Pinball Restore Project | Hang Glider

NEED A NEW BALLY HANG GLIDER BACKGLASS – Mine is flaked in the middle and cracked. Got one?

My friend John has been restoring old, vintage Electro-Mechanical pinball machines, the kind that doesn’t have circuit boards, over the past few years and I’ve caught the bug.

My last pinball machine purchase, Lord of the Rings, cost many thousands of dollars so I as enticed by listing on the Facebook marketplace for an old 1976 Bally machine called “Hang Glider” for only $250.

What’s $250 right? A few dinners at a nice restaurant.

So I drove down to Troy, NH and met the seller. He takes me around the back of a building, down a weedy dirt road and under the building where I see my “prize” sitting on a pallet amount a plethora of old CRT arcade game monitors. It’s coated in a layer of dust.

I figure what the hell. This will be a learning adventure and besides the playfield looks good, plastics are mostly intact and if nothing else, it becomes a wall hanging or cocktail table.

I got it for $240 because the guy didn’t have change for a $20.

The machine had a layer of dirt/dust on everything but the playfield was in good shape, cabinet so-so, backglass flaky and cracked – only 38,000 plays.

Day 1: Vacuuming and blowing. I took a break from my flooring project and vacuumed out the dust and used the air compressor to blow out the mouse stuff and spider webs.

I also looked up the machine on the web. Gets good reviews from players but I saw one selling for $400! Great — did I mention the one I bought has a crack in the backglass? I guess I didn’t realize how important the backglass is, I was so focused on the playfield quality. Well, a new or old backglass can be very hard to find and can cost up to $300. Even if you try to reproduce it in say vinyl at Kinkos, it will probably cost at least $100.

So anyway, I taped the glass with some clear repair tape and set it aside. If I can get this machine working, that will be the last thing I worry about.

From the looks of the inside wiring and the attempts by someone to work on the machine in the past, I’m thinking I might not even get that far.

Day One: Trying to inspect before turning on. Vacuumed and air blasted away the dirt with an air compressor. Took off the score reels, cleaned and inspected each one by moving the solenoid. Looks like one will need a new spring. Under the playfield one of the slingshots had a stuck rod. The solenoid will need a new sleeve. At the bottom of the cabinet, the main fuse looked like it was replaced but the wires were not soldered on. Someone must have been playing around with it. There was a fuse under the playfield but the connections were loose. Also, the fuses in front of the cabinet were missing. Also, the plug was broken.

Parts list: coil sleeves, fuses, fuse holder, new wall plug

Log 1:

Cleaning, vacuuming, removing old bulbs, lightly sanding contacts, looking for loose wires.

NOTE: EM Pinball machines do not need lubrication except a few drops of 3-1 oil for score motors. Don’t use flammable cleaners like WD-40 as pinball machines make a lot of sparks! Plastic parts and metal parts are designed for dry use. Lubricants will only attract dust and gum things up.

Log 2: Took the entire bottom panel out to the garage. Air blasted out all the dirt. Spent a few hours cleaning and inspecting every relay, wire and switch. Found some issues around the ball count mechanism – loose wire and crispy coil. Adjusted a few switches on the relays that seemed to be making contact when they shouldn’t be.

Log 3: Manually moved some relays and made some things work. Started to take apart and clean the score reels and adjusted some switches so they reset to “0000”.

Got some of the playfield working. One of the flippers gets out of line. Probably will need a full flipper rebuild.

One slingshot didn’t work. Easy fix found! Wire was loose on one – resoldered and it works. Yea!

Flipped the ball around and the rollovers, spinner, flippers and slings all work and add points, play sounds.

Got one of the three jet bumpers to fire – once! Contacts must need cleaning and work.

Log 4: This thing is starting to drive me nuts! LOL Ordered some new targets, took out the target bank, changed the targets and cleaned it up. Still can’t get the darn thing to start from the start button but hitting some relays does make everything move.

For some reason, the Extra Ball relay likes to go crazy. I’m going to look for a short connected to the Extra Ball – maybe the Extra Ball light socket?

