Repairing A 1948 BLUE SKIES Pinball Machine by United, A Coil Caught On Fire? - Bad Wiring!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Joe's Classic Video Games back with another cool pinball repair video for you this evening. We are working on a very special game. This is a 1948 United Blue Skies. This is from the early years of pinball machines. It's a wood rail, then it's an early wood rail. We did a video already about figuring this thing out where we took it apart and looked at some stuff and it doesn't work. So we're going to try to fix it in this video. So if you didn't see the previous video, you might want to check that out. This is from 1948, which was the year that they figured out about flippers. So the game has buttons on the side for flippers, but they, this company at least, United, had not figured out where to put the flippers yet. So they put the flippers up here. Now that may sound ridiculous now, but at the time this stuff was not standardized, you know. They were learning. This is one of the machines from the year that flippers came to the earth. I think the first one was actually in late 47, but in 48 all of the companies kind of got with it. So United had flippers on their games now, but they put them up here. And when you hit the button, both flippers flipped at the same time. And they're kind of backwards if you think about it. Like they go that way instead of that way. But they were learning. They were learning. This is a beautiful machine. Whenever you plug it in, I don't want to do it again because I don't want to burn anything up. Whenever you, if you watch the previous video, you can see that and you may see it again later in this video, but whenever you plug it in and turn it and try to turn it on and reset everything, it just makes all kinds of noise. Something isn't resetting. Something's locking on that shouldn't be. So we need to work through everything. Now I've done a ton of electromechanical pinball machines and this one is very similar to all the ones that we usually do. It's just much older. I think the earliest one I did before this one was from the about 1956. But even the ones from 76 and 77 that were the final EMs that were that were made are very similar. They have a score motor. They have stepper units. They have relays that latch on and things like that. They have kickout holes. This one has flippers. They have switches and they have light bulbs. I mean, it's all kind of the same thing. It's just this one was a little more archaic. However, the older they were, kind of the nicer they were built in some ways. So some of the stuff inside of this is built very nicely. So I think what we need to do is work in the back box first and work through some of that. And then once we get that done, maybe we'll try plugging it in and starting it up again and seeing if that has, if that gets us anywhere or what. We need to do a with the cosmetics though. We don't want to ruin the vintage look of it. But at the same time, if there's a way that we can make it look more original and clean, we're going to do that. So let me slide it out from the wall and I can show you in the back box and then I'll show you what we're going to do first. So here's what we're looking at. We looked at this, like I said in the previous video. I had a gentleman bring me this machine probably a year ago or so and it's been sitting around, or maybe not quite that long. It's been, I think it was earlier this year. It's been sitting around waiting for us to work on it. The cord has been replaced at some point and they have wired in a switch. We're not plugged in right now. So they've wired in a switch that's just kind of hanging here. So we've got to figure out what we want to do about that. A wire came loose from the one of the fuses there that we've got kind of rigged up for now. And there is a couple wires that have came off of this Jones plug. So I think maybe what we do first is we work on those Jones plugs a little bit and try to fix that problem. And then we're going to clean through these three stepper units. So you've got this, what they're calling the small step-up unit and they're calling this one the large step-up unit. And then this would be the coin unit, I guess. Replay step-up unit they're calling it. These are all very similar to the stuff that Williams was doing in my opinion. So it says here, small step-up unit hinge opens when two screws in the frame are removed. The large step-up unit tips forward by removing the wood screws at the top. So that's just what they're referring to them as. So let's mess with these Jones plugs. I believe those wires that broke may have been lights or something. Let's see if we can tell where they go. One of the problems is I don't have schematics for this exact game. Apparently nobody's got them. But I've got schematics for a similar game. So I think that went there. Again, no schematics. The way you can tell sometimes though is by looking at the other side of the wire. So this is black. So this we have wedged in here because that's what was broke. But I'm wondering if originally that went there and this went there. If you had it like that and if this went here it would connect to that wire which is the same color. What do you think? I think that may be. Now what is this wire? It's coming out of the bottom and it's brown. So it would have been on the Jones plug too because the whole purpose of these is so that you can separate everything. They've hacked in this power cord though and I don't know if that has anything to do with it. Did you see how that one was looped around and out of the way? So maybe they did that on purpose. Let's see if we can get any more clues by