disc isn’t quite right? Maybe there’s some other mysterious score motor adjustment?
• Had problems with the drop targets not popping up at the start of a new game. Spent a long time looking at it and we’re not totally sure they should.

• symptom is that when the ball ends up in the bottom trough it doesn’t cycle to the next ball and kick it out
• That seems familiar. How did I solve it before?
• It was adjusting the score motor wheel:
  
  - We got the weird behavior where the ball eject wouldn’t work to happen again. It was fine to start but got worse over time. We traced it to the score motor, index wheel, switch A, which gives power to the outhole switch that in turn triggers the end of ball cycle. It was finicky because it depended on exactly how far the score motor wheel advanced, and one of the two notches was more prone to cause trouble. Adjusting the switch leaf appears to have fixed it.
• I bent the switch just a bit more and it seems better.

• Unfortunately, I think I failed to write up what we did! So where’s it at?
• Brian came in to help, which has been great.
• We got the weird behavior where the ball eject wouldn’t work to happen again. It was fine to start but got worse over time. We traced it to the score motor, index wheel, switch A, which gives power to the outhole switch that in turn triggers the end of ball cycle. It was finicky because it depended on exactly how far the score motor wheel advanced, and one of the two notches was more prone to cause trouble. Adjusting the switch leaf appears to have fixed it.
• Match wheel was a little wonky, so we took it apart. The screws holding the inner bracket to the main plate had worked their way loose. We tightened those, put the square circuit board back in its lowest position, and put it all back together. The shoes were correctly centered.
• After that there was a problem with ball advance. One part was a problem of ignorance; I thought the ball was advanced by the outhole switch, but it turns out it was a separate trough switch that registered the ball moving to the plunger area.
• The last issue today was a flaky T. Cleaning the related Jones plug helped some, and pinching the female Jones plug a bit helped with the rest.
• There’s still a chance either that switch or the score wheel will need tweaking, but for now we put it back.

• Back at it, starting with the start button, which they know as the replay button
  
  - Button itself works.
  
  - Next stop is the replay unit zero switch, which should block the signal if there are no credits, but it passes through regardless. Maybe the switch was bent as a cheap way of making it free play?
  
  - Then it splits
  
  
  - Green wire goes to the lock relay, on a switch marked normally closed but that’s open whenever the power is on
  
  
  - Also goes to the Game relay, green (although diagram says black) and then brown out. That’s marked as normally open
• One problem was the game relay switch was not closing properly. We cleaned that and adjusted it and you can now start a game.
• However, the eject only works intermittently because the outhole switch is not always powered. This can be seen by connecting a meter between the black line on the solenoids and the top of the outhole switch.
• When this happens, the score relays are still powered, suggesting the problem is in the wiring near to that.

• What’s this thing’s deal? It’s not starting properly.
• Let’s just trace the power through the circuit diagram.
  
  - Reset relay - operates when start button is pressed. Looks like power comes out on a dual switch with red/yellow weave wire.
  
  - Tilt relay - from the diagram, it looks like it goes to a dual switch, the normal side of which should pass through, and the momentary side should go to the game relay
  
  
  - the tilt relay flips at power on, which is pretty wrong. Isn’t it?
  
  
  - It flips because there’s something on the lock relay that starts that way. If I disable the switch, it doesn’t happen. And sometimes it doesn’t happen regardless. And if it doesn’t happen, then you can’t start a game.
  
  
  - Anyhow, the power did not pass through the tilt switch to the game over relay. Fixed and verified with a meter. But that didn’t fix anything, so that was a problem, but not the problem. So what’s the problem?
• Let’s try looking from the start button forward.
  
  - I can’t find the start button. But it only works when the machine is tilted.
  
  - Wait, no. It only works when the game relay is tripped. Can I find it from there?
  
  - The start button is called the “replay switch”. I think the theory is that normally just putting a coin in starts the game, and there are no credits, just replays. Credits must have come later.
  
  - So that passes through the following:
  
  
  - replay unit zero, normally closed. So zero credits opens it.
  
  
  - or gate
  
  
  
  - lock relay, normally closed
  
  
  
  - game relay, normally open
  
  
  - 25c relay
  
  
  - ending up in the replay relay.
  
  - What if I just trip that relay?
  
  - It does something like a startup sequence, and then does not work. What trips the kicker?
  
  -

• Started out with no power. I was expecting a complicated problem with relays. But the switch connector, which looks to be a bit of hack, fell off. I put it back on and adjusted it some.
• In a test play, I discovered that both T lights are out in the backbox. Also, the ball counter is not advancing.
• And now something’s wrong with the startup sequence; it will reset the score, but it won’t play it all. Is there anything in my notes?

And I got a bunch done! It now feels like a workshop. I installed the Jones plugs for [[Pinball/Machines/TeachersPet34484]] but it wouldn’t start, so I have a clear repair issue for next time. This feels great and I’m very glad I did it.

• I fixed the problem with the outhole switch. Turns out that it was getting about 5V from who knows where, and about 8V from a switch on the switch stack that was only partly closed. If I manually closed it, it would get 29V. Filing it didn’t help, so I adjusted the switch a bit.
• TODO The special light flickers.
• TODO If you bang on the playfield you get points, suggesting some switch is too close.
• I was having trouble figuring out the logic of the points for the red targets. It’s a ladder where the more letters you have in TEACHERS PET, the bigger the points. But it has to be in order, so TE kicks it up, and TEAC gets more, and so on up to special.

• The score motor was running for mysterious reasons. It would never start on its own, but it would keep running long past when it should have stopped. I found it on the circuit diagram and there were a bunch of things that could start it off. I tried those, but they all had other effects that would only happen the first time. But the score motor knows to keep running to complete a cycle. How? On one of the switch stacks (“index”), there’s a normally-open switch that when it closes keeps the motor running until the next proper stopping point. That was opening, but the momentum of the system would keep it running through the stopping point. A small amount of friction or pressure on the switch stack would get it to behave, so I just adjusted the switch a bit and all was well.
• Next up is the mysterious outhole failure.
  
  - It used to work fine. For a while I think it worked erratically. Now it only works if you hit something else, like the one-point bumper, while the outhole switch is depressed.
  
  - The outhole switch is mechanically and electrically fine.
  
  - The voltage at the switch normally is ~8V, dropping to 0 when the switch closes. If the machine doesn’t have a game going, it’s at 5V. If I push the one-point bumper, it peaks at 22V before dropping back to 8V.
  
  - When I kick it off manually, the relay measures at ~28V. But without it, it’s at 0.
  
  - Holy shit, it’s the same index stack of switches. For reasons I don’t get, the outhole switch and the score EOS switches are all fed through a normally-closed switch on the score motor index wheel. If it goes slightly too far, the switch isn’t properly closed, and so is at too low a voltage. If I move the wheel back to the proper closed position, the normal voltage is 28V.
  
  - Since both these problems started at the same time, could there be a common cause? Why is the score motor going slightly too far now? Or is it going the right distance, but the switches were adjusted for the old distance?
  
  - Time to clean up, so we’ll find out next time!

• TODO elastics
• TODO playfield lights
• DONE score motor runs too long during resets
• TODO end of ball sometimes doesn’t happen until something else gets hit
  
  - outhole switch seems fine
• TODO permanently attach or replace broken red plastic in E hole