========================================================================================
Week of 1/1/13  

Skee Ball
Coin Jam, I found two, dimes and four pennies jammed into the coin mech.  If only they had inserted one more penny it might have worked. Coin mech worked fine after removing the coins, I did notice that the stickers that I had put on most of the games with pictures of quarters are missing.  I'm not sure when that happened but I think I need to make some more up as the Pennies, dimes and nickels have been showing up every week now for the past month or so.

Smokin Tokin
I had to clean a couple of huge wads of spit off the glass on this game. 

Jackpot Crossing 
Ticket jam

Slam A Winner
It looks like someone has taken a key or a ring to the plexiglass on this one.  Found about a dozen deep scratches all over the plexiglass.

Big Haul
Ticket Jam

========================================================================================
Week of 12/23

Super Rock N Bowl
I replaced the roll down coin mech.  Spent a while adjusting the coin switch so it wouldn't trap the quarters in the aiming chute.  I think every one of these type of quarter rolling
games, I've worked on, I have had to adjust the switch to stop the quarters from getting stuck.  It's annoying when you have to spend an hour adjusting an expensive new part 
just to get it to work properly.  

Sonic and Tales
 I pulled a token out of the coin mech.

Skee Ball
Moved five balls back into the proper lanes

Tempest
I had some free time so I worked on this one, I had been having some intermittent problems with the spinner and I found that I had purchased a new optic board for it at 
some point and had recently found it again.  Tore it apart and found that I had to shim the new optics with some washers to prevent it from rubbing on the optic wheel.  
It took a few attempts to find the right combination but once I found it, the spinner worked great.

Big Buck Hunter Safari
The Monitor Chassis came back from repair and I installed it.  The monitor came right on and looks great.  I left it run for a few days to verify that it was repaired and it 
kept working and looking good, so this one is ready to go out on location again.

Fireball II
One flipper would stick up during play, I found that the plastic linkage was worn to the point where there was a ridge on it.  I thought I had some but it appears that I will 
be ordering some Bally flipper parts after the holidays.

Flight 2000
I found another flipper sticking up.  This one was due to all of the screws on the flipper assembly being loose.  I pulled the screws out of the stop to find that they were wood screws and
were screwed into the bottom of the playfield.  It appears that most of the screws on both of the flipper bases were the same way.  I found a place that makes new flipper bases for these games.
It looks like I need to buy around $100 in parts to fix this game properly.  It is working for now but I'm guessing that the problem will return before too long.
========================================================================================
Week of 12/16

Skee Ball
Found all the balls jammed up in one lane.  There was something blocking the ball return lane.  I couldn't reach it from the top side so I pulled the lower lane plastic off but 
still couldn't reach.  After pulling the small lane cover and the one net off, I was able to remove the glow stick from the lane.  

Drill O matic
Was doing the constant restart again, reseating of the cables fixed it yet again.

Smokin Token
Found a nickel wedged into the coin slot.  I was able to pull it out without too much trouble.

Super Rock n Bowl
The swivel that the coin mech was mounted on wouldn't move at all.  I tore it apart and found that someone had been stuffing quarters into the small gap where the turret moves.  I pulled at least eight
quarters out of that area.  Tightened up the screws and put it back together to find that the coin return no longer works.  It appears that the coin mech is now bent, it still works but the coin return
button doesn't work.  I think I have a replacement mech in the shop that I will bring along for the next visit.

I pulled about $.75 in pennies dimes and nickels from several coin mechs at one location.  

Gauntlet Dark Legacy
It was rebooting occasionally and I was blaming the hard drive but I tested the five volts and found it was right around five volts, which is usually where you want it to be but these games seem to work
best when the five volts is set to 5.2 volts.  So I set the voltage up a to 5.2 and left the game run several hours and it never rebooted.  I was getting the replace battery message when I entered the 
test menu, this game uses one of the combination battery / chip setups that I don't keep on hand.  But I did find one of my parts boards that had the same setup so I pulled the socket part and swapped them.

Week of 12/9
Drill O Matic
Cleaned and restocked the prizes in Drill O Matic, pulled out the candy that was close to being out of date and cleaned up the prize chutes.  Looked pretty decent by the time I was finished.

Air Hockey
Found it completely dead, checked the main fuse and power switch and both were good.  Found that there was no power to the game at all.  Apparently, someone had pulled the power cord and yanked it out of the outlet.  This is in the celing for this game.  After I Plugged it back it worked fine.  Spent a while cleaning up the drop ceiling stuff off the game.

Jurassic Park III
Coin jam, found a couple of tickets wedged into the coin slot.
Atari Football
The replacement board arrived and I double checked the voltages from the power supply and installed the board.  I could hear the game playing but couldn’t see any video.  I went to adjust the contrast and as soon as I touched the adjustment knob, the video showed up.  Worked the adjustment back and forth a few times and then adjusted it for a slightly dim picture.  On these older games, I like to think that running the monitors on the dim side lengthens their life span.  There is still a lot of work to be done to this game, the trackballs need rebuilt and the cabinet needs a ton of cosmetic work. 
========================================================================================
Week of 12/2
Blackout Pinball
It had been working fine for a few weeks but the CPU appears to be locked up again.  Spent about an hour on it and moved onto to other more urgent projects.

Sportstation
Pulled three tickets out of the coin mechs.

Prize order
Arrived, I priced the items and put them away.

DinoScore
I finally found a replacement gun for this game. Went to install and couldn't get the old Turret out.  The original turret was metal and the mounting for the gun was different enough that I needed to swap the turret out.  I was having difficulty getting the old turret out (probably due to the extra long roll pin that I had forced into the pivot in a previous repair attempt.  I got the bright idea that I could pull part of the frame off to get better access.  I did find out that the neon light on the door is indeed one piece and can be broken somewhat easily and I don't see any way possible to replace the neon.  So, I gave up on this project and considered what the going rate is on scrap metal and how much this game would be worth in scrap.  So I moved onto to my next problem game.

The Hammer
I had bought a few replacement LED boards for this game a while back and haven't had the chance to install them.  So I swapped in the new boards and found that now I have no sensor activity at all.  Even with the gain turned the whole way up, I get nothing.  I worked on it for a while and decided that the problem must be on the board.  Next time I work on it, I need to use my O scope to do better troubleshooting.  I pushed it back into the corner where it has been hiding and tried to forget about my failed attempts at repairing the games lurking in my shop.

Cyclone
Cleaned it up and put it up on Ebay for sale.  If it doesn't sell, I may swap it for one in rough condition I have on location and try to sell the rough one instead.

BBH Safari
Sent monitor board out for repair.


========================================================================================

Week of 11/25
Atari Football
I found a working board at a decent price, so I now have a board on the way for this game.
Prize order
Put another small prize order in as I am getting low on prizes.  I ordered mostly prizes valued 100 tickets and up.

Cyclone
Slid it back the six inches or so that it had been moved out of position and pulled a redemption ticket out of one of the coin slots.

Sportstation
I pulled a redemption ticket out of one of the coin slots.

Western Train
I pulled a redemption ticket out of one of the coin slots.

Corvette
I pulled a redemption ticket out of each of the coin slots.

Change machine
Someone has been playing with the power cord again on this changer.  I don't know what the attraction is with a power cord but I figured no good can come out of it.  I found some gaffer tape at the location and taped the cord back down into the channel that it usually resides; hopefully this will dissuade whoever has been playing with the cords.

Pool Table
I got a call from the customer that both cue balls had gotten stuck.  As it turns out, one got stuck then the patrons used the other ball until it too got stuck. I found the chalk from the game stuck in one of the ball paths. 

Hyperdrive
I'm still working on this one, I looked into why some of the LED's were stuck on and others were always off.  I can't find any schematics but I watched the output from the driver chips and found a few that were always off and a few that were stuck on.  I watched the inputs to the chips and they seemed to be toggling but the voltages were really low so I'm not certain that the driver chips are bad.  I checked my inventory and I don't have any of the chips on the board anyways so I stopped troubleshooting that issue and moved onto to others.  One was that I was reading 5.6 volts out of the chips and sure enough the supply was putting out almost six volts on the 5 volt line.  Every time I adjusted the voltage the supply would shut off.  I've never seen one do that before but after I would unplug it and plug it back in the supply would come back up.  I did find that there are differences in the Atari / Midway steering wheel driver boards.  The board in Crusin World lacks the connectors that the board from Hyperdrive has. 

Western Train
Found someone ripped off part of the decals from the one side. 
==========================================================================================
Week of 11/18

Fooseball Table
I delivered it to a friend that is going to try it out in his arcade and see how it does.  I hope it does well for him as I really don't want to move it around again. The delivery went well with no problems at all.

Big Buck Safari
I pulled the monitor out and removed the monitor chassis so I can send it out for repair.  I emailed a couple of the places I usually send monitor chassis to verify that they will work on this model and haven't heard back yet. 

Blackout
This game was a bit flaky the last time I played it, so I powered it up and played a few games to test.  It worked fine for a while but after a few games it started to act strangely, displays pulsating, reboots, lockups and random coil firings.  I reseated the boards and it didn't get any better.  I pulled the driver board and replaced the female interconnect on it and put it back in the game.  The game worked fine so I let it run for a while and it took around a half hour but it started to flake out again.  I pulled the CPU board and noticed that the ROM sockets didn't seem to have much tension to hold the chips in.  So I replaced them. It was one of my worst soldering experiences lately, a lot of the pads would lift off the instant that I touched them with the desoldering iron.  I've lifted pads before but I've never run into a board like this one.  After the first socket, I thought I would try a different method and pull the plastic part of the socket off the board first.  This worked slightly better for the next socket but the second socket I tried to pull the plastic off resulted in pads lifting. I finished replacing the sockets and repaired the damages the best I could but I was certain that this board wouldn't work again.  I popped the test ROM in and powered up the board and to find it wouldn't boot at all.  I found a solder blob that was shorting two of the pins together, I removed the blob and the board passed the tests. I put it in the game and it fired up and worked.

Flash
Since I already had the schematics out and was in Williams system 6 repair mode, I took a look at a Flash that was working mostly right but all of the controlled lamps were blinking.  I had previously looked at this one and found that it wasn't on the boards.  So troubleshooting was fairly easy, I measured the 18 volt line on the AC setting and found that it had five volts of AC on the line.  There really isn't much to the 18 volt line on these games.  Just a bridge rectifier and a 30,000 micro farad cap.  I didn't have any of the 30,000 caps around but I did have a 38,000 micro farad cap that is used in the Midway MCR games, I put that in and no more ripple or blinking lights.  But the cap doesn't mount in the bracket that the old one fit into so I have to find one that fits or a different bracket. I checked with the parts places I usually buy from and no one carries a cap in the original value anymore so it may take a while to locate.

Drill O Matic
It appears that someone has been kicking this one again as most of the prizes were hanging out of the front of the slots.  So, I enabled the tilt alarm again. Honestly, I hate to do it as it is a pain.  It is battery powered and when triggered will sound for two or three minutes at a time, if it gets triggered while the alarm is going off, it drops a plate over the prize hole and won't accept any more money until the plate is manually reset.  The other issue is that the alarm will sound if the battery voltage drops below a certain point, I don't know if it was designed intentionally to do this but what happens is that the alarm goes off and the location unplugs the game only to have the alarm continue, followed by a call being placed for a emergency fix to stop the noise.

Skee Ball
I moved three balls back into the proper lanes.

Western Train
Replaced the bulbs and it is nice and bright again.  The game is bright enough to make me wonder if the rear bulb has been out the entire time that I've owned this game.

Jackpot Crossing
Found it unplugged, I plugged it back in and it worked fine.

Super Rock N Bowl
Coin Jam. It sits right next to the Jackpot Crossing and is also red so I assume that someone complained that the game took their money and the employee at the location didn't get the right game.  Anyhow it was an interesting jam, the quarter that caused the jam had an extra deep imprint on it and the outer rim was deeper than normal, I tried it on a couple of other mechanical roll down type mechs and it got stuck in every one of them as they have parts that brush against the side of the quarter. 