looking at this. All of those are populated except the top two. And the top one does look like at some point it had a wire on it. So you would have to assume that maybe this one went to the other one. So if it did, I mean we've got two open ones there, but what wire would it have connected to? Maybe we would find the other side of this and that would give us a clue as to what it needs to connect to. We're gonna figure it out. Don't worry about it. So these wires are very similar to this wire. Could it be? I think we're right about our black wire. Comes in here, comes out of here. No. So the AC power comes in here and runs through there and it says line 115 volt on the tag. So the AC power comes in here, goes across the fuse holder, is soldered here, and runs the transformer. We already had it doing that. And then if this was over here, then the AC voltage would run through here. Maybe, here's the transformer voltage coming out through here. It says 8 volt line and this one says coils 30 volt. I think it says 30. 30 volt line, but they're running through here. So what is going to be coming down this line if we were here? All right, so let me pull up my schematics that I've got of the wrong machine and see if that'll give us any kind of clue. I didn't get the schematics yet. So one side of the wire is coming in, going through a switch, and then running to this fuse. The other side of the wire comes in, this is a replacement wire, and goes to this little jumper for normal and low line. And then there is a wire soldered on that that looks like it's probably original that would actually reach over to there. It went through there. Sorry about the camera work. If that was like that, so that could be. So let's look on the schematics, see if we can figure it out. If on the schematics it shows a wire going to this jumper and then a separate wire coming off, that may give us a clue on it. So that's our first little issue we've got to figure out. All right, so these are the schematics from United's 1948 Paradise, which would have been a machine that came out just before this one, maybe a couple months before this one, the one that we're working on. And we're right here at the beginning. Here is the plug that comes in. And so it's showing you that one line runs in and runs through a fuse. That's exactly what ours is doing. And then when it gets to the other side of the fuse, there is a blue line. To me it looks black because that's what 80 years has done to it. 75 years has done to it. No, more than that. How many years? 75 I think. Yeah, 75. So after it goes through the fuse, the blue wire connects to the transformer. That's what we've figured out. And then there is one that runs down here to the reset coil. So I'm assuming that the reset coil is in the bottom of the machine. And so that would be correct. So it connects to off of the fuse to the transformer and then through the Jones plug that they never show on these schematics. Like no pinball machine ever shows the Jones plugs really, or the ones through the head at least. And then it goes to the reset coil. So we're going to open it up and see if the reset coil has the black, well the blue line running to one side of it. Okay, and so then the other side is the line comes in right and eventually goes to that jumper that we were looking at with the low line or the normal line. And then power connects to the transformer. That's what ours is doing. Ours has a separate connection right here. So no matter where you put the jumper, that connection stays with it. So in other words, the schematics are not always drawn exactly how the physical connections are. They're just drawn how the electrical connections are, right? So there is something connected to this line. Where does it go? Well, if you go back up, they're calling that the purple line, and it does kind of look purple. There is a extra wire on that line that connects to this switch. This says CWE start relay. So I believe that would mean connected when energized. Connected when energized start relay switch, right? So the CWE is written all over these. I haven't really, I haven't seen that before on schematics, but these are older ones and they're made by United, which is a different company that I've worked on. So that would probably, the start relay would probably also be down in the bottom of the cabinet. So the purple wire should go through that, and that would make, whenever the start relay pulls in, it would connect that wire to the blue wire, which they probably shouldn't use that color. And then if the master or the meter, motor, probably motor, motor reset switch is closed, then you would then have power on both sides of this coil, which is the reset coil, and that would start resetting the game. So with those two wires broke, I don't think, I don't think it'll do anything because you would never get the reset coil to come on. So that's your problem. So we need to get those two wires. But what I'm going to do is, let's open up the play field and just double check my logic here and make sure that the blue line seems to go down to the reset coil, and then make sure that the purple line seems to go to the connected when energized switch on the start relay. If that's true, then we'll, then we will permanently wire those back into the Jones plugs where they should be. These are the schematics from United's 1948 Serenade, which seems to be identical in that part. So I think we're, I think we've about got it figured out. The, the other, these machines that we're using the wrong schematics from, it's because I can't find anybody that even has a copy of these, the schematics for this game, Blue Skies. And also the games are all very similar