Log 5: I’ve been taking apart all the steeper units and score reels to clean and lubricate with SuperLube only on the parts that need it. Don’t lube the coil plungers! With EM Pinball machines its better to under lube than over lube – lube can attract dust. Also, don’t use flammable contact cleaner or something like Valvoline which will harden up and gum things up.

I’m having a problem with a few reels sticking when I try to reset so I’ll be taking a look at a few of the reels again.

Also, I experience some issues with the numbers on the reels coming off. The score reels on em pinball machines were inked on and the ink is very delicate. And it varies from reel to reel. Some you only have to look at and they start coming off.

I had some blow off a bit when I used the air compressor to clean off the dust. Others just about washed off completely with just water. Anyway, be very careful when cleaning score reels.

— FIXED – FOUND A LOOSE WIRE ON ONE SCORE REEL AND CLEANED A SWITCH –

My next step is to work through the start-up sequence and figure out why the game won’t start up from the start button.

I found this advice on Pinside that will be helpful:

“First, the Delay Relay should not be pulled in at start-up. … it will come on when there was a slam tilt. That relay should be off in any other situation except a slam tilt or a kick off. – check –
There is a normally closed switch on it that basically provides all the grounding for all the sections of the coin up and start process, so if the delay is on none of it works… Be sure look at the Delay Relay and check the switch with the black-red and black wires coming to it. It should be closed when the relay is off and open when it’s energized and pulled in (on).” – check –

So besides the Delay Relay, the chain of logic to getting things going seems to be this:

A make break switch at 1F on the score motor should be closed (probably is, I wouldn’t tinker with the score motor until you absolutely have to),
– Check –
there is a normally closed switch on the Reset Relay that should be closed (has a black-white wire to it),
the credit (start) button needs to be pressed,
the Credit Unit Zero switch, which is open when there are no credits on the reel, should be closed,
and finally either the Game Over Trip (the one on the Reset Bank?) or the Game Relay (Game Interlock Relay?) need to be closed.
If all those things are closed it creates a path to the Credit Relay, which will then hold itself on. The Credit Relay activates the Coin Relay, which activates the Reset Relay, which essentially gets the game going.

Log 6: Trying to wire the coin door which was a mess of cut wires. Pushing down the coin switch and the score motor turns. ???

Log 7: Got one of the coin switches to work with this guide.

Left limit switch:
Yellow common
Yellow/Black NO
Red/White NC (interlink between switches) my wire is missing

Right limit switch:
Red/White common (Interlink between switches) my wire is missing
White/Red NO
White NC

I will also leave the stop coin lock out coil disconnected for now but the blue/red and white/red are the wires for this coil.
I assume that the white/blue is for the NO contact Ist coin chute not sure of physical position of this yet so leave it out for now.

One configuration made the score motor move when the switch was pressed. Another just made the coin relay pull in.

LOG 8: Started to see some more action so I decided to pull out the relay board and go through every again – cleaning and checking adjustments.

Put everything back in and everything was dead except for the GI lighting. The coin switch wasn’t clicking anymore and the LOCK RELAY wasn’t locking.

Was about to throw the whole thing over a cliff but then I found this on Pinside:

The lock relay is controlled by the delay relay. When the delay relay is energized, it de –energises the lock relay. The delay relay has the light bulb. The delay relay needs to be NOT energised fo0r the lock relay to latch. The delay relay purpose.
If the machine is abused and the slam tilt switches are closed the delay relay energises and stays on for a short period of time. The time is controlled be the #455 bulb. This bulb has a bi-metal switch in it and when it heats up, about 2 or 3 seconds, the bulb turns off and the delay relay become de–energised.
If the delay relay is de-energized, then check the points on the relay switch are correct. Look for the Black/ Red wire, the switch that this wire is connected to should be closed when the delay relay is de – energized, clean the points. After checking and cleaning, press the lock relay in and see if it stays on.

This at least brought back my level of “working” – meaning manually pushing relays and getting some action!

Log 9: Holy moly! I got the credit button to work! Push the button and the coin relay pulls in and the score motor rotates 180 degrees like it should.

How was this accomplished? Rewired the coin – I think it’s right now. Took apart the credit button switch, cleaned and reassembled. Did some cleaning around the score motor flywheel with alcohol. I think that might have broken up some gunk that was making it overshoot the stop notch.