Big Haul
I found it unplugged.  Unsurprisingly when I plugged it back in it started with the "check tickets" message over and over.  Reset the jackpot, fixed the ticket jam and it was back up and working. 

Megatouch
The screen was blurry, I adjusted the focus and brightness and it had a nice picture when I was done with it.

HyperDrive
I had some time this week, so I returned to working on this game.  I took it outside and filled in the damaged sections with fiberglass and Bondo.   Now it needs sanded and touched up.  Oh and the damaged I did to it moving it outside to Bondo also needs repaired.  I'm tempted to sell it off as a project and be done with it.

Atari Football
I won this on an Ebay auction and picked it up.  It was booting to a screen full of garbage.  At least that was what it was supposed to be doing.  I couldn't get it to do much of anything.  I tried reseating the socketed chips only to have the CPU socket fall apart on me.  I replaced the socket and then realized that the
CPU had been inserted backwards.  So I think I need to dig up a 6502 and see what it does with a working CPU chip inserted the right way. I don't have much hope for repairing this board myself.  I've started the search for a replacement and or repair service for it.
========================================================================================
Week of 11/11

Skee Ball
Found one lane with an out of order sign on it.  It appeared to be a coin jam but when I pulled the coin chute assembly out, I found that the coin mech was mangled one of the carriages was bent and twisted and there was four quarters jammed in another section.  I replaced the mech as this one is too bent up to be repaired.
Apparently someone kicked this lane hard enough to break the wood that holds the coin assembly in and jam it into the side of the cabinet.  The damage was hidden behind the stainless steel.  I used a couple of two inch long screws to put it back together.  Then I had to bend the hinges back into place and replace the screws that held them in place as they were also broken loose.   I found another lane that was missing the pin that the lock latches to I found a screw in my tool bag that made a decent replacement.

I moved four balls back into the proper lanes.

Air Hockey
Found it with an out of order sign on it, I found two pucks stuck at one end behind a screw that was wedged into the score area. 

Western Train
Both bulbs had burned out.  One was the original oddball Korean sized bulb and the other was a t20f12.  Instead of a fixed bulb holder like you commonly see in the games, Andamiro used a connector that is on a couple of inches of wire so I can pick up a pair of T20F12's and not have to try to source the oddball length bulb.  Although, I do enjoy showing the hardware store people how wrong they are when they claim that the oddball length bulb that I am holding is actually made somewhere. It never fails, I tell them what size bulb I am looking for, they tell me that I couldn't possibly need that length as it doesn't exist, then I hand it to them and watch them measure it and get a confused look on their face.

==========================================================================================


Week of 11/4

Skee Ball
Found one lane with an out of order sign on it, I played several games on it and other than only having five balls in the game, it worked fine.  
I moved seven balls back into the proper lane.

Air Hockey
Also had an out of order sign on it, Played several games and it worked fine.  More than likely one of the other games is broken and one of the kids moved the signs around.  I've asked the location to put the name of the game on the sign to stop this sort of thing but it gets forgotten.

Sonic and Tales
Ticket jam.  Cleared up the jam and the game worked fine.

Super Rock N Bowl
Had a nickel jammed into the coin slot.  Tore apart the coin mech and forced the nickel out of the slot and it worked fine once again.

Big Haul
I had my son along this trip and watched him hit a jackpot on Big Haul.  I finally know for sure that the game is dispensing too many tickets and when, there were only a couple of quarters in the truck bed that he hit but he got around a 100 tickets as the jackpot.  He really should have gotten closer to fifty.  I probably would have never figured this out nor had seen it happen had he not been along. I don't think that there is any way to fix it as I guess it is some sort of glitch with the software.  This is the single player unit and the software seems a bit buggy for it.  I know the single player big haul games are uncommon and there seems to be a number of glitches with them.  Such as the DIP switch settings don't work like the manual says they should.  I plan on swapping this game out as soon as I can find a suitable replacement. 

Redemption Counter
I started to clean it up and pull out the summer merchandise when I found one of the screw that hold the rail that hold the shelves in.  I pulled everything out and cleaned it up and put the screw back in.  Sometimes I do get lucky as there wasn't much holding up the shelves and prizes and they didn't fall. I added several new prizes to the counter, we will see what happens.  This location has a weird redemption clientele; they never save up for the larger prizes, so I end up stocking mostly smaller items which is OK but it leads to the counter having the same merchandise over and over as there really isn't a huge variety of prizes for thirty tickets and under.
========================================================================================
Week of 10/28

Prize order
The order came in and I sorted and priced everything.  Usually takes around two hours for a small order like this one.  I got some new items in to try out and see how they go.


Road Trip
Customer called and said that the game was taking money but not giving games.  When I arrived at the location, the game was up and running with credits on it. I ran $25 in ones through it and it worked fine every time.  I found that there was an odd amount of quarters in the game which shouldn't happen on a game set for $1 a play.  I wonder if someone thought it was a $.50 game and complained when it didn't start on fifty cents.  But the owner at the location said that they had put a dollar in and it didn't give credits.  I checked the logs and there wasn't any activity at all for the time that they said all this happened. I'm guessing that maybe the power supply shutdown as the bill acceptor is a 120 volt model and would take money if it was powered up and the game wasn't.  I checked and found that the power supply is $130 + shipping.  Completely insane pricing for what is probably just a standard PC power supply.  But I couldn't tell for sure that it was a standard supply and the game is currently working so I will let it go for now and see if anything further develops before spending $130 on a hunch.  It will also give me some time to see if I can find a supply at a better price. 

Big Buck Safari
Picked it up and brought it back to the shop. Verified that it is indeed the monitor that is bad.  I need to research who repairs this model monitor.  I don't have the time to work on it myself right now.

Skee Ball
I moved four balls back into proper lanes.
One lane wasn't accepting coins, pushing the rod back into the hinge corrected it.

Drill O Matic
Found it unplugged with an out of order sign on it.  I guess someone thinks it is easier to move games around and climb over other games to unplug it than it is to use the power switch. It also won't accept any money unless it is working right.   I plugged it back in and it displayed garbage in the displays but nothing else.  Pushed the power connector back down on the CPU board and it came back up.  It was also out of tickets. Restocked the tickets and played a few games on it and it worked.

Rowe Changer
Tried to test it and I couldn't even get the bill in the slot, took it apart and found some shredded tickets in the bill acceptor.  I cleaned the tickets out of the acceptor and it works once again.

Western Train
Opened it up to test it and one of the balls fell out of the prize chute.  I am utterly clueless on how this happens, it happened once previously at a different location. I assume that there is a spot where the ball manages to fall out of the guides but I've never found it.  The game has multiple balls in it so it doesn't cause a problem. I put the ball back in and the game worked fine.

Touchtunes Jukebox
I got an email from Touchtunes that the jukebox was offline for over five days.  I went to the site and I had a network connection but the jukebox wasn't getting an IP address.  I unplugged it from the switch and plugged it directly into the router and it got an IP address and went online again.  The customer said that their computer guy had been a few days prior and had unplugged everything.

Fooseball
I’m getting it ready to go back out on location.  I had set the coin mech to free play for the York Show and I needed it set back to pay for play.  It took me a while to get the coin mech back together and working properly but its ready to go now.  While I had it apart, I cleaned, polished and lubed up the various parts in the coin mech in the hopes that it will return to original starting point after the balls are released.  

Megatouch
Screen rolling when it first starts up.  I adjusted the monitor again.  It worked fine on the location that I had it previously and it worked fine at the shop but once I got it at this location, it has a horizontal hold issue when it starts but it clears up after two minutes of running.  I probably need to install a cap kit in it.
========================================================================================
Week of 10/21

Big Buck Safari

Arrived at location and found that Safari had a blank screen.  Game played blind but no video.  I took a quick look at it and found that the monitor is getting power but no picture.  It was about time that this game get rotated off the location anyways so I am going to pick it up later in the week and work on it at the shop.  Oddly enough, it had more money in it than it usually does.  I guess the lure of a blank screen is hard to resist.

Skee Ball
Moved three balls back into the proper lane

Rowe Bill Changer
Not accepting bills.  This unit still has the original Rowe bill acceptor and it is starting to show wear. I cleaned the acceptor and it was working once again but the belts are starting to look bad.  I need to come up with either replacements or buy one of the kits to convert it to a newer bill acceptor

Drill O Matic
Dead with garbage on the displays.  Reseating the power connector fixed it, obviously someone was kicking it again as a lot of the prizes were hanging out of the front of the tubes.

Slam A winner
Would not accept any coins, found parts of a toy jammed into the coin slot, I had to disassemble the coin acceptor to get the parts free.  Once I got the toys parts out of the game and the acceptor reassembled it worked fine.

Sonic and Tails
Ticket jam.

Touchscreen Delivery

Since the truck is back together, I delivered the touchscreen game that I had started last week prior to the truck issue.  While trying to kick release lever for the back wheels on the hand truck, I managed to get my foot stuck on the hand truck.  I've owned this hand truck for several years and I've never done this before.  I was balancing the game on the hand truck while on one foot.  I couldn't stand the game up as my foot was stuck on the cart and I couldn't pull my foot too hard or I would pull the game onto me and knock me over.  Eventually I got my foot free and set the game up.  Put it into place and powered it up and saw that the screen need the horizontal hold adjusted.  That was when I realized that I didn't have the keys for the game with me.  I'll be back at the location in a few days so, I will have to fix it then.  I also managed to put a scratch into the floor while pushing the game back.  I also managed to pull my back while delivering this game.  I'm starting to think that this game must have some sort of curse on it.

Prize order
I placed a small order in for prizes for the redemption counter, lately I'm going through a lot more prizes than I should be and I need to restock. 

========================================================================================
Week of 10/14

Truck
After a few hours of work and a few trips to the auto parts store, my truck is road worthy again.

Cyclone
Had a ticket jam.

Air Hockey
Coin Jam one of the coin return buttons was jammed in and somehow there was still a stack of coins jammed into the mech.  Looked like someone tried to feed the quarters in side by side again.

Western Train
Ticket jam

Skee Ball
Moved four balls back into the proper lane

Jackpot Crossing
Someone managed to unscrew the handle for the coin aim, the chute was lying in the bottom of the game and the handle was in the office.  Put it back together and used some thread locker on it.   Hopefully that will keep them from pulling it off again.  The ticket dispenser was just hanging inside the game.  I have no idea how you could knock one off without picking up the game and dropping it.  Which is entirely possible that it happened at this location.

Super Rock N Bowl

Coin Jam and ticket jam, the coin jam was due to part of a ticket being in the coin mech.
========================================================================================
Week of 10/7

York Pinball Show
I tried to get the truck fixed in time but I ran into some problems getting it fixed, so I had to use the truck that doesn't have a liftgate.  So I couldn't take a few of the big heavy games that I had gotten ready to sell at the show.  I didn't sell any of the games that I took but I did have a good time, I picked up a few parts that I was looking for but I didn't buy any games.

Truck
I loaded up a game and was heading out to deliver it and thought the brakes seemed to be working a bit funny.  Next red light I hit, I found out that the brakes were pretty much gone.  Drove back to the shop and parked the truck and unloaded the game.  I found that one of the brake lines had rusted out so I need to
get that fixed.

Skee Ball
Moved four balls back into proper lanes.
Pulled water bottle out of score ring area.

One lane had a coin jam, I cleaned the coin mech and it is working again.  I probably should replace this mech as it seems to be getting sensitive about the coins it accepts.

Smokin Token
Giving Error 4.  Cleaning the coin mech cleared it up.  This game is really picky about the timing of the coin switch and sensor seeing the coin.

Corvette Pinball
Found ticket in coin mech.

