My new-to-me Counterforce had most of the lamps in the insert panel (behind the backglass) missing. I grabbed my supply of LEDs and populated the lot. The glare was so bad it made the game hard to play.
I replaced a bunch of the LEDs with #47 incandescents, except where I liberally used #455s, the blinky bulbs. I love these — although I see they seem to be out of stock at several suppliers. I suppose they will go NLA soon. But I have them for now, and I love their randomness and the noise that they make. Plus, since they’re usually off, the glare is greatly reduced.
When I cleaned the playfield, I upgraded several lamps to LEDs–Nifty frosted warm white, generally, since I still have a stock of those. But a lot of the playfield holes won’t accommodate the larger plastic ring on the LEDs, so I used #47s.
Initially, I didn’t know if I would LED the controlled lamps or not. But I had a couple I wanted to brighten up, and they looked so good, I started installing LEDs in all the inserts. Counterforce has quite a few non-controlled inserts — around 12 that are on when a corresponding drop target is on. All of these are yellow inserts, so I used TJ’s trick of lighting them with a pink bulb. A yellow LED bulb tends to look washed out. The pink ones look great. They look really hot in the purple inserts that Gottlieb used for extra ball.
Another 28 lamps are stepped up with an under-playfield transistor. These provide the incoming bomb lights. I haven’t done these yet, but I think they’ll look great when done.
But on my way there, I’m soldering shut a bunch of lamp sockets, or maybe replacing sockets. This is a trick I learned from Tim Arnold’s handouts a long time ago. Here’s a PDF. On old sockets, the press-fit loses its will to press-fit. But a drop of solder on the joint provides connectivity and can revive a dying lamp socket.
So far I’ve had a couple that look great with the upgrade.
I plan to do this on the bus sockets used for the bomb lamps and the bonus ladder, both of which are irreplaceable, have lots of individual wire connections, and quite a few loose sockets.
[Originally written in early 2021, minor updates in early 2024.]
A useful video, found via Pinside, on how these are supposed to work.
I have a Counterforce that has been sitting idle since we moved to a new house. I got it set up and noticed some score digits were out. No problem, I know exactly what the problem is: I have connectors that I have not serviced. I opened the head to jiggle them.
When I went to open the head, I noticed that the key was easy to move, as if there was no lock mechanism. What actually had happened is that I did not tighten the screw sufficiently when I re-keyed the lock, and having the game on a truck for shows and a house move jiggled the screw out of the lock.
When I first got this game, I remember changing the lock. I only change head locks when I can’t find a key. On this game, I think there was no lock or the lock was defeated. I changed it to my keyed-alike lock, and forgot how the mechanism works.
In short, the mechanism on these early System 80 games moves a crossbar down and forward, which pushes two (sprung) arms forward. When the arms are in the forward position, you can’t lift the backglass.
On Counterforce, there is an extra wrinkle that the speaker mounting is in front of the lock, but a long screwdriver is very helpful in getting the screwdriver in the right place.
Note that it is useless to tighten the screw when the lock is unlocked (assuming my usual Fort locks, which will not release the key in the unlocked position). And, when the insert panel is fully open, it prevents the head from being locked (the crossbar intentionally interferes with the insert panel). However, if the insert panel is only somewhat open, I can lock the head, pull the key so the lock doesn’t turn, and then crank down on the screw.
Even by the standards of this blog, which is an absolute backwater of the Internet, this post is of very limited utility. But here it is.
Chris refers to the Gottlieb drops as the Cadillac of drop targets. I’m not so sure, but they do play well. Drop targets are an annoying mechanism to work on, especially those with added features like trip coils.
Williams drop targets have a failure mode I call slo-mo drop targets. You smack one with the ball, and instead of clicking down, it sinks slowly into the playfield. This comes from dirt. If they’re really dirty, you can hit one, the ball can move far away, and then it sinks. It’d be cool if it happened on purpose.
I got this Gottlieb Counterforce. And it had slo-mo drops. I’ve never seen this in a Gottlieb game. There’s nowhere for the dirt to hide. So, while shopping out a bunch of stuff wrong with this game, I did the drops.
I replaced all the targets (which didn’t match). I followed PAPinball’s guide, which is very good. I didn’t expect this to fix anything, but I hoped it would. It didn’t.
Toasty coil sleeve in my drop target bank.
