Those pesky "Gremlins"

[doc1who-R]

Ok fellow Mech's,

Let's hear your favorite "Gremlin" problem
and how you chased them away.

doc

[Guest]

Re: Those pesky "Gremlins"

This one was a real swine.

I arrived at a centre where the machines had suffered from big style neglect loads a' gremlins.

Eventually we managed to trim it down to a few dodgy distributors. When they were in the 7 or 10 positions sometimes they would oscillate quite violently from side to side but only on the lanes with the 50Hz GE back ends with the splined shaft distributors.
Now if you havent seen one of these the stators are huge and there is only about 1/2" clearence between the base of the stator and the drive shaft. We eliminated all the usual things (distributor,pivot support, drive shaft) until one day I sat a spirit level on top of the motor and noticed the motor was tilting slightly into the pit. Turns out the back ends weren't all that level and the support brackets from the motor had got bent causing a whole set of bad angles for the U-Joints to deal with.
Easy fix and 90% of pinfeeds disappeared overnight as well as my memory after getting sloshed in the bar.

Kelvin

[Universal Revolutions]

Re: Those pesky "Gremlins"

I took a job at a 12 lane center once, with machine troubles by the dozens. One lane in particular comes to mind that gave me fits for a long time. A simple case of the ball under the cushion. No problem right? The bounce plate parts are broke or loss, right? Not. The cushion mounting blocks are loss or broke? Not. Ok, something with the cushion shock is terribly goofed up? Not. I studied this nerd day and night. Finally, one day, (once we had and spare cushion) I swapped it out. The cushion looked to be in great condition, and then, there it was. A small piece of the frame had broken off, squarely, through the lower bolt hole on one side. The previous repair was tough to detect. Someone had redrilled the two holes about an inch or so higher than the original location, causing greater clearance under the cushion. I never saw it until it was out on the floor.

Chris……..

[Guest]

Re: Those pesky "Gremlins"

I have 40 AMF 82-70s with, I HATE to admit this, MENDES scoring. I have a couple of "ghost machines". The BE motors will run for about ten seconds. Only the BE motors will run, and it only happens when I have other lanes running. I also have a lane where mu Phoenix-X lane machine will sometimes leave the seven and ten standing. It only happens on this one lane!

[kryley]

Re: Those pesky "Gremlins"

This might sound corny, but i reckon the machines are slaves to the gremlins!!!

haven't u ever got a call from the front counter that so-and-so lane keeps dropping the 6 pin or something, and u sit on it for hours and hours, then u walk away and five mins later you get a call - "lane so-and-so is still dropping the 6 pin"

grrr, i'm surprised i have any hair left on my head!!!!

Have fun!

[GPS]

Re: Those pesky "Gremlins"

Many years ago I worked at a center 2 nights a week. (bought a new house and discovered I needed more money for a down payment..DUH) We were getting under grounds in the same ball return. I finally tell the owner that if his day mechanic isn't going to fix it I will stay late and look at it. He says oh the problem is not in the ball return or under ground track. The problem is with the gutter. I look at him with a very perplexed expression. Oh he says, the ball if it goes in the gutter about 3/4 the way down the left gutter of the right hand lane the ball jumps out of the gutter, rides on top of the track capping, rides up the downsweep a little and rolls back underground towards the fowl line but doesn't have enough speed to make it up the return (AMF magic circles) I figured if its no problem with him or his head mechanic why should I worry about it.