Super Rock N Bowl
Found the coin mech full of Pixie stick sugar (at least that is what it smelled like) and the lockdown bar unlatched on it.  Cleaned up the coin mech and I had to move latches down about a quarter inch each side to get it to latch once again. 

Slam A Winner
Found it unplugged with the power cord pulled out from behind the game.  Plugged it back in and it worked perfectly.  No idea on why this was done, there is an easy to access power switch on the side of the game.  I did find what appeared to be coffee grounds under and on the side of the game.

Tokyo Drift
Found a ticket in the coin mech.

Jurassic Park
Found a ticket in the coin mech.

HyperDrive
Repainted the seat base and installed the artwork.  Installed new T molding and put it the seat back together, it really turned out well. Now I need to do some work to the main cabinet of the game.  I was trying to get it finished in time for the York Show but it doesn't look like I'm going to have it done in time.

========================================================================================
Week of 9/23

HyperDrive

I sanded and sprayed some paint on the seat base; I got some sort of weird fisheye in the paint on the one side.  I tried to sand it out and ended up with a mess.  I ended up stripping the paint from one side off and starting over.

Skee Ball
Moved five balls back into proper lanes.

Ticket Eater

The paper jammed when I was printing the weekly audits.  I cleaned all the rubber rollers and it was working better.
========================================================================================
Week of 9/16

Slam A Winner
Was doing the "check tickets” found a ticket jam caused by the ticket dispenser hanging loose on the brackets.  I also found that one of the metal rods that runs through the plastic was shifted over by a half inch or so and was preventing the dispenser from being mounted back up properly.  Pushed the pin back in and got the dispenser mounted properly again and it was working fine.  I also found a rubber band wrapped around the dispenser. I'm guessing that someone at the location was trying to fix the jam and didn't notice the reason why the dispenser wouldn't mount up.

Skee Ball
Moved four balls back into the proper lanes.  
Continued cleaning the lanes, I had enough Brillo along this time and got them finished.  I think it really looks better; I should replace the nets on these machines as they have really gotten torn up.  But I don't know if I want to pay $150 per lane only to have them ripped up by the kids again.

Corvette Pinball
Brought the right sized connectors along and crimped a new end on the ground wire for the coin switch.  Working well once again.

HyperDrive
This is an uncommon midway driving game that I picked up a while back.  I am considering taking it to the York Pinball show to sell so I started getting it ready.  The major issue with this game was the one corner of the seat base had about an inch chunk out of it.  I had replaced the base with one from a junked California speed
it bolted up but the overall length and the shape was different.  I had picked up a set of artwork for the base but it would require a lot of work to get it on the pedestal that I had installed.  I decided to repair the original seat base. I cut out the bad section with a circular saw with the depth set to 3/4 an inch to try to keep the
wood that supports the seat intact.  Then I cut a piece of 3/4 plywood to fit the cutout section.  Then I clamped and glued the section on and followed it up with some Bondo to fill in the small gap that remained.  After some sanding, it really looks good.  I need to clean up some dents on the base and install the artwork.
========================================================================================
Week of 9/9

Skee Ball
I had some extra time so I started to clean up the Skee ball machines.  I got the lane completely done on one and about half way on another lane.  I ran out of brillo pads and had to quit for the time being.

Gravity Hill
Customer complained that they got the ball into the top hole but didn't win anything.  I took the plastic covers off and manually won the game a few times and it worked fine.  

Corvette Pinball
Not registering coins on one slot, I found that the ground wire on the coin switch had vibrated loose.  I didn't have the right sized connectors along so I ran the wire through the hole and gave it a few twists to hold it in place.  It works for now but I need to fix it the right way. 
========================================================================================
Week of 9/2

Game move
One location was refinishing their floors, so I had to move the games out of the way.  Almost 20 machines total.  A lot of work but not too bad.  It gives me a chance to clean the games.

Slam A Winner
Found it with an out of order sign on it.  Played several games and found it to work fine.  Probably a case of someone pulled the sign from another game and put it on this one.
========================================================================================
Week of 8/26

Hot Stuff Crane
The parts came in (only a couple days after ordering them).  Installation was straight forward and easy.  Other than some minor contortions to get my upper body into the crane to get to the screws, it was an easy fix.  Put all the parts in and it fired right up.  A few of the employees commented that the crane was brighter than it had been before.  It’s entirely possible as the bulbs were the original bulbs and are a few years old by now.

Game Pickup / Delivery
Pulled Flamin Finger off location and put a Golden Tee in its place.  Went fairly well other than getting caught in the rain on the way home.  Dried the game off and it wasn't too bad.  I think I got the rain off of it and dried before any real damage occurred.  

Alley Cats Shuffle Bowler
Wouldn't always reset the pins after the second puck throw.  I dropped the pan and cleaned all the switches.  I think I missed the last row when I cleaned them previously which as far as I can tell are the ones that would cause this problem.  Fired it up and played several rounds and it worked perfectly.

Jackpot Crossing
Found it completely dead.  Crawled behind it and the power cord had been pulled out of the back.  Plugged it back in and it worked fine.  I don't know why it was unplugged.

Skee Ball
Went to replace the bad bulb on the display and after pulling the score panel off, found I had picked up the wrong package of bulbs.  I needed the #74 bulbs but I apparently picked up a box of #44 bulbs.

Rock N Bowl
Found a ticket jammed into the coin slot.  Why do the kids always jam up the coin slot on this game?

Redemption Counter
Went to restock it and found that several items were empty.  Based on the ticket counter meters, there was around twice as many prizes gone as there should have been. I restocked the counter with prizes that easily cost more than what this location's income has been for the last couple of weeks. 
========================================================================================
Week of 8/19

Big Haul
I've been watching the ticket payout on this game closely as I'm pretty sure that it is dispensing a lot more tickets than it claims to be.  I've been making a note of  the numbers on the tickets themselves and until this week, they didn't appear to be too far off.  But this week it appears that the game paid out just under a thousand tickets when it really should have been closer to a hundred or so.  This game is the now the next to be rotated out of this location.  I would have just pulled it out but the patrons at this location have destroyed two other redemption games fairly recently and I don't have anything to replace this game with right now.  I will call the distributor and see what they have. 

Hot Stuff Crane
The customer called me and said that they had moved some games around and now the crane and one other game didn't work.  The second game was just a simple fix of a loose power cord.  The crane however was much worse off.  I could smell the burnt electronic smell when I got near it.  When you power it on, only the Bill acceptor powers up and everything else is dead.  Not even the light over the prizes will go on. The main fuse is good but I don't seem to be getting any voltage anywhere other than the Bill acceptor and the light up power switches.  I blamed the power supply and planned on ordering one. But When I got back from the site, I checked the crane company’s web site and found that the supply is almost $100 and there are a couple of options of which supply to order.  So, I will revisit the site and double check the supply part number.  I also realized that I should have also tried to power up the crane's supply by itself without the crane's wiring involved.  The more I think about the symptoms the more I think that it may be something other than the power supply that failed. 

Hot Stuff Crane
I stopped by the location again and bypassed the crane's   wiring and plugged the supply directly into the wall and the crane started right up and worked, so it is not the power supply.  I called the company ready to order the line filter assembly; I explained the symptoms to the parts  guy and he mentioned that there is a fuse in the one power distribution block  that I hadn't seen.  So, I need to make another visit to the location and check that fuse. 

Business cards
I had some made up a while back but I wasn't happy with the end result.  I spent a few hours creating a new layout for the cards and I'm still not 100% happy with the end result.  I am starting to think that business cards are one of those items that you are never 100% happy with the finished product.

Megatouch
Screen wasn't  not responding after running a while.  I cleaned the screen as it had a buildup of dirt and grease on it from a location and let it run for a few days and it has worked perfectly the whole time.  Once during testing it went to an all black screen while my son was playing with it.  I could get the display to show the menus so it had to be on the computer itself.  I rebooted it and it has been working fine.  I suspect that my son found some sort of bug in one of the games but he can't remember what game he was playing when it happened.  I'll let it run a few more days to make sure it is fine before it goes back out on location.

Skee Ball
Moved one ball back into proper lane and found one bulb out of the score display.  I received an order of the bulbs recently but neglected to put any in the truck so this will wait till my next visit to the location.

Smokin Token
Coin jam, found four tickets, two pennies and a nickel all jammed into the coin slot.

Super Rock n Bowl
Found a couple of pennies jammed into the coin slot.

Tokyo Drift
Found a ticket jammed into one coin slot.

Crane
Found a nickel in the coin slot.
========================================================================================
Week of 8/12
Multigame
Found that someone kicked off a four inch chunk of the corner of the front of the game.  The part was found, it may be possible to glue it back on.  The cameras at this location have a good view of this game so I get to watch hours of video to track down the person responsible.

Golden Tee
I was getting it ready to go back out on location.  I went to latch the control panel down and noticed that the cleats that the latches grab were gone.  This was strange because I had latched it a couple days prior.  I found the piece of wood that the cleats were on lying in the bottom of the cabinet.  This explains why the game never seemed to latch the control panel securely.  I got out the wood glue and four #12 by two inch screws and reattached the part. I had to slide the control panel out and stand it on end to get to the area where I needed to attach the wood.  Certainly not the ideal working condition but much easier than disconnecting the thirty or so wires that I would have had to pull to get the control panel drawer separate from the game.  It latches securely now.

Game move
Got a call from one of my customers that "something" happened and I need to get my games out of a location. I ran up the location and found that the place was locked up tight and no one around.  I could see that my games were locked in the location.  There was a sign saying that they would be open on Monday.
So I ran up on Monday and the only person there would only say that I had to talk to their boss.  So I made yet another trip up and eventually talked to the boss.  They wanted some sort of proof that the games were truly mine. Although, it was frustrating I was glad to see that they were concerned enough about the equipment to demand some sort of proof.  I used my keys to open up the games but they still wanted my personal information just in case there was a problem I gave it to them and showed them my driver’s license as proof.  I loaded up five games but had to leave one behind temporarily as it is too large to handle by myself.  I just finished unloading them into my garage when it started to rain.   In the lessons learned category, I need to come up with an easier way to prove ownership of the equipment on locations and look into some sort of way to track if they wander off the location.  These people were decent about it but the potential was there for it to be a truly ugly situation.

====================================================================================
Week of 8/5

Skee Ball
The display was pretty much unreadable.  I found that there were twelve bulbs that were out.  Usually this happens when someone throws a ball and hits the backglass. Amazingly I had enough bulbs with me to replace all twelve that were out.  I only dropped one item down through the net and into the score rings in the process.

Air Hockey
Sanded the puck. I should probably order a few more spares.  I cleaned some sticky stuff off the playfield again.

Super Rock n Bowl
Coin Jam, I dug some pennies out of the coin mech.

Sonic and Tales
Replaced a few of the bulbs that were out and adjusted the sound back up to normal levels.

Big Haul
Coin Jam, found six pennies jammed into the coin slot.

Jurassic Park 3
No sound, I took a quick look at it but I didn't find anything wrong.  The game had been moved a few inches from where I had it, so it may be related.  I was running out of time and this game is a bear to move around so I let it go till my next visit.
========================================================================================
Week of 7/29

Golden Tee
Customer called and stated that the bill acceptor was not working again.  I ordered the replacement and it should be here in a few days.

Neo Geo
Customer said that game wasn't removing credits from game and could be played forever without putting money in it.  I found that it was on Free Play via the DIP switch.  There is also a soft switch that was set to off.  Oops, this one was my fault.  I had set it to free play in the shop and didn't set it back properly when I dropped it off.  It was on location for a few weeks before anyone let me know about it.

Golden Tee
Not accepting bills.  Acceptor was pretty dirty so I cleaned all the rollers and optics.  Eventually, I found that if you powered it up with the bill cassette removed it would never go ready but if you powered it up with the cassette on it would go ready.  I don't think that this is normal behavior so I will get a replacement.

