Zaccaria Moon Flight loses track on ball in play - help

[Wizards_Hat]

I've had a Zacc Moon Flight for for a couple of months now & it's had this fault since I got it - never had an EM before, so not too sure how to start.

Whether set on 3 or 5 ball play the game loses track of which ball is in play usually after 3-balls left to play - i.e. it will display "Balls left" 5, 4 or 3 correctly, then has nothing on the backglass for balls left - then ends the game after that ball (occasionally it will drop to "1 left" either from ball 4 or 3...and very rarely it will display ball 2 correctly, but usually goes blank again after ball 2).

I have downloaded the schematics from IPDB and will give it a go at trying to figure them out, but as I said, I'm a complete noob with EMs (quite frightened with poking around inside it whilst it's plugged in as I don't know what's live with hgih voltage & what isn't!)

Any suggestions as to where to start looking would be appreciated.

Regards,
Dan.

 

[ronsplooter]

There'll be a ball count stepper unit that keeps track of what ball is currently in play. It sounds like this isn't working as it should. I'd expect this to be in the head somewhere and first thing to check is how it works when operated by hand with the power off to see if it's gummed up or something has broken.

I think it'll be a unit with 2 coils on....one to advance the stepper one click at a time for each ball played and another to reset it at the start of a new game. You can generally see if something is wrong just by looking at an EM so also try and observe what the unit does during actual gameplay.

Have a look on your schematic and see if there's anything else linked to the ball count unit and have a look at those things as well

 

[Wizards_Hat]

FIXED!
Thanks @ronsplooter - there was a spring not pulling tightly enough against this stepper; I assume the tooth at this point is slightly more worn than the rest - doesn't look it by eye, but it was slipping when trying to grip this particular point.
I've just clipped the spring on about 2/3 of the way along rather than at the end & that seems to be doing it just fine now.

For the first time since I've owned it the game now has no issues & plays well

Regards,
Dan.