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Centaur got beaten up in SE London… urgent help needed!

VeeMonroe

VeeMonroe

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I’m hoping to run a small, last-minute tournament on 10th March. We moved Centaur upstairs last week to make room for Elton John.

The glass was off while it was being moved, the playfield fell out and forwards, and - having worked beautifully up to now - it’s now spawned a bunch of faults 😭
  1. The left flipper, you press the button down and it now seems to take much longer to register than the right flipper (or it did before).
  2. Red lamps 4 and 4x are working fine on a lamp test, but turning on inappropriately during play, and also lamp 4 turns on during parts of attract mode.
  3. The GI flashes when the flippers are pressed.
  4. I’m pretty sure lots of lights are turning on and off inappropriately during play (see video below), e.g. the Orbian lights don’t light when the targets go down.
I’m obviously super keen to get this fixed so it can go into competition. All advice welcome. If anyone is in SE London and is happy to take a look in exchange for cash/cakes/the opportunity to play EJ, I would be eternally grateful. @MadMonzer was going to pintech it all this weekend, but we only have one day without our little boys in the house (and I can’t pintech at the moment due to a broken shoulder).

View attachment trim.AF279056-2A07-4FCC-8AA4-D984CCC27224.MOV
 
some of centaur GI is controlled remember. check all connections and take a good close look under playfield for and broken or bent lamp sockets or things that might have shorted, broken or frayed wires etc. check all connectors are on properly in the backbox.
 
The glass was off while it was being moved, the playfield fell out and forwards, and - having worked beautifully up to now - it’s now spawned a bunch of faults 😭
Click to expand...

So you moved the pin with the playfield in the upright position? Just trying to work out how this happened.
 
Arv said:
So you moved the pin with the playfield in the upright position? Just trying to work out how this happened.
Click to expand...

Sounds like the glass was off and the lockdown bar was not put back on so the game was tilted and it just fell out. I think.
 
Alpha1 said:
Sounds like the glass was off and the lockdown bar was not put back on so the game was tilted and it just fell out. I think.
Click to expand...
Just sounds like a lot of things got squashed in the "fall". I'd go with what Alan's said.
 
Arv said:
Just sounds like a lot of things got squashed in the "fall". I'd go with what Alan's said.
Click to expand...
I’ve now cleared a day and a half for @MadMonzer to work on it.

He overcame the epic ‘three-different-simultaneous-electrical fault’ problem with El PinBotto, so he is optimistic
 
VeeMonroe said:
The left flipper, you press the button down and it now seems to take much longer to register than the right flipper (or it did before).
Click to expand...
Playfield fell into the cabinet? Probably hit the leaf switches for the flipper buttons if so. Just adjust them to match each other.
 
David_Vi said:
Playfield fell into the cabinet? Probably hit the leaf switches for the flipper buttons if so. Just adjust them to match each other.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I’ve done that this morning - the leaf switch had moved when the playfield hit it :) Thanks for the suggestion :)

@MadMonzer is now struggling with light sockets.
 
I had some issues with lights on centaur going insane when the playfield was down.
Turned out a wire was getting pinched and grounding against the playfield bracket when the playfield was down.
 
Bad news - this morning the pin was playable with some light/switch issues. After messing about with the lights, I am now unable to play the game. I am getting the correct 7-flash startup test (for the Alltek board we have, this is one flash then a gap then 6). But the game flashes zeroes on the display, does not enter attract mode, and will not start a game. I can still run the self tests using the test swtich inside the coin door - the LEDs all flash on lamp test (including the ones I fixed), the coils pop on the coil test, and almost all the switches work on the switch test. I am going to look at the dud switches while waiting for replies (they were dud this morning - I don't think they are causing the new problem) but I expect there is something else going on as well.
 
That's a standard Centaur issue, it's even in Pinwiki as a common 'fault' 🤣
We've all been there ....

Well I haven't but that's because @AlanJ warned me before we first powered on our centaur after it had been dead 30 years!
 
Imo I think you shouldn't even be turning it on. From working on pinballs and computers start from scratch on the OSI model.

Check physical connections, go through wires, connections, switches etc as turning it on with these potential damaged connections may make things worse.

I think going into the test menu probably too fast if whole thing fell and yanked everything.

Look for exposed wires, bent switches, board damage. Turning it on and off will not fix it
 
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