Now we are playing some pinball!

Finally, after months of hard work, I played my first real games on Funhouse! It was really fun cleaning up this beast and I am not done yet, but now I can play it.

First I have a couple of things I need to go over as far as solutions to previous problems.

Rudy was not blinking

I had cleaned out Rudys head, installed new springs, new plunger for eyelids, repainted the lip, put it all back together and found out that once Rudy closed his eyes they were not going to open back up. I was a little stymied, I had noticed that I did not like that action at all as far as the plunger for the eyelids went in and out of the bracket, so the plan was open him back up and reverse the coil. Luckily before I did my friend Jim pointed out there was supposed to be a little plastic spacer between the coil and bracket. I had not noticed this because the one that had been in there previously must have disintegrated some time ago, and when I had looked at the schematics its pointed out as it is supposed to be there, but visually you do not actually see it. If you pay attention (like I did not) you will see it listed in the schematics. Replacements available at the time I am writing this from Marcos for .99 cents.

Now his gaze is inescapable.

 

Check out the paint job on the lip as well. I ended up using Testors Gloss Dark Red, but I think you really need to play with the colors to find the one that matches yours. I had two different face plates and both were different colors from each other.

 

 

Multiball problems

 

After I fixed Rudy I was all excited to finally play a game. Trouble is multiball was not functioning properly. Here was the problem I had after I would reach 11:30 and light the lock. Please not I am copying and pasting this from elsewhere because it is a LOT of info and I really do not feel like typing it all out again, so please excuse the use of present tense instead of past tense.

 

So having an issue with multiball on Funhouse. Here is what happens once you reach 11:30 and the lock lights for the first time:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

First ball in lock- The ball sometimes does not lock. The ball goes in, waits a beat but does not go into ball search, and then the disc fires it out and then fires again as if to eject a second ball from the lock but there is none. Then you have to try for the lock again. It is not an issue of the ball slamming past the disc, it comes to a stop.
Sometimes it does lock though and ball two comes out at the shooter lane like normal.

For the second ball lock- sometimes it will go into the lock, waits a beat but does not go into ball search, then the disc will eject the first ball and then fire again and eject the second ball. Now there are two balls in play but when the first ball drains it does not recognize it as the end of the ball, you keep playing until you drain that second ball. You can at this point shoot the ball back into the lock, but it will not count as a second lock, it will either only count as the first lock again, or not at all. Sometimes it does recognize it and lock it as the second ball.

So if you lock two balls and Rudy goes to sleep- If you shoot it in Rudys mouth multiball starts as normal. If you shoot the lock for a third time on accident, the disc will now kick out all three balls without starting multiball and you are back to the scenario as above again. It wont recognize the first or second balls as drains and if you shoot the lock again you will be starting over from lock one.
If you end your game with balls locked, the game does not fire them out, it keeps them until the next game, where if you shoot the lock before its lit the disc shoots any and all out into play but like before none of them count as drains until the last one goes down.
In switch edge test the switches work off and on but mostly test as good, so I believe its a switch problem. I have tried adjusting them but you can only adjust from below the playfield. When in test mode it is hard to test the switch with the ball because once you send one up there its stuck due to the playfield design until you exit all tests and it automatically kicks out or go into solenoid mode and make it fire.

Here was the solution:

Ok, so I went home and worked on this last night.
First I was having trouble actually testing the switch in the edge test with the ball, like I said once you sent a ball up there you had to exit test mode so that it would kick the ball out. I knew I really needed to be testing this with the ball and not under the playfield by pulling on the switch. I bit the bullet and removed all of the screws from the steps ramp, unplugged the connectors on the bottom, and pulled it not completely out of the machine, but away from the ball lock area so I had access to that. To completely remove the ramp I would have also had to remove the mirror sign and a plastic so the connector would pull through the playfield. Instead I zip tied it to the wireform so I could raise and lower the playfield and keep the ramp safe from being damaged.
Second I fooled around with the position of the disc that ejects the balls. Its pretty tricky, It is like a flipper mech where a rod comes through a bushing and you loosen it like you would a flipper. I ended up making a small mark with a marker on the end of the rod so I could see how much I was turning it so I could fine tune it. I did it a little this way, a little that way until I was satisfied. I will also note here that previous to this I had to replace the spring that was broken, and the plunger that was worn going into the coil. If you are reading this later on trying to troubleshoot your Funhouse, check that while you are down there as well.
So now I could run the test with an actual ball, this was VERY helpful. I could see that when a ball entered the lock area the switch would trigger BUT not stay triggered, the ball was not resting fully on the switch. Also I was previously only making adjustments to the arm that was coming out of the playfield. See the pic below. What I actually needed to adjust was the little flat piece of metal that hits the switch to make contact, it has a red arrow pointing to it. Mine was bowed. I flattened it out and the switch was now registering.
I only say "Mostly" fixed because I do still need to tweak that switch a bit. But this was definitely the issue. I played for about forty minutes last night and got rejected due to the switch a few times. I include times when I shot the lock without it actually being lit as well, so it was a pretty high success rate, maybe 95%. I knew it was still working properly even when not lit because when you shoot the lock without it lit Rudy will make a comment about giving back your ball, and the disc would only fire once, previously it would do it twice. This let me know that the switch was still registering correctly. Still I am very satisfied with the results. The ball lock works properly now. You lock one ball, then the next and it stays locked, and if you accidentally shot a ball into the lock before you make it into rudys mouth it only rejects the one ball like it should.
I did note that the game is designed that if you drain with any balls locked it is supposed to keep them up there until the next game, that is normal.

So very proud of myself. I really did get a lot of help from others, especially Jim and Willie. Willie must have gotten at least 50 emails about problems, what a great guy.

So are we done?

Not quite. There are other things I plan on doing and that need addressing, but I think I will just enjoy it for a week before diving in.

Future tasks:

New test switches came and still need to be swapped with the bad ones.

About 7 lights out in the playfield, have not really looked into them, could just need new bulbs.

Lockdown bar is gross, the foam in it is nasty with old beer or soda, want to tear that out and replace.

Lockdown bar receiver is also rusty and gross from old beer or soda, want to remove that. Have been wanting to try Evaporust, may be a good candidate for that.

Legs are pretty dingy, want to maybe try the Evaporust on them as well, give them a good polish.

Trim that faces out from the backbox is pretty dinged up. Just that one inch strip that faces you. May consider color matching and painting just that portion of backbox, the little white dings are a real eyesore.

I am sure there will be new things, only time will tell.

So keep coming back, I will be updating this as new things happen, thanks for stopping by!