Log 10: More progress. Cleaned the Game Over relay which connects to the Reset Relay. Now I can start a game up to the point of resetting the score wheels. Next to figure out the ball count unit and player up unit

Log 11: Score motor kept turning? I’m I going backwards? Argh! Cleaned the score reel contacts – nothing. Cleaned the Game Over relay – back to where I was. Good.

Something going on with Game Over relay as the game will only reset if the Game Over lights are on.

Log 12: Score motor runs at startup.

Log: 13 Score motor stops if playfield is disconnected.

Went through the playfield and examined every switch. Cleaned more adjusted to make sure nothing was on that wasn’t suppose to be on. Checked the outhole. Removed the switch, cleaned and adjusted.

Found a fried LED up at the top – one of the rollovers. I replaced the old light socket with a new one.

Plugged in the playfield, fired it up and a couple of good new thing happened.

Game Over light came on automatically – before I had to trip it manually.
Score motor stop.
Credit motor starts reset.
Flippers and playfield came to life.
Ball in play lights up as number 1

But then reset never finishes. Outhole worked but didn’t kick out.

Found a couple of locked relay issues – Game Match locked up in the backbox and the Bonus Unit didn’t fire. I suspecting the bonus unit of some kind of issue or whatever makes it fire in start-up.

I think the outhole will only kick the ball out after the bonus unit resets.

500 Points is cycling non-stop. I’ll check anything that gives 500 points.

Log 14: Seems to be something with the Bonus Unit or something feeding it.

Also – game match unit was getting stuck. Cleaned and adjusted the 10 Point relay which feeds it. One switch looked like it wasn’t always making contact.

Game Over Relay sometimes get stuck and Player Numbers aren’t resetting. So lots of resetting type issues. I did a bit more cleaning of the relays – bonus related relays and player index.

Also, Tilt light bulbs were flickering. Screwed in the light bulbs a few times and that seemed to fix it. Also cleaned the Tilt Relay contacts.

Tightened up the spring on the Bonus Unit and the Match Unit.

Log 15: Not getting any lights for any of the bonus inserts. Actually no insert lights at all. They did work at one time. Also, the Alternator Unit wasn’t firing.

This changes the bonus light locations. So no lights, no changing. I looked it up on the schematic and found that the Alternator Unit coil is fired when the 10 Point relay is hit.

Checked the wire colors and yup – there it was on the 10 Point relay. So I cleaned and adjusted the switch and – back in business!

Log 16: Bonus lights come from the Bonus Unit. I have to investigate why no power is going to the lights.

Log 17: Replace bridge rectifier $4 part. Converts AC to DC for flippers and slingshots.

Log 18: Flipper Rebuild. $50

LOG 19: Fixed the “Game Over” at startup problem by tracing the red and white wire to the Game Over relay and cleaning the switch. Now the Game Over trip snaps at power on.

Now all kinds of action! Flippers work, playfield elements work. Ball tries to kick out but rolls back in. That will be my next plan of attack.

Log 20 – Searching for bonus scoring problem – 500 points scoring non-stop after ball kick out. Looking at bonus relay, target down relay – orange-black wire (78).

500 relay locking on.

Log 21 – now the score motor is running and the reset is running non-stop. Argh!

Log 22: Non-stop scoring of 500 points – one of the top roll-overs? I’m putting a piece of paper in between to isolate them all. Nope – that didn’t do anything.

Log 23 – Narrowed down the problem! If I isolate this connection on the bonus unit I can play full games (except some bonus points don’t score).

Narrowed down the problem to this connection on the bonus unit. If left to its own devices it will continuously score 500 points.
A piece of paper isolating it will allow me to play a full game, although without certain bonus features. The real problem must not be here on the bonus unit but what every is triggering it.
Could be a stuck switch or some kind of short on the playfield. Note: When the playfield is unplugged, it doesn’t score 500 continuously. I’ll unplug the playfield’s jones plugs and test the 500 point switches for a short.
– Edward Fielding

Log 24: Still can’t get the bonus unit to work properly. Took apart the stepping coil and the sleave was melted a bit inside which caused the plunger to stick. This coil is also a bit crispy. I ordered a new one and have been playing it around without the coil sleeve.