back then. So they may have some, some bumpers in slightly different places and stuff, but the flippers are in the exact same spot. The lights in the back box are the same lights, et cetera, et cetera. So they're very, very similar. And the, the beginning part of the schematics would probably be identical. And so far they are, I've got one more to check. So these are the schematics from 19, United's 1949 Oklahoma pinball machine, which have been redrawn by somebody. They did a really good job. And it looks like the only difference is on this one, they have added by that time and outlet inside of it. So you could plug in a soldering iron or something, but the other parts of it are exactly the same. So I think we've about got it figured out. So let's see if we can find those wires in the bottom of the cabinet. The reason I'm being so cautious about it is because I don't have the schematics and I haven't really worked on one this old. So I want to make sure I don't fry up a bunch of crap. So inside the game, it has this little label. Danger 115 volts used only in three places on the playboard. Now this is exactly what we were looking for. The switch on the starting relay. We just figured out about that switch on the motor unit. We just saw that and the reset bank coil. So that's exactly the three things that we just identified that those wires would be running to. Switches and coils are identified by red paint. So here's a switch with red paint and it says automatic reset coil with an arrow pointing that way. Here's a coil with red paint and here's our blue wire on one side and our purple wire on the other side. If you look up here, blue wire and purple wire like it's showed in the schematics. And then the motor unit, it mentioned a switch on the motor unit. And if you look, they have put red paint on the switch with the blue wire and the purple wire. So when it rolls over that little thing, it's going to close that, which is going to make the reset coil pull in and reset everything. This is just, it's kind of interesting. It's all a little more sloppy than they were in later years, but it looks like maybe that's how it's supposed to be. I don't know. Look how this moves, but it's just mounted with one thing. And when it pulls in, the whole thing moves, but it looks like it's designed that way. So by doing that, this switch is now open. If that were to trip, now the switch is closed. Okay. So yeah, I'm confident that's where those go. So we need to basically get this line over to one of these. I might do the bottom one because this wire is not as long. And then we need to get this line over to the other one. And then I need to solder the two wires here back onto the Jones plug where it goes. So I think we've figured out where everything goes. Okay. So the wires kind of cover it, but I have firmly attached both of the wires where they go. I have put that one back on the fuse where it should go. The jumper I put behind those, so it's out of the way. And then I put it on the low line condition, which is going to basically give everything a little more pep. We'll see if that's a good idea or not. That's probably all right. But you know, it's easy enough. You just move it to the other one if you want. And then the Jones plug. So all of the wiring in the back boxes back out should be with the exception of the actual cord. Right. And then the Jones plug. These Jones plugs are just wonderful inventions. I've had people mention that these are not really Jones plugs because they're not the actual Jones version. They're another version. These are just generic versions that the pinball companies made. They weren't made by the Jones company or whatever, but it's the same idea. And so I added this one back in obviously. And then I touched up the solder on that one because it looked bad. So basically they have a hollow pin that's brass or whatever. And what you do is you strip back the wire a little bit, stick it down inside the pin, and then you fill up the pin with solder. And it just, it works great. So I just heated up the solder that was in it, tapped it on the pinball machine, and the old solder fell right out. And now we're going to put the old wire back in and fix it up. So they're really cool. Now if you get them too hot, of course it's going to burn through this Bakelite-ish board that the plug is made out of. But as long as you don't get it too crazy hot, the things work fantastic. All right, so I got them back in there. They're lined up with their correct companion wire. And then the stress relief was missing. So that's the original one. And so I just made a new one. That was the best I could do, folks. You could put just a Chinese zip tie on there on your 1948 United Pimp. You could, don't, come on, come on. Come on, come on. It's even cheaper. Look, this, I got a, it's like a dollar. People, come on now, don't do, we already got to put Chinese light bulbs in. Don't, don't do China. I wonder where that string came from. We won't talk about that too much. Okay, so I got that all back together. I think that looks pretty good. That's going to provide AC power to the reset section, which probably had something to do with the loud buzzing noise we were hearing before. So I think we may try powering it up again and seeing what we get. Now, if that didn't fix anything, of course we got to work through everything, but if that didn't fix anything, you'll hear the buzzing that I'm talking about. All right, we're plugged in. Now, last time I figured out that if you, if you push the switch and you're on, I don't know if we're on or off, we're going to swap this, right? When you do the switch, you start hearing the transformer hum. That's the only