I cleaned the coil sleeves for the two reset coils, which didn’t really help. So I removed the bank and did a deeper (but still half-assed) cleaning. When I was done, I still had slo-mo targets. (This sleeve is cooked, but it still works OK. Perhaps I’ll replace the coil, but for now, it’s working fine.)
It became pretty clear the problem was with the reset bar not sinking. If one target was already fully down, any other target would drop quickly. But if no targets were all the way down, you’d get slow action because the drop target had to push the reset bar down. So once the reset bar was down, targets would drop quickly.
On this mechanism, there is some freedom to adjust the coil in the bracket. Coils can be twisted slightly relative to their plunger and the reset arm. The coil needs to be square to the bracket, and both coils need to be at about the same depth. The coils can be adjusted slightly so the reset bar doesn’t over-extend the targets out of the top of the playfield, but they need to be square to the mechanism to work correctly.
Now, as drop target banks go, this one has all the bells and whistles. There are seven drops, but there are seven trip coils on the top, too. These are triggered by the computer when it wants to drop a target. In Counterforce, these are triggered by rollover switches and standup targets scattered all over the playfield. Each drop target has a sense switch, but it also has a lamp voltage switch used for “when lit” indicators for the trip switches, and also for the big falling-bomb gimmick.
On my game, one of the trip switches didn’t trip. This appears to have been a coil that was open. The coil was A-18642, but research indicates there are a couple other usable substitutes, one of which was in Chris’ parts bin. So that’s what got used. (Pinball Resource can identify the substitutes, if necessary, but they also have the correct part number.)
I was able to identify that this coil was open by using a multimeter. In the diode setting, I was able to measure the diode of the bad coil — but not of the good coils. For the good coils, when I try to measure the diode, I measure the coil instead. So that was my indication that the coil was at fault.
So far, so good. Resoldering these coils is kind of a pain because there’s so little clearance in this mechanism.
My Counterforce is still torn apart waiting for other parts, but the drops all now work correctly.
So:
Make sure the reset arm drops completely, and freely. If not, look for a twist in the position of the reset coils.
The reset coils should be positioned so that the coil stop stops the plunger before the drop target goes up too far and shears off the foot.
Find the criteria for remote-trip coils and verify they’re all working.
This all applies mostly for Gottlieb drop targets. In any case, I haven’t generally had problems with them once they were rebuilt in home use.
On Williams games with the horseshoe mechanisms, the problem is the horseshoe mechanism. Those things are terrible.
On Williams games with optos, and I suspect those with leaf switches at the bottom of the column, they get dirty and sluggish. I cleaned my BK2K’s targets once and they’ve been great, even after the game was operated for six months at the PPM.
On old Stern games, there’s only one spring that drops the target, so it can be twisted by the spring. If you can get that adjusted correctly, they work great, and can be swept by a good shot. I love these.
Old Bally games are similar, but I don’t have as much experience with them.
I have seen two different drop mechanisms on new Stern games. On my WPT, there’s a service bulletin to enlarge the catch shelf for targets that has cured most of my woes. On my Simpsons Pinball Party, I had a loose connection — otherwise it’s been quite reliable.
In general, I don’t rebuild Gottlieb “fat boy” flippers as part of shopping out a game. This is in contrast to Williams solid-state flippers, which do wear out. The exception is the EOS switch. The lever arm will chew a hole in it over a couple decades of play, and it’s worth checking first. It may be fine, or it may need replacement. I have also seen the plunger/link crack apart. But otherwise, these flippers just work.
On my Monte Carlo and couldn’t make the Firepower-esque lock shot, up the left side and into a saucer. Without this shot, there’s no multiball, and no way to spin the roulette wheel. The flippers seemed fine otherwise, but were clearly missing some oompf.
I replaced the sleeve because it’s cheap and checked out the link assembly, which seemed to be fine. I decided to get more drastic. I have a couple MA-989 upgrade kits with NOS link assemblies and new EOS switches that should make the EOS switch also nearly indestructible. I decided this was a fine occasion to use one. Ultimately, I replaced the EOS and lane change switches, the coil, the coil stop, the plunger/tip, and the lever that clamps around the flipper shaft. Still, it was weak, and in fact it was a little worse.
But in the process, I had installed the flipper with an angle that was too horizontal at rest. I think I was working off the angle of the left flipper, which wasn’t necessarily right to begin with. I went back and took a look the flyer and went for a droopier angle, and happily, I can make the shot!