Totally frustrated. I tried a bunch of configurations. Finally took the “spider” off and was able to play a four-player game – minus the bonus features.

Going to search for a short in the wires…

Log 25: I put a piece of tape over the Bonus Unit frog leg that was shorting.

With this modification, everything on the game works except for lit advance bonus targets.

I can live with this for the moment. Moving on to working on the playfield and other cosmetics.

Clear coated the playfield filled in the inserts. Details – https://www.dogfordstudios.com/pinball-restoration-playfield/
After stripping off the ugly, rusty black paint on the legs, I measured and looked them up. They turned out to be 31 inch Gottlieb legs rather than 27 inch Bally legs. Ordered new and appropriate grey Bally legs.
Flippers were chattering which can mean either the springs are too strong or the holding part of the flipper coils is bad. For $12 a flipper, I ordered some new ones.
I also ordered some pop bumper skirts and insides to replace the existing cracked and discolored ones.
I also found an old plastics set on Ebay for $21 that included one piece that I have that is cracked. I’ll see which plastics are best and replace as appropriate. Sell the rest at a discount on Ebay.

Log 26: Mostly playable!

I moved Hang Glider out of my office and into the line up next to Gottlieb WipeOut and Stern Lord of the Rings, just in time for my wife’s annual office party.

Unfortunately, Hang Glider started to act up and would not kick out the ball after many, many attempts.

The next day I took apart, cleaned and lubed the kick-out mechanism. Now it works again and kicks out the ball on the first or second attempt.

Another gremlin: If player one scored 20,000 points the OVER THE TOP buzzer lights up and the 100,000 light comes on. I took a look at the 10K score reel and got it working right again but then it came back. Kind of minor irritation.

Log 27: New plastics for Hang Glider

Replacing yellowed, warp and cracked pinball plastics with reproductions.

New Problem

Getting a slow bonus countdown. Before the ball will kick out, it seems to be running the bonus countdown longer than needed. I found this:

“Clean the bonus unit zero switch on the bonus unit under the
playfield. This is easy to find. The switch opens by a nylon post of
the bonus unit when it counts down to zero. It will be closed when the
bonus is at 1000 and above. It needs to be closed and making good
contact during bonus scoring. Crud, corrosion, and loss of tension
will cause this switch to become intermittent due to vibration and
cause changes in tempo. Also, adjust the shorter switch blade to
increase the tension between the closed blades. This solved a
similar problem on my Wizard.

If this doesn’t work clean and adjust the bonus score relay and bonus
zero relay switches. The bonus score relay should hold continuously
through the bonus scoring cycle. If it flutters, that’s when you’ll
see a single scoring instead of a double.”

I’ve got some cleaning to due.

Found it! Wire was loose on the bonus unit. It was two thick yellow wires. I soldered a pigtail and then soldered that to the switch. Should hold now.

Log 27 – We’ve been enjoying the slower pace and relaxing nature of our EM pinball machine even though a few problems remain:

Some of the “advance bonus” targets don’t work – waiting for my expert friend to come visit and perhaps offer a clue to the problem.
Occasionally a “100” point switch scored during a ball start causing the game to go to the next ball or player.
One target frequently doesn’t reset.

Recently had a problem with the target bank. It just didn’t reset. I found the clevis pin on the bottom of the cabinet. Took me a few weeks to track down a clevis pin that would fit. Got it working again.

Time to call in the expert

I took Hang Glider as far as I could. Finally got the chance to haul it two hours away to my long time friend, electrical engineer and pinball restorer, John to see if he can get the remaining gremlins out of this machine.

What the Expert Found

Well, I thought I did a decent job going over the relay board of my Bally Hang Glider when I first got it. I took it out, blew the dust off it with an air compressor, cleaned all the contacts, inspected all the switches and adjusted any I thought were out of wack. But then my pinball expert John looked it over and found a bunch of stuff!