Fooseball
One of the handles fell off.  Usually this happens when they get banged and split in half but this handle was intact with the pin still attached. I'm guessing that  when the handle was replaced a few months back it wasn't on the whole way and roll pin missed the shaft and hole in the shaft.  Although, the handle doesn't look like one that was replaced, I'll go with that explanation. I put the handle back on and hammered the pin back into place.  I also removed several balled up napkins that were jamming the balls up in the game.  I now know why you rarely see them out on location anymore.

Skee Ball
Moved four balls back into proper lanes

Toyko Drift
Someone pulled of the decal for the dashboard.  I found it curled up under the game.  I may be able to salvage the decal.  I really need to do something about the vandalism at this location as it is getting to the point where the amount of damage done to the games exceeds the amount of money that I take out of the place.

Super Rock N Bowl
Something was stuck in the coin mech.  Cleaned it up and it worked fine.

Sportstation
Coin Jam  I cleaned it up and it was better.  I found that the quarter that was jammed in the mech wouldn't go through any of the mechs.  I didn't see anything wrong with the quarter but there has to be a reason why it was rejected by all the mechs.  I do need to replace the coin acceptor on this machine as it is very
worn.  I'm not sure why as it really never got that much play but the one coin mech is rough on it.

Air Hockey
Found some sort of sticky stuff all over the one end.  Cleaned it up with some Windex.  I need to bring some sandpaper along and sand some roughness out of the puck.  It appears that the players have taken to rubbing the puck on the wall again.  Which does the exact opposite of what they think it does.
====================================================================================
Week of 7/22

Skee Ball
Only had to put one ball back into the proper lane

Air Hockey
There was something sticky all over the play surface, cleaned it up.

Crane
Dug a keychain out of the coin mech, I had to dissasemble the mech to get it out.

Parts
The proper power supply for Jackpot Crossing arrrived.  Of course, I left it on the workbench when I left for my usual weekly visit to the location.   I boxed up the wrong power supplies to be shipped back.

Getaway Pinball
I had some time so I was going to repair the non working bonus light problem on the game.  Found out that I only had four of the .100 terminals left and I need around ten of them for the connector.

Jackpot Crossing
Installed the new power supply and it fired right up.  It only took around ten minutes to install.  Finally this is working once again.  As a side note, I got the invoice for the supply.  Just under $150.  But I'm glad that I didn't hack in a generic supply as I noticed that the wiring colors were backwards.  There is a
psuedo standard of +5 being red wires and +12 being yellow wires.  This game isn't wired like that, the red wires are +12 and the yellow +5 so I probably would have connected the 12 volts to the 5 volts line and really had a mess. 

GoldenEye pinball
Was loosing track of balls, it would randomly display missing 5 or 2 balls.  I disassembled the trough and found the ball release mechinism was worn and binding so I cleaned it up and replaced a few parts on it.  But the problem still happened, I found that the balls would intermittently catch and stop on something in the
trough.  I found that there were small wear spots where the balls rest.  I spent a while sanding and polishing and get the spots out and the problem cleared up. I've seen this problem many times on the Williams games but this is the first time that I saw it on a Data East / Sega / Stern game.

Gauntlet Dark Legacy
Was constantly rebooting again.  I pulled the board cage out and cleaned the connectors and put it back together.  I let it run for a few hours and I didn't see it reboot.  A couple of the screws that held the boards in place turned out to be carrige bolts that went through the board and had nuts on the bottom of the cage
holding them in place.  If it wasn't for that, this would have been a simple job.  I didn't put the carrige bolts back in. 

Time Crisis
Monitor was out yet again.  I've fixed this monitor a few times and even had a professional monitor repair place fix it and I still can't seem to keep it running. I turned it off and will look at again when I have the time.

========================================================================================
Week of 7/15

Skee Ball
Found garbage and a wad of wet paper jammed into the ball return slot on one lane.  Moved four balls back into the proper lanes.

Drill O Matic
Looks like someone was kicking it again as a good portion of the prizes were hanging out the front of the tubes, spent a few minutes pushing them back into place.

Super Rock N Bowl
Coin Jam, I pulled the mech apart and cleaned a lot of dirt off the coin mech internals.  I wonder if this had anything to do with the opened mini pixie stick and powder I found on the glass of the game.

Slam A Winner
Wasn't taking quarters, I tore apart the coin mech and found a dollar coin jammed into the slot.

Gauntlet Dark Legacy
Turned this game on for the first time in months and found that it was now rebooting and playing in slow motion.  Ran some diagnostics on it and everything passed but the drive access times seemed slow.  I noticed that it was a Quantum Fireball hard drive (I have had a lot of problems with them over the years)
so I ordered a replacement drive

Parts
I received another box with a power supply in it and it was also the wrong power supply for Jackpot Crossing.  At that point, I had decided to give up and just hack in a generic supply and call it done.  I called the distributor about getting the wrong part yet again.  They offered to look into it once again. I got a call from someone at American Alpha who apologized profusely about the situation and explained that the game I have is rather old and uses the less common supply.  Hopefully, the right supply is now on the way and I can put this ugly saga behind me.  I've thought I've had it resolved previously too so we'll see what happens.

Skee Ball
Had the "help" message on the displays.  I cleared the ticket jam and it was working once again.

Cyclone
Coin Jam, someone had jammed nickels and pennies into one of the coin slots.

Air Hockey
There was some sort of sticky stuff all over the playing surface.  I cleaned it up with some Windex.  I had just cleaned it a few days prior so something had been spilled on the game (probably pixie sticks).

Drill O Matic
Was doing the constant restart again.  Reseated the power connector it was off by about 1/4 inch again and it cleared up.  I am considering some hot glue on this connector.

Super Rock n Bowl
Found the coin slot jammed up with nickels, pennies and tickets.

Slam a Winner
Found a folded dollar bill along with pennies and nickels jammed into the coin slot.  I had to tear the coin mech apart to get it out. 

Big Haul
Was out of tickets and doing the "check Tickets" routine.  I think it may have dumped all of its tickets as there was almost a full ticket deck in it the other day.  So I cleared the check tickets and loaded more tickets in it.  I made a note of the starting number so I can see for myself what it is up to.  This game makes it hard to track the ticket payout.  The counters don't work properly, as far as I can tell they increment roughly around 1/3 of what it really pays out. And the game play doesn't force every quarter into the bucket, so it is hard to tell how many people really played as their quarter may be laying in the game.


Getaway Pinball
I noticed that it seemed really dark, I found that a bunch of the bulbs were out on the lower section of the playfield.  I tore into it and replaced the bulbs and some worn rubber rings.  Put it back together and the balls would hang in the left inlane.  Eventually I compared the rubber rings and noticed that the old rings were thinner.  They were both the same size but the older one was thinner rubber.  I scrounged around and found one last thin Wico ring that I installed and it solved the problem.  At least until that ring wears out.  While working on it, I also noticed that some of the RPM lights weren't working.  It looks like the IDC connector or cracked solder joints is the culprit.  If I would push on the connector the lights would work again.  I need to pull the light board and reflow the pins and replace the connector.  I was out of time, so it will have to wait.

  =======================================================================================
Week of 7/8

Skee Ball
Moved five balls back into the proper lanes

Smokin Token
Coin Jam found a ticket jammed into the coin slot

Slam A Winner
Coin Jam found a ticket jammed into the coin slot.  I had to disassemble the coin acceptor.  I really need to pick up a spare electronic style mech. 

Ticket Eater
I finally found a suitable replacement for the noisy fan in this machine. Its a 4" 120 Volt fan.  I had found them at one of the places that I usually order parts from and at a good price. I had some free time and there wasn't anything going on at the location so I replaced the fan.  It wasn't too bad of a job, just dirty and time consuming but nothing too painful.   The new fan is much quieter and it is moving a lot more air around.

Game Delivery
I thought I had a delivery set up for two games but when I called to confirm with the customer, I got their voicemail   I left a message and I never heard back from them.  I will try again to set up the delivery. 

Jurassic Park 3
Left gun broken yet again, replaced the gun hose and moved the game so the gun couldn't be slammed against the game next to it. 

Big Buck Safari
Customer called and said that game had a blank screen and was playing music constantly.  When I arrived on location, the screen was blank and it was playing the in game music that plays on one of the selection screens.  Both start buttons were on but nothing happened when they or the gun triggers were pushed.
I hit the test button and the test menu came up on the screen.  Ran it through all the tests I could and they all tested fine.  The logs didn't show anything unusual either.  I suspect that the PC is going into some sort of sleep or power saving mode.  It's also possible that the PC video card is dying.  Played a few games on it, set a few high scores and was on my way.  If it happens again, I will try reseating the video card.

Game Delivery
Finally made contact with the customer and delivered two games to their location.  Went smoothly and I reloaded the prizes for the instant redemption game already on site while I was there.  While I was unloading the games, there was a guy staring at me with an angry look an his face.  After a while he added screaming to the stare.  He wasn't screaming words just screaming, he eventually wandered off, leaving me wondering what that was about and glad that he didn't do anything else.

Coin Circus
I Had some free time so I started on cleaning and organizing the shop.  I realized that this game was taking up a good bit of space, so out came the sledge hammer I pulled all the glass off and tore it apart.  I found around $15 in quarters while smashing it, so it wasn't a complete loss.  It took around three hours to
break it up and clean up the mess. 
========================================================================================
Week of 7/1

Skee Ball
Found several pieces of sticky candy all over the lanes, cleaned it up.

Super Rock N Bowl
Coin Jam found a dime and a nickel wedged into the coin mech.

Ticket Eater 
Won't accept tickets but motor runs when ticket is inserted.  Found a ticket and some Laffy Taffy jammed in the section before the cutter.  Cleaned it out and it works fine once again.

Alley Cats Shuffle Bowler
No sound.  While working on it, I found that if I moved the wires that went to the volume adjustment, the sound would return.  I found a damaged section of the wired and cut it out and reconnected the wires but the original problem was still there.  Tried to track down the problem for a long time and eventually gave up
and replaced the wire and volume control with one from a machine that was scrapped. 

Pole Position
Garbled road graphics.  Did the standard reseat of chips and put it back together and it worked fine.  I was surprised as Pole Positions are known to be difficult to repair and usually need a lot of work to fix.

Air Hockey
I bought some larger sized rivets and tried to use them to hold the part on that has been falling off.  First rivet went in perfectly and held nicely.  The next hole I tried, the rivet wouldn't fit.  I need to see if there is another size of rivet that is in between the two diameters that I currently have.

Parts
Called the distributor about the Jackpot Crossing power supply.  Turns out that there are two possible supplies and mine uses the uncommon one.  I hear this story frequently, somehow I manage to end up with the oddball games and don't know it until this sort of situation occurs.  The right supply is on the way.
====================================================================================
Week of 6/24

Skee Ball
Moved five balls back into proper lanes.

Sonic and Tales
Ticket Jam

Cyclone 
Ticket Jam

Neo Geo
Work continues on getting this game ready for location.  I tried to touch up some of the damaged parts with paint but it didn't turn out well and I spent a couple of hours cleaning off the paint with Goof Off.  It works well at removing the latex paint but the odor seems to linger in the shop.

Drill O Matic
Reseated power connector to resolve continuous rebooting problem.  The connector had moved close to a 1/4 inch.

Jurassic Park 3
Replaced Gun hose and calibrated the guns.  It works well now.

Fooseball Table
Customer called and stated that there was a coin jam that happened a few days ago.  Opened it up and found that the jam was due to a ball hanging on the transition between the rail and the ball chute that rotates.  Adjusted the rail and ran a lot of coins through it and it works well. 

Parts
The power supply finally arrived for the Jackpot Crossing game.  I opened up the box and found a PC power supply.  It isn't even close to what I need.  I tried to call the distributor but the parts department closes at 4:30. I will call on Monday.
====================================================================================
Week of 6/17

Skee Ball
Coin jam, found a Canadian quarter stuck in the coin mech.

Cyclone
Coin jam, found a Spanish coin jammed into the coin slot.  One other station had a ticket jam.

