Expert: Rodger Knutson - 11/6/2009

Question
Roger
First I want to thank you again for the response to my last question back in August.  The Bon Voyage game I have is slowly coming back to life.  It now counts and handles the balls correctly.  It also keeps score and resets and accumulates free games correctly.

The problem I have is that the play field lights do not come on. ( although they did for about 20 minutes a couple of days ago)  When I shut the machine off and turned it back on  the play field was dark again.   

I am thinking this has to be something simple if they worked for a short period.  Yes/no?    

Can you tell me which function is likely the one that controls the lights?
Is it related to the reset relay, or lock relay, or game relay
or ………?



I am having some trouble reading the schematic.     What does it mean on the drawing when there is a small box with    13-7   or   52-1   or sometimes just a  20.  Most of the boxes will have a wire color with them like    O – R ?


Is there a way to find the physical location of a component from the schematic or do I need an owners manual or some other documentation??


Answer
Hi Ron!,

Well I don't know how much I can help you hrer at and on all-experts site but the numbers you Refer to are wire color codes. a wire with a wire number like a 70 wire is a solid Orange Wire with no tracer. If it is a 7-1 wire, then it's a Orange wire with a Red tracer "Line in the" orange wire. Bally slot machine wire codes I have, and I am not sure the same code works for Bally pinball machines they made, the slot machine code is:
1. Red
2. Blue
3. Yellow
4. Green
5. White
6. Brown
7. Orange
8. Black
0. No Tracer

Again:
First Number = wire body color
Second Number = tracer color
Third number if any = re-use of same color wire in a different circuit.

Also if you get to know your different voltages and voltage taps you will know an Orange wire say, is a say 7 volt lighting circuit wire or a Red wire can be a coil circuit wire and be from the 50 volt coil circuit and so on and so on. As for: physical location of a component, the manual is what you need for this, as finding the location from a schematic can be hard, and harder yet if you don't know what your looking at, but a manual will help complete this information.

Lets look at your wire numbers for example: Your 13-7, this might be a Red wire with a yellow tracer used in other circuits and this being the 7th different circuit. Your 20 wire is a solid blue wire. Again I am using a bally slot machine wire code list and your pinball codes might be different. i can and do repair some of these things but i am not an engineer so some of my information is not perfect but you can get the good idea on how it works. As for your lighting problem, check fuse, clean all wire plugs as they corrode and start from the voltage tap for the light circuit and follow the voltage to were there is none. I think it could be a bad or corroded wiring plug, fuse, or bad ground somewhere.

I tried to get at all your questions at least once, I hope I did. Now I need to get out in the shop and get busy on a repair job myself Ron.

Take Care........

Sincerely

Rodger Knutson

Http://www.coinslots.com