Found 2 loose wires that were not soldered – cleaned up and soldered them.
Cleaned up AC and player unit wiring/soldering
Tightened all relay stacks – they were all super loose which is common.
Adjusted all relays – the game over was brutal – not really happy with the throw on it (it is a latching relay)
Checked contact swipe on all score motor contacts – adjusted two of them
Cleaned up the “ball in play” wire. (it had a smaller pigtail and the wrong color)
Checked the jones plug contact tension and increased it on a few contacts.

More troubles found from my expert:

“I believe I found the short! There are super thin bakelite insulation wafers between three differently powered sections of the fingers. This insulation is only 0.030? thick and you have 50V across it. Over time, the isolation broke down and it became carbonized in a section. Once that happens, it turns into a direct short over time. I found it by removing the finger assembly and measuring the resistance between all sections with my meter – and one was ~6K ohms which is totally wrong. You can see the burnt area of the insulation material and it partially melted the mounting shaft.

I was able to make two new insulators out of PTEG-G material – which is, fortunately, the same thickness. Put it all together last night and the short is gone. “

Part II

“I worked on the drop target reset mechanism and think through some adjustment I have it working well. Also adjusted all of the switches in the drop target mech, re-routed the pop bumper GI wiring to prevent shorts and cleaned up a number of solder joints. “

Part III

* Soldered all sockets on the PF
* Double checked all lamps for shorts and opens, replaced a few of them which were bad
* Double checked for wiring shorts, bad solder joints, etc and fixed anything I saw
* Disconnected the coin door coin eject relay which was buzzing (you don’t need it unless you are collecting coins and it was mechanically broken and missing parts anyway)
* Put the PF back in the game and played about 30 games

The good:

* Game starts perfectly every time.
* Bonus seems to be working 100% perfectly!
* Game is playing very well, lively, super fun
* Bonus advance is all working with every target and sequence
* Alternating relay is working perfectly
* Extra ball working perfectly too
* Pretty much playing 95% or so.

The Bad:

* The advance bonus lamp on the lower left target never lights – could be a bad bulb, have to check it
* One of the advance bonus lights of the upper roll-overs does not light, like bad bulb
* The spinner does not score when the 1,000 light is not lit. I did see it score a few times with 100 points but not reliable. That needs to be investigated.
* One of the upper rollover is stiff, needs some adjustment
* It does not reliably kick the ball out to the shooter lane, that needs to be investigated too.
* The buzzer turns on around 90,000 points, not sure that is correct

Overall the game is really playing great.

Setback

Oh no! Fuse blew – flippers and slingshots dead.

This means one of two things:

* There is a playfield wiring short somewhere in that circuit
* One of the flyback diodes on the one of the 5 coils in that circuit
is shorted (likely culprit).

John replaced the diodes and that seemed to fix the problem.

Outhole Kicker Problem

Since day one the outhole or drain kicker has been problematic. Sometimes it takes five or six kicks to get out to the plunger. Besides being frustrating, waiting for the ball and listening to the kick of the coil as well as the targets resetting at the same time, it can lead to skipped turns.

With all of that shaking of the machine, if any point is scored via shaking and then the ball rolls back into the outhole, the machine “thinks” the current player has played their ball.

In the operation scheme, a player’s turn only starts when the first point is scored and then ends when the ball goes in the outhole. No point scored, fine, same players turn. Point scored, ball number is advanced and on to the next player.

Sometimes when the ball kicker wasn’t working properly, you could see an entire game disappear while it tried unsuccessfully to kick out the ball over and over.

I tried disassembling and tumbling all the parts of the outhole kicker. Changed the coil sleeve and lubricated the mechs with white grease. I got it to the point that it would kick out the ball every other attempt and sometimes on the first shot. But it wasn’t reliable and still sometimes caused the loss of a ball or turn.

Leave it to my expert friend to figure out the real problem – someone had replaced the coil with the wrong one! A new correct and stronger coil from Pinball Resource fixed the problem.

“There is a A-1300 coil in there right now (this is for
pop bumpers and 14 ohms resistance) but the schematics call for an A-25-850 which is more like 6 ohms. “

Ordered, dropped shipped it to John and:

“the new coil completely fixed the ball return. It comes out so fast now it actually rolls up the shooter lane! “