Drill O Matic
I found it unplugged, customer said that it was unplugged because it wouldn't stop dispensing tickets.  I found that it was indeed out of tickets and when I turned it on, it made the jackpot award noise and started to spit out tickets.  Powered it off and did the jackpot reset to it and it stopped dispensing tickets I played several games on it and actually got it to start dispensing tickets nonstop.  I watched the LEDs on the dispenser and they never changed.  I guess its possible the detector on the dispenser is going bad.  I cleaned the opto and tested it again and it worked fine.  But I am going to replace the dispenser anyways just to be safe.  The past few weeks there has been a discrepancy between the counts on the ticket eaters and the counts on the machines and this sort of problem would explain it.

Air Hockey
The metal plate in the puck return broke loose yet again.  I was prepared and had the rivet gun along but after two tries I found out that I didn't have rivets that were large enough to hold it, so I put screws back in and plan to stop at the hardware store to pick up larger diameter rivets.

Slam a Winner
Complaint was that it was taking money but not playing.  It was playing the in game music and the halogen bulb above the balls was on.  I pulled the back off and found that if I manually operated the solenoid and dropped the ball, the game would award tickets and not leave the game mode.  I checked the LCD display
and it didn't indicate any error.  As a side note, I never noticed that there wasn't any sort of test mode either.  At this point, I was thinking something serious and expensive was broken, then I noticed that it showed 53 credits on the display.  But the button wasn't lit.  I opened the front door up and found that the button was unscrewed and the switch was laying inside of the game, after putting it back together, it worked fine.  I had to play 53 games on it to clear the credits.  Why someone didn't walk off with the button is a huge mystery to me, only gravity was keeping it in place.

Tokyo Drift
It had an out of order sign on it, I found a Canadian quarter stuck in the coin slot.

Big Haul
It has an out of order sign on it and Was playing the jackpot music and doing the constant Check Tickets routine.  Cleared the jackpot and reloaded tickets and it seemed to work fine.  Customer stated that it had been dumping tickets nonstop.

Jurassic Park
Right gun not working, it appears that there is a break somewhere in the gun wiring, if I held the gun a specific way it worked fine.  Not a huge surprise that it is broken the kids really yank on these guns.  I think I have a replacement hose at the shop.  This game uses the standard Happ guns which aren't too expensive
to repair.

Parts
One of the parts I ordered arrived.  The distributor charged me $26 shipping on a $45 dollar part.  The power supply for Jackpot Crossing hasn't arrived yet.

====================================================================================
Week of 6/10

Beach visit
I took a few days off and took the family to the beach.  I got to check out a lot of arcades and games on the boardwalk.  It really is helpful to see other arcades and see what is working (and not working) for them.  The big game this year seems to be the Eluat Wizard of Oz coin pusher game.  Every arcade we visited had people playing this game.  One place I watched a guy shoveling twenty dollar bills into it.  I also got to play a huge animatronic gun game (Craven's Crypt I think) that was really interesting. 

Air Hockey
The metal plate broke loose again.  I put it back up with more self tapping screws but I really need to find a permanent solution to this.  I'm trying pop rivets next.

Dollar Coins
Dug two dollar coins out of coins mechs.  Found another in the coin box of Drill O Matic.  How the kids get them through the coin slot is really a mystery to me.  I've tried it myself and gave up after a while.  I assume when you don't have to repair the damage or pay for the parts you are willing to go that extra mile and really force them in.

Skee Ball
Moved three balls back into proper lanes

Air Hockey
I found the mallets laying in the office, tested the game out and it worked fine.  Cleaned up some sort of sticky stuff of the surface of the table

Jackpot Crossing
Was rejecting quarters, so I tore into the coin mech.  To service the coin mech on this game you have to remove it from the game.  I was about half an hour into the process when I noticed that the game wasn't actually running.  The rope lights and other lights were on but there wasn't anything on the displays.
I finished not fixing the coin mech and pulled it out and found the power supply was bad.  Called the distributor and found out that list price was $150 on it, but they cut me a break and got it down to $115 + shipping.  I would have hacked in a generic supply but the mounting of the original supply would
make that difficult and time consuming.  

Gravity Hill
Customer had a patron tell them that it took a dollar in quarters from them and didn't play.  It worked fine for me, I ran several dollars through it and it worked perfectly.

Fooseball
Quarters jammed in slots again.  I found that a couple of the screws had worked loose on coin mech.  

Golden Tee
Screen had shifted down around a half inch or so.  I was able to adjust it back up.

Invoice Fun
I bought some equipment a few weeks back and paid for it with a check upon delivery.  I got an invoice that showed I still owed for the equipment.  Four phone calls later to the bank and distributor I got it cleared up.  
====================================================================================
Week of 6/3

Skee Ball
Moved five balls back into the proper lane and removed soft pretzel parts that were all over the lanes. At least they weren't covered in mustard.

Cyclone 
Ticket Jam

Jackpot Crossing
Out of tickets

Super Rock n Bowl
Ticket Jam

Air Hockey
The metal plate in the scoring area broke loose again.  There were fragments of the rivet laying in the game.  I put it back together with some self threading screws and it seems OK, I really need a permanent fix to this problem.

Parts orders
I put together an order for some prizes for the redemption counters and instant win games.  I also placed an order for more paper for the ticket eater. Both orders came in quickly and no problems.
=================================================+==================================
Week of 5/27

Western Train
Ticket jam

Big Haul 
Ticket Jam

Super Rock n Bowl
Some sort of debris in the coin acceptor.

Neo Geo
Started on getting this one cleaned up to go back out on route.  Another old game but it has some of the more poplular titles in it.  A location with a narrow door way has requested a few more titles and there aren't many new games on the market.  Even less that will fit through the doorway.  In the old days the companies were better about building games that could fit though normal door openings but not so much anymore.  

Crane 
Dug around fifty cents in pennies, dimes and nickels out of the coin mech.

Pool Table
Location called and said that it wasn't accepting quarters.  Found that the coin slide wouldn't move past a certain point.  Pulled the slide out of the door and tore apart the coin slide.  Eventually found that a screw had worked loose and fell into the underside of the slide.  I had to tear the slide down almost entirely to get the screw out.  Put it all back together and it worked perfectly (much to my suprise).  I need to order a spare coin slide as I don't have any spares in stock.

Gravity Hill
Location called and said that the game wasn't working.  I had just left the location less than an hour prior and the game was working when I was there.  Anyhow I got the location and found that the game was working fine.  Apparently the ball had got stuck on the screw in the front of the game and the customer shook
it loose.

====================================================================================
Week of 5/20

Sportstation
Installed the replacement hard drive. Game fired right up and worked fine.

Air Hockey
One of the metal plates in the score section was off again.  It took me a while to get the bolt loose from the score chute.  Put it all back together and it worked fine.

Fooseball Table
Coin mech was jammed.  I ended up pulling the mech out of the game.  I turned it upside down and the quarters broke loose.  I'm not sure what happened here as they were both quarters and not bent up. I ran a few dollars through the mech and lubed up the areas that needed lubed and it worked well.

Smokin Token
I was moving games around at the location and had this one pulled out so I went ahead and lubed up the gears on the motor.  I couldn't find a pencil oiler in the last few weeks so I used a can of spray lube.  It made a rather big mess, I need to find a pencil oiler.  After cleaning up the excess oil, I powered up the game and the motor seems much quieter now. 

Sportstation 
Spent a little more time on it and ordered a drive for it.  I'd like to pull this game from location but I've already pulled two other games from this location that were destroyed by vandals and I don't have any other games that would be suitable for this location on hand.   

Skee Ball
Moved three balls back into proper lanes.  I noticed a large fresh gouge several inches long in the cork on one of the lanes.

Coin Circus
Pulled this game from location, managed to rip a huge section of the wood on the game off in the process.  normally I would be upset about doing this but since  this game is going to be trashed anyways it doesn't matter.  I spent a while reviewing security footage and I am getting closer to catching who vandalized this
game.  

Jackpot Crossing
Finished getting this game ready to go back out on location.  Delivered this game, no problems at all.  I had forgotten how tall this game is once you put the marquee on it.  Its easily seven or eight feet tall.  Hopefully I won't get complaints from the patrons about the blinking lights on it.  I previously had a game that featured
lights on it at this exact spot at the location and the patrons complained non stop about the lights on the game.

Super Rock n Bowl
Had an out of order sign on it, I played it and it worked fine for me but the first ticket out looked like it had been jammed up in the game.

Sonic and Tales
Had an out of order sign on it, it also had a ticket jam.

Tokyo Drift
Had an out of order sign on it, I played several games and it worked fine for me.

Air Hockey
Cleaned the playing surface, there was some sort of sticky substance all over it.

Redemption Prizes
I was getting ready to place an order for prizes, so I did an inventory of all the prizes that I currently have on hand.  It took a few hours but I now know exactly what I have on hand and have a much better idea of what I need to order.  Maybe this time I will keep it up to date.  If I find some free time, I will put it into  an Excel spreadsheet.
=================================================+==================================
Week of 5/13

Arrived at location and found that they were having a large event.  The place was packed and there was barely enough room to walk.  Found five games broken. I also found chairs and tables blocking access to the better earning games at this location.  

Coin Circus
Someone managed to pull the screws that held the roll down style coin mech in the game. I've pulled this part out in the past and it takes a while to do.  Why no one saw them doing it or stopped them is a question I would like answered.  It is also in direct line of one the security cameras so I may still have a chance of
finding out who is the culprit.   I found the coin mech just hanging in the game.  Odd that they figured out how to unbolt the coin mech but not pull it out. You have to twist and angle the mech to get it out so maybe they didn't catch onto that.  The wiring was torn up and the coin mech was fairly banged up.  It was one of the
expensive comparitor type coin mech. I spent a while reassembling the whole mess and the coin mech didn't work when I was done. Given that this game never really earned much and it is rather old, I think I am going to just trash this one and be done with it.

Sportstation
Rebooting constantly, I took a quick look at it and it is probably the hard drive again.  Last time I replaced the drive I realized that I am going through two drives a year on this game and here again it doesn't really earn that much. In fact I spend more on hard drives than it earns.  So this game may also get trashed.
 The boardset and monitor have some value so I will pull them out and dump the carcass.

Drill O matic
Had garbage on the displays, reseating the connectors got this one back up and running.  I had to push the prizes back into the prize chutes.  Obviously someone has been kicking this game for a while to move that many prizes out of the tubes.  I don't know if it was designed this way but when you kick this game the prizes move to the front of the game and not into the prize chute.  I  usually find the prizes laying in the front of the game.  You would think that they would stop kicking when they see the prizes moving away from the prize chute but they don't.

Cyclone
Ticket jam

Western Train
Ticket Jam

Skee Ball
As I walked up to the game, I found two kids sitting one lane and one sleeping on another.  Their mother was sitting on a huge bench by herself near the skee ball machines by herself and asked if I wanted the kids off the game.  She may have noticed me telling her kids to get off of them several times.  I had to cut off some of the sticker trim work as someone peeled it off.  As I walked away, I saw the kids jump back on the game.  Great parenting, I didn't feel like getting into an argument so I just kept on walking and pretended that I didn't see it.

Pool Tables
I had bought a couple of pool tables for a location and was working out a delivery date with the distributor. They called me around lunch time to ask if the next day would be OK.  After some pleading and apoligizing to my customer, I got it worked out.  I got them delivered directly to the location.  The delivery and set up went smoothly.  But I did find that one of the coin doors didn't lock properly.  It had the wrong length cam installed on the back of the lock. Since I had my truck along, (my spare parts were in my usual car) I had to improvise and used a screw to hold the door in place until I can make it back with the right sized cam.  I need to revisit the site with my label maker and make up some pricing and "please keep food" etc signs up.