I suspect that flipper mechanism develops a lot of power at the end of its stroke. Plus, the angle made the flipper play funny, and I may have had a hard time adjusting.
I will keep all the parts I took out as spares—I don’t think they’re bad. And I will pay more attention to the angle in the future.
I am not enamored with the MA-988/MA-989 upgrade kits. They require some care to ensure that the return spring isn’t touching the switch. The geometry of the flipper just doesn’t allow this fix to be very good. Plus, my NOS parts came with NOS factory rust in non-critical locations. The original flippers work pretty well without the fix.anyway. I will probably use these kits up and switch back to the original-issue parts once I exhaust my small supply.
I chased down the flash lamp problems on my Monte Carlo.
The flash lamps next to the roulette wheel were locked on. I found a out-of-spec transistor on the driver board. The under-playfield transistor (MJ2955) tested fine once the driver board was disconnected, so I just left it.
The other one was weirder. The “left dome” flashers did not work. Lamps themselves were fine. The transistors tested okay, and there was voltage at the lamp socket, but grounding the lamp socket did not cause the lamps to light.
I found that the two lugs of the lamp socket were shorted together. Apparently the resistor in circuit that steps down the voltage is good enough to protect the transistors from failing, or I just got lucky.
I might have caught this sooner if I’d noticed that the last person to re-rubber the game had looped rubber around 89 sockets rather than reading the manual for the correct rubber ring sizes.
In March 2013, I picked up a Monte Carlo. Nominally, it was working. But it needs some work. Here’s a rundown so far.
The head glass was cracked in two pieces, held together by the trim — just barely. I got a new one through a friend who got it cheap, but we got it cut just a little too small.
Next, the mezzanine board on the MPU was cracked. All System 80B games self destruct because of this damn board. Because it is single-sided, and all single-sided boards on a pinball get cracked header pins, it causes the computer to become unreliable, if it boots at all. Someone had “fixed” mine by jamming packing peanuts in it. I fixed it by desoldering it, removing solder, adding fresh solder, and putting it back.
Fortunately, this game shipped with one of the cordless phone-style batteries and had not leaked. Unfortunately I got a little ahead of myself when removing it and I lifted a trace. I replaced it with a memory cap and did an OK job, but the lifted trace still annoys me. It was otherwise a perfect MPU.
The right flipper was weak, so I couldn’t get multiball started, because I couldn’t make the Firepower top-capture shot. But worst of all, the roulette wheel had dirty switches, which meant that there was no way to win roulette and the game would have to time-out every roulette spin. Terrible!
I did immediately start looking for a topper, and found one locally. I cleaned and reinstalled it and it looks great, or at least as good as that topper ever looked.
Around this time, I bought my Spring Break and got sidetracked, since I’d never even played Spring Break.
After almost a year, I’m back trying to play Monte Carlo. First order of business was the roulette wheel.
The spinning bit is held on with a set screw that might be accessible without removing the assembly. Removing the whole assembly is a good idea to clean it. But if you remove the six screws holding the window on, then take the set screw out, you can probably lift the wheel out.
The wheel has twelve switches and I guarantee they’re all dirty. I cleaned them with whatever scrap of paper was in my pocket and now it works pretty well.
I also put new foam washers to hold the window on. Now, the window is much closer to level with the playfield.
Now, I went to play it, and the game wouldn’t kick out the third ball to start multiball. I noticed while in test mode (testing the wheel) that switch 42 was stuck closed. The manual says that’s the trough. How can the trough have only one switch? I have no idea, but that’s all it has. On that one switch, the backing blade was bent against the playfield-touching blade. I adjusted it, and now I have multiball.
Still to go:
Right flipper too weak. Left flipper too, perhaps, but we’ll see.
A couple light sockets are bad. Target #5 is burned out, and the bulb is the most inaccessible light I’ve ever seen on a playfield.
+5V filter cap hack on transformer panel should be cleaned up
add redundant +5V/ground lines on MPU-driver cable
blown transistor for the flash lamp on the roulette wheel; lamps are missing from their sockets because they’re locked on (and burned the playfield!)
Old notes are bulleted, with inner bullets updating the work I did:
Battery corrosion. This had one of the “DataSentry” style black batteries of doom. … I have so far removed the battery but not cleaned the damage.