TouchTunes Jukebox
I was getting the alerts that it was offline.  I found that it was wired to the customers network properly and was gettting a link and an IP address but not  connecting to the servers.  The customer called thier computer guy and he was kind enough to run over and take a look at it.  It turns out there was an IP conflict between my Jukebox and one of the other devices on the network.  Apparently DHCP was issuing addresses that were in use by other equipment at the location.  He took care of the conflict and the jukebox connected to the servers and was happy once again.

Jackpot Express
Still working on getting this ready to go back out.  The veneer on this game is starting to peel up.  I tried to glue it back down with some success.  I picked up some paint to fill in some of the areas where the veener already got pulled off.  For the second time in a few days I managed to coat a good area of my hand and fingers with super glue.  I really need to stop using superglue before I glue myself to something.

Fooseball Table
Moved it from one location to another.  Went fairly smoothly.  At least as smoothly as moving one of these beasts through narrow doorways in the rain can go. I didn't do to much damage to the game.
================================================+===================================
Week of 5/6

Skee Ball
Moved two balls back into the proper lane and pulled a nickel out of the coin mech.

Cyclone
I turned it on and heard the same loud buzzing noise that I had heard when it popped the fuses a week or so back.  The noise stopped and the game booted and played fine but obviously something it still wrong with it.  I may swap the board or the entire game out.

Air Hockey
Returned to the location armed with a drill, screws and glue.  I took a good look at the game and realized that section of veener I found torn off earlier  in the week wasn't the only section that had been pulled off the game.  It was the only section that they had managed to actually rip off the game.  I found just about anywere you could get a fingernail into the veener was loose.  Spent an hour or so glueing and screwing the veener back down.  I don't expect that this will stop whoever it is doing the damage but it may slow them down.  They will probably just move onto a different game. I did manage to spill some super glue on to my hand and part of the floor in the process.  Its suprising just how much area one of those single use super glue tubes can cover when you squeeze just a bit too hard on the tube.

Skee Ball
Moved two balls back into the proper lane

Air Hockey table
Someone ripped off an 5" by 2" section of the side of the game.  Its sort of a veneer with the artwork on it.  If the parts were they I would be able to just glue them back on but the parts are gone.  

Rowe Changer
Found pennies jammed into the bill acceptor

The Hammer
I pulled this game off location last year when it broke again (not sensing the hammer) and it has been sitting around the shop since then.  When it  came off location, I had started repairing it and had replaced one of the emitter boards but it still wasn't working. I finally cleared enough games out of the shop that I could get to it and work on it again.  The current symptoms are that there is a line on each axis that is stuck on and one axis only detects on  small section.  After a few hours of troubleshooting I found that there is one detector bad on one board and another detector board is somehow preventing any other board on the row to work properly.  I replaced the chips on the bad board but it didn't change.  I moved the board to the other axis and the problem followed  the board.  I'm going to order another board and use one of the working detectors to replace the other bad sensor.  This game has been a lot of trouble over the years.

Jackpot Crossing
I started getting this one ready to go back out on location. 

Merit Evo Touchscreen
Moved it from one location to another.  Went smoothly.
========================================================================================
Week of 4/29

Skee Ball
Removed ball from game.  There was a non Skee Ball in the game.  

Cyclone
Arrived on site and found it unplugged.  Plugged it back in and other than a loud humming noise it didn't do anything else.  Found that two fuses were blown.  Replaced the fuses and it fired back up and worked fine.  I let it run while I did other things and it continued to work.  I suspect that this problem isn't truly fixed.

Air Hockey
Had an out of order sign on it.  THe puck was missing, I found it under one of the other games.  Put it back in and the air hockey table worked fine

Sonic and Tales
Coin jam, found a few tickets jammed into the coin slot.  Cleared the jam and it worked fine.

Smokin Token
Had an out of order sign on it.  Played several games and it worked fine.  

Golden Tee
Installed the foam and delivered the game.  Went well and didn't have any problems.

Pharoh Pinball
Finished cleaning this game up.  Took a while to get the upper set of flippers working to my liking.  I'm not sure why but they seemed weak.  One was bouncing up and down, I kept making adjustments but nothing seemed to help.  Eventually I took it apart again and found that I had burned up the coil.  Replaced the coil and it seemed better.  Still not great but I am going to let it go for a bit and see what happens. I finally got to play the game all cleaned up and it is a lot of fun.  I think it plays better than Black Knight.  I'm not sure why they didn't sell more of them back in the day.

====================================================================================
Week of 4/22

Skee Ball
Moved four balls back into proper lane

Cyclone
Coin Jam 

Skee Ball
The coin return button was stuck down and there was still a coin jam in the mech.  I cleared the coin jam and freed up the stuck return button.

Crane
The win count was was way up. Played a game and found that it was detecting a winner every game no matter if you won or lost. I found that the plastic tube over a few of the prize sensors were off.  I found them still in the prize chute and put them back on and it cleared up the problem

Pharoh
Continued working on this one.  Ran into a couple of posts that I needed to use the vise as a press to put the rubber back on them.  I don't  remember running into this style of rubber before but I had them in stock.  I finished the top side of the game and started with the mechanical parts under the playfield.  Replaced all the coil sleeves and cleaned up all the mechanical parts. Someone had used some sort of grease on the parts so they were gummed up and filthy.  All that is left now is the rebuilding the four flippers.

Golden Tee
Just got this one in from another operator.  It had a large chunk of the cabinet knocked out of it.  I filled it in with fiberglass and bondo.  Sanded it smooth and painted it.  It came out pretty good, not perfect but definately better than it was. I cleaned the game up and all it needs now is a strip of weather stripping between the glass and control panel to keep stuff from falling into the game.

Crusin World
On power up it would force the calibration of the controls.  Typical for what happens when the battery dies.  I tried to find one locally (as I have done countless times in the past) and couldn't find one anywhere .  As a temporary solution I put a 2532 in but it doesn't fit as tightly as it should.  I ordered a ten pack of the correct batteries and will replace it when they arrive.
========================================================================================
Week of 4/15

Skee Ball 
Moved five balls back into proper lane

Tokyo Drift
Someone tried to pull the decal off the back of the seat.  They were mostly sucessful, it was hanging on by around two inches of adhesive (or maybe the super glue I had used on that side a while back) I broke out more super glue and accidentially spilled most of the tube on the area that the sticker needed to go onto.  I smeared it around and put the sticker back on.  I doubt anyone will be pulling that sticker off anytime soon.

Big Haul
Powered it up to check it and it was making the jackpot noise and dispensed over one hundred tickets before I got it to stop.  You have to hold the coin switch for three or five seconds to clear it.  It usually takes a few tries before it actually works.

Pharoh Pinball
An old Williams game from the 80's.  Similar to Black Knight but has some interesting differences.  I've had this one laying around in the shop for a few years.  I got it working but never did anything more than that with it.  I played a game on it and noticed the the left Magna Save wasn't working. It would count down like it worked but the coil never energized.  I got out the manual and schematics and discovered that the details about how it was wired were a bit lacking.  I started at the magna save coil and measured the lack of voltage back to the board.  Eventually I found that the pre driver transisitor for the Tip 122 was bad.  When I touched it to measure the voltage, it crumbled apart.  Apparently a leaky battery had dripped battery acid on it and it eventually ate through the transistor leads.  I pulled the boards out and replaced the driver and pre driver transistor. Put it all back together and it worked fine.  Since I had the game somewhat apart, I started cleaning it up.  I got most of the top side cleaning done but I need to order some parts to rebuild the flippers.  The game already plays much better with the new rubber on it.  
====================================================================================

Week of 4/8
Arrived at the location thinking since it was the Easter Weekend it would be an easy and quick visit.  I should know by now that when it is slow is when all the problems show up.

Skee Ball
Moved 4 balls back into the proper lanes

Cyclone
Coin Jam it was really jammed up and I didn't find the reason why.  Cleared it up and it seemed to work fine.

Air Hockey
Puck was missing, I spent a while looking for it but I couldn't find it.  I put the last new spare puck I had into it and found out that the scoring sensors weren't detecting it.  The puck was a day glo red color and I bought it from the company that made the table but the sensors didn't see it.  I tried cleaning the sensors but it didn't help.  So I resumed the search for the puck, eventually I found one.  I found one that went missing a few
months back under the Skee Ball machines.  Put it in and it worked perfectly.  I need to order some more pucks, I've lost somewhere around four of them in a few months.

Corvette Pinball
Locating ball message.  I found the ball on a ramp caught under a switch.  I couldn't get it to happen again.  I verified that the game was level and adjusted the switch, played a few games and it seemed fine.

Crane
It seemed to be low on animals so I checked the meters and saw that it had given out a lot of animals.  I put it into test mode to check the claw settings and it went off and wouldn't come back on.  The lights were on but the CPU wasn't coming up.  Powered it off and on a couple of times and it started working  I'm guessing that the switch to put it into test mode is getting flaky.  Anyhow checked the settings and they seem OK.

Redemption counter
Wasn't too bad off but the majority of the larger priced prizes were missing.  Based on how much money I had seen in the games, it shouldn't be possible that someone had enough tickets to win all the prizes.  I will know for sure when I count the money later this week.

Prize order
I still hadn't received my order of prizes.  So I gave the supplier a call and they tracked them and it showed as delivered.  Turns out that they had put the wrong address on them.  After a visit to the neighbor’s house, I got my order. 
====================================================================================
Week of 4/1

Skee Ball 
Moved five balls back into proper lanes.

Cyclone
Found it unplugged.  Plugged it back in and played a few games on each station and it was working right. Left it run the entire time I was at the location and it seemed fine.  I assume that one of the kids unplugged it.

Slam a Winner
Found it with an out of order sign.  Turned it on and it was yelling check tickets.  It was right one side was empty and the other jammed. I caused the jam by not getting the ticket decks glued together properly.

Family Guy Pinball
I noticed that the death target wasn't dropping completely.  I found that a bracket had snapped on the drop target assembly.  I was hoping for a simple adjustment.  I need to order the part.  

Road Trip
Customer complained about the attract mode being too loud.  I turned it down completely.  Hopefully that will solve the issue.  While I was there, I made the adjustments to the prize payout to get it down from its current rate of 85%.
====================================================================================
Week of 3/25

Skee Ball
Moved three balls back into proper lanes.

Slam A Winner
Not accepting quarters.  I checked for the usual tickets or something jammed in the coin slot but it looked clear.  This game uses one of the coin comparator type acceptors which usually are trouble free.  In the past, I had a problem with the IDC connection into the connector on the coin acceptor on this game.  So I spliced in a new connector, it took about a half hour to finish up.  But it still wasn't accepting quarters.  So I started to disassemble the coin acceptor itself.  Eventually, I found a small magnet was stuck to one of the few metal parts in the acceptor. Put it all back together and it worked fine.  

Road Trip
Customer called and said that a prize had gotten stuck in the game.  Sure enough the prize had landed behind the prize door and managed to wedge the door shut.  Pulled the prize out from the back.  While I was there, I checked the stats on the game and it is handing out way too many prizes.  In fact it is handing out more in prizes than what it has taken in.  I need to review the manual to see how to correct that.

====================================================================================
Week of 3/18

Skee Ball
Moved 4 balls back into proper lane and removed two others that somehow got wedged together in the 30 point whole.

Rowe Changer
Had the out of service light on.  It was showing that it had a Hopper error. Pulled one out and sure enough it was jammed.  Emptied it out and it moved freely, reloaded the quarters and it was better.  Reinstalled the hopper and it was still throwing the hopper error. Found that another hopper was also jammed up.  Very strange.  Emptied the second hopper out and just like the other one found it to be fine.  Not sure what to think of this one.

Super Rock N Bowl
Found a redemption ticket in coin mech.

Touchtunes Jukebox
Returned to location to run cable.  Got it mostly run but there was no room to get the cable down through the channel that the wiring used to run through. As luck would have it their computer guy showed up and offered to cut a hole in another section of the wall to get my cable though.  So I need to stop back again and verify that the jukebox is happily connected to the Internet in a couple of days.

Touchtunes Jukebox
Followed up and the juke is back online.

Rowe Changer
I ran into someone that was looking for one and I have a couple of spares so I sold him one of the spares.  While demonstrating the machine, I noticed that the one hopper motor was missing. I gave him one of the spare motors I keep around.  It also started having problems with the Hopper jamming. I found several tokens in the hopper that were too large for the hopper.  At first glance they looked like .982 tokens but they weren't.  I don't know where I got them from.  I suspect that they are from overseas as they seem to be the same diameter as a dollar coin. I fished them out of the hopper and lubed it up and it was working well again.
========================================================================================
Week of 3/11

Road Trip
Picked this one up from the distributor for a new location.  The owner said to call him as he wanted to be there when I installed it. After picking up the  game, I called the location several times and owner wasn't returning my calls.  Ended up having to lay game down in truck and parking it in a garage as it was going to rain the next day.  Eventually got a hold of the customer and set up another delivery day.  I had to take the handle off the front door of the location to get the game in the building.  Also realized that the measurements quoted in the manual don't take into account the Bill acceptor.

TouchTunes Jukebox
Was showing as offline.  When I visited the site, I found that they had remodeled and cut the cable that connected the juke to the internet.  There wasn't enough cable left to just put another end on it. I picked up another 100 ft cable and will return to rerun the connection.

Skee Ball
Moved nine balls back into the proper lane

Dinoscore
Pulled this one off location today.  Went fairly easily.

Skee Ball
Four balls back into proper lane.

Sportstation
Dug ticket from coin mech.

Big Haul
Found a nickel wedged in coin mech.

Super Rock N Bowl
It was jammed up with something in the coin mech.  I pulled it apart and didn't see anything but there must have been something there as it started taking quarters after I had taken the acceptor apart.
====================================================================================
Week of 3/4

Skee Ball
Someone broke the coin return button off one of the lanes.  I used a vise to press it back in and slathered it up with some JB Weld for good measure.  Pulled the Gatorade bottle and wadded up paper from the score area and moved four balls back into the proper lane.

Ticket Eater
Replaced the paper on it, I used my last roll and need to order more paper for it.  But I do have some time as the rolls are huge and it will probably be a few months before it becomes an issue.
====================================================================================
Week of 2/26

Skee Ball
Moved two balls back into proper lane

Rowe Change machine
Had the Out of Service light on, the computer showed the code for a blocked sensor.  Tore the bill acceptor apart and found a ticket in it.

Smokin Token
Gear sounds are getting louder again, its due for some oil.  I need to pick up one of those oilers with the long hose on it for next trip to this location.

Redemption Counter
There wasn't much broken at the location today so I spent some time cleaning up the redemption counter.  I pulled everything out, cleaned the inside glass, shelf and cabinet
Put it all back together and it looked a lot better.  It wasn't all that dirty but cleaning it up really made it look better.  

DDR
The hose I ordered sort of arrived.  At least the notification that I have to sign for the package arrived. I filled out the form and put it back in the mailbox but the number that was on the instructions is busy constantly.  

DDR
Finally got through to the Post Office and I now have the part.  I was concerned as I ordered it from a company in China but it arrived and it is a quality part.  The new hose is better constructed than what the original hose was.   Although, I am sure that it is just flexible electrical conduit.  Now I need to work out a time with the customer to install the part.
====================================================================================
Week of 2/19

Skee Ball
Replaced another five bulbs on the game.  I found that a few of the bulb sockets were also broken, which confirmed my ball throwing theory.  Moved three balls back into the proper lane.

Coin Jams
Apparently the location had a large crowd of children in that didn't bring any money to play the games. So in lieu of quarters, the kids resorted to trying gum wrappers, paper, gum, tickets, lollipop sticks and anything else they could find to try to play the games.  So I cleared the items out of the coin slots on the following games:
Skee Ball, Cyclone, Air Hockey (both slots), Drill O Matic, Smokin Token, Toyko Drift, the crane machine and Western Train. 

DDR Extreme
The replacement sensors arrived so I installed them. I installed seven of them.  In the process, I cleaned the lights and the pads and found a couple of brackets inside the steps that worked loose.  I also replaced the fluorescent lamp assemblies in the marquee, both bulbs were out and had the typical blackening of the tube at the ends.  Plugged it all back in and they worked but were very bright.  I let the game run a few hours and came back to it and found that one bulb was out.  While I was working on that the other also went out.  Started troubleshooting and tested to see if there was voltage to the lamps and found that there was
240 volts AC to them.  Looked at the old lights and sure enough they had 240 volt ballasts in them.  I hadn't noticed that before.  So, I put the original lights back in and replaced the bulbs.  Let it run for a few more hours and I found that the cooling fan was making noises.  It is a 4 inch fan but it also was 240 volts, so I ordered a  replacement from Grainger.  I delivered the game (they were OK with the noise) but I need to install the fan and the hose for the wiring when both parts arrive.  Apparently the location has people waiting for this game to arrive so they can play.  It seems that there aren't many DDR's on location these days.  I've played the newer DDRs with the new dance pad and I truly prefer the older style.  The technician part of me also wonders how you service the new dance pads as there doesn't seem to be any accessible screws on the dance pad.

Toy Taxi Crane
Found one of the metal corners (complete with a chunk of the bottom of the crane) to the game laying in the office.  Apparently someone kicked it off the game.  Not an easy  thing to do, hopefully they know who did it.

Skee Ball
Swapped four balls back into the proper lane.  I also noticed that a lot of bulbs were out in the displays.  I had a box of bulbs and replaced eight bulbs but there are still at least another four or so still out.  I think I have more bulbs at the shop, if not I'll order some in.  I'm guessing that someone was throwing the balls at the backglass of the game as it is unlikely that this many bulbs would all fail at the same time.

Tokyo Drift
Found a ticket stuck in the coin chute.

Corvette Pinball
Installed the tilt bob, it was missing when I got the game and I had forgot about it until recently.  I was reminded when I found the game moved around week after week. I did a quick cleaning of the playfield with some Novus.  I don't understand why this game gets dirty, it really doesn't get that much play on it.

Air Hockey
There was something on the playing surface of the game.  I spent quite a while removing it.  It was extremely sticky and hard to remove.

Western Train
Noticed that one of the obstacles is moving slowly.  Took a look at it and it appears I need to order a motor for it.

Corvette Pinball
Found it slid around six inches from where it normally sits and banged into the wall.

Slam A Winner
Used some epoxy to put the speaker back together, I'll have to wait a few days to see if it actually holds.
Cleaned the stepper motor wheel, I got a lot of dirt off the wheel.  I hope that takes care of the wheeel not spinning.

Tokyo Drift
Hooked up the monitor and keyboard and verified that all the BIOS settings matched what the manual states.  They were set correctly so I pulled the PC out and hooked it up to  the other Drift and verified that the problem is with the PC.  I guess the next steps are to either reload the software or use a diagnostic disk to check out the PC hardware.

Ticket Eater
Jamming by the cutter again and a printer jam.  I tore it apart and cleaned all the rollers and adjusted one of the guides that looked out of place.  Cleared the paper jam out  of the printer and ran a lot tickets though it and it worked fine

Merit Megatouch
Touch screen not registering at all.  I rebooted the machine and it got somewhat better.  After cleaning the grease off the touchscreen it worked 100%
========================================================================================
Week of 2/12

Slam A Winner
Wheel was not spinning and lined up with the 100 ticket hole.  The stepper motor was turning but the large wheel wasn't but the game still ran.  I was under the impression that  it detected this sort of thing and would throw an error when this sort of thing happened.  I found the nuts that held the stepper motor in were somewhat loose.  I pushed the  motor against the wheel and tightened them down.  The rubber wheel really needed cleaned as it was filthy but I didn't have anything along that I wanted to try to clean it with. The game seems to be working for now.  I'll bring some cleaning supplies along next trip. 

Rowe Change machine
I replaced the bulb on the bill acceptor and reinstalled the acceptor.  When I powered it up the acceptor kept running forwards and backwards like there was a bill stuck in it.  I had to adjust the P1 pot to get it to work.  I'll try to ignore the possibility of that was all that ever needed done and that I may have made the problem worse with my troubleshooting.

Tokyo Drift
Someone peeled the sticker almost completely off the back of the seat.  I reattached with a healthy dose of super glue.  It seemed to hold it back on.  

DDR Extreme
Attempted to order a replacement sticker that surrounds the monitor.  The distributor's part department told me that it was only available as part of the complete sticker set.   Ordered the kit and discovered that it did not include the monitor surround sticker.

Skee Ball
Moved six balls back into proper lane

Air Hockey
Found and out of order sign on it.  Opened up the end lane and found a glow necklace wedged into it.  But the puck and a mallet were missing.  After some searching, I found the  mallet under a chair but the puck was gone.  Replaced it with one of the spares and played a game.

Western Train
Found a ticket jammed in the coin slot

Cyclone
Found a ticket jammed into one of the coin slots

Slam A Winner
No sound but working fine otherwise.  I found that the speaker had fallen apart.  The magnet was laying in the game.  I put it back together and it actually worked.  I used  electrical tape to hold it together till I find a replacement.  The mounting holes are four inches apart. Hopefully I can find one somewhere local.

Tokyo Drift
Got the computer back to the shop and powered it up.  I got the CMOS settings restored messages.  Replaced the CMOS battery and set the CMOS settings to the settings in the  manual.  Put it back in and it booted into the game but there was no sound.  I hooked up a keyboard and tried to access the CMOS settings to verify that it was set correctly but the monitor wouldn't synch to the frequency.  So I let it run without sound.  I will pick up a PC monitor this week and hook it up to check the settings.  If I had more time I  
would have put the computer into the other Drift to see if the no sound followed the PC but I was out of time for the visit.

Time Crisis
Found some free time and took another look at this one.  I found that the B+ voltage was running a tad bit high.  After lowering the voltage the monitor would power up reliably. 

  I spent a while adjusting various settings on the monitor but the picture was still very dim.  I broke out the rejuvenator and did the clean and balance to the tube.  Powered  it back up and it was brighter but way out of focus.  I figured that the tube was toast at this point.  I hooked up the rejuvenator again and did the emissions check and now all of the guns read as bad.  Did the rejuvenate function and then the guns all went to passing the emissions test but were uneven in the readings.  Followed it up by the Clean and  
balance function.  Put it back together and powered it up and the picture was a lot brighter but still somewhat blurry.  I adjusted the focus and this time it actually came into focus with a great picture.  Played it for a while and was surprised at how clear everything was in the game.  I noticed some details in the game that I hadn't noticed before.  

Rowe Changer
Found the out of service light on again.  Dug a ticket out of the bill acceptor again.  While I was testing it, I saw the bill acceptor randomly running like there was a bill in the acceptor. (I have heard the changer running the acceptor for a while now but never caught it in the act) Cleaned the sensors and it was still doing it.  I found that the  sensor itself was loose.  I also wiggled the bulb and watched it go out and not come back on.  I didn't have the big soldering iron along to replace the bulb ( on the older Rowe changers the wires are soldered directly to the bulbs) so, I will have to return to fix this one.  I think I may have another acceptor for this changer at the shop.

DDR Extreme
Found a location for this one.  Its been disassembled with the dance pads sitting on thier sides.  Put it all together and it fired right up.    Put it into test mode and found  a few floor sensors aren't working reliably.  I need to order around six of them.  
========================================================================================
Week of 2/5

Fooseball Table
Continued the cleaning on this one.  Replaced two more handles and broke another new one in the process.  Replaced one leg.  If it does well on location, I will replace the others and the remaining two handles.  
I delivered it to the location.  I had to set it on it's side and turn it through the door to get it in.  The real hard part was putting the legs I took off back on.   But spent a while getting it level and it worked well.  Only bent one rod when moving it around.  Its not too badly bent so I'll let it go and add it to the list of things to replace if  it does well on location.