Ultimately, I just stopped. I have parts to rebuild the reset section, but it’s working; why fight with it?
Computer has been trashed. Like every 80B computer, this has a piggyback board arrangement where the solder joints fatigue and crack. … [T]his involves desoldering the board so I can work on the underside. Unfortunately someone decided to go to war with the thing on the top side. I did finally get the board off, but I am afraid I have damaged the plated-through holes. I obliterated at least one pad on the bottom and damaged another.
I bought one of the GPE daughterboards. Highly recommended. The redundancy that this board adds helps make up for my mistakes, and Gottlieb’s mistakes.
Ramp cracked at entrance badly.
I have a new ramp, but it’s not installed.
Sounds lacking. So I can hear some correct sounds, but mostly it’s static. Can’t hear the music. I want to take a look at this, but there’s no reason to until grounds are verified.
I did put this off until after the ground mods, but the ground mods weren’t required. All the grounds in this game are one big common (eventually) and that was easy to verify.
The actual problem was one or more bad ROMs on the sound board. I verified this by swapping parts with my Monte Carlo, which had a working sound board. This was much easier than trying to go at it with an oscilloscope… which I also did.
Ground mods not done. I suspect this is causing sound problems. At least one set of pins (this game has five) is burned badly.
I did the major ground mods. Didn’t fix the sound (not surprising). I’m not happy with them, though, because it means permanently rerouting a cable in a way I just don’t love. I may try and come up with another method the next time I do this.
Lots of lamps missing.
Bad sockets and bad bulbs. I need to solder some sockets “shut”, but that’s about it.
Driver board has transistors replaced with the twisted-leg hack.
In the vein of the Maybe they’re all burnt out rule, I recently got a Gottlieb Monte Carlo and none of the pop bumpers worked.
I got really lucky with this one. Each pop bumper is fused separately, but each and every one of them was blown individually. I could have gone checking the power train back to the transformer, but I was sort of smart and checked the fuses first. I say sort of smart because if I was legitimately smart, I would already have pulled every fuse on the game and made sure they were as originally specified, and I haven’t.
All of that said, why did three fuses die simultaneously? Well, the game was moved several hundred miles on the back of a truck. The drop target reset fuse had also blown. Maybe the fuses were just old, or perhaps I have another problem. In any case, though, they certainly needed to be replaced.
Chris goes to the Captain’s Auction Warehouse coin-op auction regularly, at least recently. I started getting some bids in on some weirder titles that are going for reasonable prices. First I got a Spanish Eyes, then a Monte Carlo. Most recently I picked up a Spring Break for $500, plus premiums and tax, which are actually pretty steep.
But I was happy to get it. The game is complete. The playfield is a little rough, but they’re still available. The cabinet is very good.
So far, I’ve found the following problems with it:
+5v regulator pot was bad. They’re all bad, unless they have been replaced. Mine was running a little north of +5v and the adjustment pot just didn’t work. I replaced it, and it’s OK.
Battery corrosion. This had one of the “DataSentry” style black batteries of doom. Unlike my Monte Carlo, which is a few months older and had a beautiful, clean computer, this one has some damage in the reset section. I have so far removed the battery but not cleaned the damage.
Computer has been trashed. Like every 80B computer, this has a piggyback board arrangement where the solder joints fatigue and crack. The solution is straightforward: resolder the pins. The difficulty is that this involves desoldering the board so I can work on the underside. Unfortunately someone decided to go to war with the thing on the top side. I did finally get the board off, but I am afraid I have damaged the plated-through holes. I obliterated at least one pad on the bottom and damaged another. This won’t be too hard to mitigate, but it probably would not have happened had someone done good work to begin with.
Ramp cracked at entrance badly.
Sounds lacking. So I can hear some correct sounds, but mostly it’s static. Can’t hear the music. I want to take a look at this, but there’s no reason to until grounds are verified.
Ground mods not done. I suspect this is causing sound problems. At least one set of pins (this game has five) is burned badly.
Lots of lamps missing.
Driver board has transistors replaced with the twisted-leg hack. I have the right transistors and I’ll fix that.
Black rubber on playfield. Ew.
On the upside, a lot of lamps DO work. The flippers are pretty strong. The cabinet is very good, other than some duck tape glue that should be pretty easy to clean off. The translite is a little faded, but not too bad. I dropped in the regulator and computer from my Monte Carlo, and that gave a lot of hope.