Skee  Ball
Moved four balls back to proper lane.

Tokyo Drift
Nothing on the screen.  I found that the PC appeared to boot but nothing would show up on the screen.  Did the standard PC reseating routine and still nothing.  So, I carried the PC out so I can take a look at it back at the shop.

Rowe Changer
Out of service light on.  Found a ticket wedged into the bill acceptor.  Removed ticket and it was working again.

Time Crisis 
The monitor chassis came back from repair already.  I put it back in and it had a terrible picture and intermittently wouldn't power up.  

Tickets
Ran up to Snydertown to pick up my ticket order.  One of the quickest pickups of anything I ever had.  I was loaded up and on my way in under five minutes.  Including the travel time, I had about four hours into the whole trip.  Not bad considering shipping would have been over $200.
====================================================================================
Week of 1/29/12
Gravity Hill
Finished it up, loaded it with prizes and delivered it to the location.  Went well with no surprises.

Slam A Winner
Found it with an out of order sign on it.  I thought it was just out of tickets but instead I found that one of the belts in the ticket feeder had broken.  First time that I've seen that happen.  Installed one of the spares belts and it was back in business.

Skee Ball
Cleared a coin jam in one unit and moved four balls back into proper lane.

Cyclone
Got a couple complaints that it was too loud, so I lowered the volume a few notches.

Air Hockey
Cleared a coin jam in one side.  The quarters were side by side in the jam so it is likely that someone jammed them into the slot that way.  The other jam I found earlier was  the same way.  This happens occasionaly on games that are fifty cents for a game. Maybe they are used to using fifty cent gumball machines?

Rowe Changer
Had the out of service light on.  I found one coin bucket jammed up tight.  I couldn't find what jammed it but emptying it out and pouring the quarters back in cleared the jam. There is probably a bent quarter or a nickel in there causing the jam but I couldn't find it.

Fooseball Table
The parts I ordered came in and I got started on cleaning it up.  I pulled all of the bearings off and cleaned them up, polished all of the rods and replaced four of the  handles.  I broke one new handle when installing it.  The roll pin took a chunk out of the handle when it came through the rod.  The rest of the handles look decent so I may let  them alone.  Vacuumed out the cabinet and cleaned the ball guides.  I easily have 30 hours of labor into this game and I still need to clean the fooseball men on the game and  the outside of the game.
====================================================================================
Week of 1/22/12

Gravity Hill
Continued to get this one ready for location.  Fixed the LED strip light by reattaching cable, replaced light assembly at the top of the game.  I tried to locate a rope light locally as the one that is in it is bad and it doesn't appear to be anything special.  After three stores and not finding one, I gave up and I will order one.  Got all of the old candy and prizes out of the game prior to cleaning.  Since it was moved on its back, the bad candy found its way into areas that it normally wouldn't be able to get into.  I spent a long time getting it back out.  I resorted to using the shop vacuum with a PC keyboard cleaning attachment to pick up the candy piece by piece in one section.  I also replaced or added a set of BMX bike grips to the control bars.  I don't remember seeing many (if any) with the grips installed but it seems like a good idea to have them there.  The manual shows the game as having them and given that it is at head level for some kids a layer of padding on the bars may prevent someone from getting hurt by them.  I used the old school BMX trick of spraying hairspray into the grips to get them on.  Hopefully the new style of non aerosol hair spray works as well to hold them on.  I also spent a while adding a bill acceptor to this one.  I tested the acceptor and then put it on and it started to act funny.  The part that pushes the bills into the bill cassette kept cycling.  I didn't have any more bill acceptors so I put a blockout plate on the hole till I decide what to do with the bill acceptor.  Its almost ready to go all that is left is cleaning the outside of the game.

Skee Ball
Found an out of order sign on one lane.  Played a few games and found nothing wrong with it.  Other than the usual of being short a few balls, it seemed fine.   I moved the four missing balls back into the lane.

Cyclone
Also had an out of order sign on it and also worked fine.  I took the time to clear the settings back to factory default and set the options.  I set it a bit easier to win, its earnings have been dropping the past few months, maybe making it easier will help improve the earnings.

Air Hockey
There was something on the playing surface, so I opened it up to get the cleaning supplies that I keep in it and bumped the wiring, the game went off.  The main fuse blew.  I found that the wires that ran to the overhead had chaffed through the insulation by the connectors,  taped it off with electrical tape and tried to reroute wires so it wouldn't happen again.  The main fuse was a six amp GMA fuse (one of the physically smaller fuses)  I didn't have a six amp but I did have a four amp. Replaced the fuse and the game worked, I played a couple of games and it seemed OK but I need to get a six amp fuse back in there.

Fooseball
I started work on this one, mostly figuring out what I parts I need to order for it.  So far, I need balls, handles, locks and one leg.
====================================================================================
Week of 1/15/12

Gravity Hill
Just bought this game and it needs cleaned up before going out on location.  All of the lighting is out on it but it works fine.  It came with a bunch of prizes and candy already loaded into it.  I know better but I tried one of the pieces of candy to see if it was any good.  It wasn't and a day later I still have the horrible taste in my mouth.  

Cyclone
Found an out of order sign on it.  Played several games at all the stations at it seemed to play ok.  I bumped the game and it turned off. Found that it was plugged into a power strip and the power strip switch was resting against one of the legs of the games in just the right way that if you bumped it it would shut the game off.

Skee Ball
Moved four balls back into proper lane.

Drill O Matic
Ticket jam

Sportstation
Coin jam.  I need to replace the coin acceptor on the one slot.  It's worn out.  Its not that old but the spring tension is gone and it is full of metal shavings.

Sonic and Tales
Had an out of order sign on it.  Played it and found nothing wrong.

Big Haul
Coin Jam.  Found a managled quarter in the coin mech.  

Time Crisis/ K7000 27 inch monitor
Spent some more time on this one and realized that it is a K7400 monitor.  Dug out the schematics and found that I did put the proper value caps into the board.  The monitor is mounted face up in the cab and pulling the chassis out and putting it back in is a pain.  I think I am going to send this one out for repair as I've spent too much time on it already and troubleshooting it in the game is difficult due to the mounting arrangement.  I should put together some sort of test bench for monitors.  I have most of what I need to build one on hand but have lacked the time to get it done so far.

Ticket Eater
Found it with an out of order sign on it.  I was worried that the cutter blade problem was back.  Fired it up fed it some tickets and it worked fine until I tried to print.  I got the Papr error, opened it up and found that the end of the paper was just laying in the cabinet with a nice straight cut end.  I'm guessing that there was a paper jam and someone attempted to fix it but couldn't figure out how to put the paper back in.  If you haven't done it a few times it is dificult to see how the paper should be loaded.

Dinoscore
Sensor wire broken.  I patched in another section of wire and it was back up and running.  

Air Hockey
Someone pulled the felt pad off the bottom of the mallet.  I need to replace the mallet.  

Cyclone
One station had a ticket jam, one station had a coin jam.  The coin jam was caused by a folded up dollar bill that had been shoved into the coin slot.  That is a new one as its usually tickets.  

Rowe Changer
I heard a motor starting and stopping over and over, I opened it up and saw that the Mag LED was flickering.  Cleaned up the Mag sensor with an eraser and the flickering Mag lite stopped along with the sporadic motor running.  I had heard this one doing this before but I didn't catch the flickering light before so maybe this will correct it.

Big Buck Safari
Converted it back to Quarters and adjusted the pricing on it.  I need to order more quarter acceptors.  Delivered the game and it worked fine.

Cyclone
Had an adult customer complain that they hit the jackpot but didn't get awarded any the tickets.  After asking a few questions they admitted that they got ten tickets, which is the amount of tickets that are right next to the jackpot.  After asking a few more questions of the customer about what the game did, it became pretty clear that they didn't hit the jackpot as the game makes a certain sound and lights up the amber lights when you really hit the jackpot.  This particular person's child has made some rather oddball complaints about other games in the past so I am guessing that it was thier child that really claimed to have the problem.    
====================================================================================
Week of 1/8
Ticket Eater
The parts arrived the day after I ordered.  I installed the new cutter assembly, it took a bit of work and some persuasion to get the new cutter installed into the Eater.  Fired it up, ran a bunch of tickets through it and no more jams. I spent just under $300 in parts on this repair.  But I now have a spare set of blades for the eater.

Skee Ball
Moved three balls back into proper lane.
Dug a penny out of the coin acceptor.

Super Rock n Bowl
Found it turned off.  Which due to where the power switch is located it quite the feat.  I had to crawl under the pinball machine, slide the Super Rock N Bowl out a few inches and turn it back on.  After it was on I found that the one of the stickers between the ticket decks didn't hold and needed to be fed into the dispenser again.  

Ticket Eater 
Found it jammed up again in the same spot (the cutter blade).  Installed the new blade that I bought a few weeks back and it didn't make a difference.  I did find that one set of the feed rollers had some play in them.  Tore it apart as you can't get to the set screw with the assembly in the cabinet.  Put it all back together and the jamming was now worse.  I gave Deltronics a call and they suggested replacing the whole cutter assembly.  This eater is rather old and they have an upgraded cutter assembly that both blades are replaceable (currently only one is on mine)  Ordered the new part ($180).  They are also in PA so I should have the part in a couple of days. 

Fuse fest
I used to carry a selection of fuses stored in a bag.  I realized the other day that I am spending way too long trying to find them in the bag and frequently buying values that I have but couldn't find.  I had some free time this week so I spent a few hours sorting and organizing fuses.  I ended up with 2 small containers with twenty compartments each.  I made up lablels and got a list together of values that I need to order to keep on hand.  
========================================================================================
Week of 1/1
Air Hockey
Puck was missing, spent a while looking for it but eventually gave up and put one of the spares in.

Corvette Pinball
Getting the Check the F114 or F115 or 12 volt opto supply message again.  Replaced the fuse and powered it up and the fuse popped again. Pulled the connectors from the board and powered it up and the fuse held.  So I know that the board and bridge rectifiers are all fine and that the problem has to be something shorted on the playfield or cabinet.   I spent a long time and many fuses trying to isolate what was shorted.  I did notice that the drag strip was missing its screws, so I pulled the connector for that and the fuse stopped burning.  I didn't see anything that was obviously shorted on the track.  I left it disconnected to see if the message comes back. Not the ideal fix but at least I will know if the track is involved if the message returns.

Toy Taxi Crane
Rope light almost completely out, I need to order a replacement for it.

Time Crisis/ K7000 27 inch monitor
I replaced the gun on the game and it still wasn't tracking on the screen.  So I tried to crank up the brightness to test the monitor and found that I couldn't turn it up bright enough to see the retrace on the screen.  So I installed a cap kit on it.  But the monitor was one that had the caps numbers lableled differently than most of them.  I'm not sure what the story is on these but I've run into to them before.  So I replaced the caps by matching up the values.  Reinstalled the monitor and it worked for a little bit but the gun tracking wasn't any better nor was I able to see the retrace.  The monitor died after being on around 15 minutes or so.  I remembered that there is a Bipolar cap on these montitors that I've mistakenly replaced when doing a cap kit before, I rooted through the caps I pulled out and found it.  4.7 Microfarad.  I need to swap it back in and retest.  I think I will try out the Tube rejuvenator on the tube and see what it says before I replace the flyback. 

Hakko 808
I got this a few years back and it is probably one of the best tool purchase I've made.  While capping the a monitor the tip got clogged up, which sometimes happens.  In an attempt to save time, I tried to use the cleaning tool while the desoldering tool was still hot.  I managed to break off the cleaning tool in the tip of the desoldering iron.  So I tore the iron apart (while still hot) and then proceded to impale and burn my finger on it.  I tried many different ways to get the broken cleaning tool out of the tip and was unsuccessful.  I tried to drill it out and got the hole off center and drilled a new and not too useful hole into the tip.  Ordered a couple new tips and cleaning tool, which is probably what I should have done instead of drilling.