thing I could hear last time. It may do more now that we've got that plugged in. Nothing. Electro boom says, hey, well, there you go. She has rejoined the living. Oh, I don't like that. Something's changing. Okay, so yeah, it booted up. Let's turn it back on. Maybe that, see if we can figure out what is going on. Okay, now it's sitting because we're not in gameplay. I think before we were in, the last time I tried to mess with it, I tried to reset it. And so I think, I think part of the problem is I've never played one this old, but I think we were kind of halfway through the reset cycle since it didn't have the AC. It couldn't reset those coils. And the way it does that is it pushes this bad boy here. You push this. Okay, so I'm going to do it again. And then I'm gonna try to turn it off real quick if anything crazy happens. So the game's sitting there. No one is playing it. Cool. All right, we're gonna turn it back off. We got some coils on. I don't know if they should be on or if they're locked on or what, right? But you got to see it at least try to do its reset. It left us with 100,000 points on it, but we're seeing signs of life. So I think next thing that we do, hmm, should we rebuild the steppers? Or I think maybe we clean some coils underneath the playfield. These are probably doing what they, these probably light up score lights, I would think. Things like that. So we probably need to check under the playfield. I saw a coil under there that looks like it has caught on fire. So the people that are likely to be the new owners of this machine are watching this video. I'm going to check it out and make sure it's not going to catch on fire on you again. So maybe we do that first and check that out. Let me show you the ugly part underneath the playfield. So just behind the, what they are calling the automatic reset coil, is this coil and it is toasted. And look at the wood behind it. The plywood actually is charred. I mean a little part of the plywood is actually gone. So this thing got really hot. So is that supposed to get really hot or is that something that burned up? I mean obviously it burned up, but and obviously it's not supposed to get that hot. But is that a hold coil or something? I can't read the paper. So I'm going to try to just wipe that off with a rag and maybe we can read it. If we can't, we'll just have to figure out what it is. There is one make or break switch on it and there's one normally closed. No, open. Yeah, see look they've got it bent wrong. When this pulls in, it should close that switch. Oh yeah, it's open. Just barely. So one normally open or a closed when energized switch and one make or break switch. Black and white, blue, white, white and black, and that's it. Okay, so we can look through the schematics and find it and just see what coil that is. Why that would be on is, you know, is that something stuck somewhere? Is that like a hold coil that's on the whole time you're playing? What is it? All right, so we're back to our serenade schematics, which I was wrong. This wasn't before Blue Skies. This was just after Blue Skies. So this is probably really similar to what's in this machine. And I looked at a few more of the schematics and they're all about the same around this part for a couple years there for United. So that coil is the lock relay, which makes sense. The lock relay holds on the entire time that the game is on. So some people in the past, on certain games, you can just take this out and just wedge the switch closed all the time. So the switch on this one that it keeps on is the, it basically, it keeps on the start relay, I believe, or whatever. But it's basically keeping all the lights on. Okay, so without it, you would lose that. You could just take that off and just permanently connect that switch together. But the problem is, if you did that, you wouldn't be able to turn off the game. But when you turn off the game, it doesn't turn off everything on the game. So this is kind of how they did it. So here is the off switch, which apparently is in the front. There's a switch on the bottom. I didn't know what it was, but that's it. If you press that switch, it kills power to the lock relay. Okay, at the same time, it sends power to the tilt relay. So it makes the game tilt by pressing the switch on the front. So closed when energized tilt relay. Whenever it tilts, it's going to light up the tilt light. But since you also killed the hold relay, the lock relay, it's going to open this, which is going to kill all the power to all of the lights. But the thing is, the transformer will still be powered. All of this will still be powered. So you still got the transformer on, you just don't have the lights on. And that's just how they designed the thing back in the day. So I think what I'll do is I'll get the thing functioning as it originally was, and then we may put a power switch on the actual line coming into the game or something. We could just extend that one switch, those lines up to the front of the game, and put an on-off switch up there too. I haven't decided the cleanest way to do that yet. I hate reinventing the wheel, you know what I mean? So my instinct usually is to go back to however the schematic has it. And then if someone has figured out a better way to put the on-off switch on there, I like researching it and figure out what other people have figured out, instead of just trying to come up with your own solution. All you have to do is put an on-off switch somewhere in this line. So we'll think about that. But I need another lock coil. It tells you on here what the part number is. It's a 6-29F1150. The 6, I'm not sure what that means. I think that may just be the... well, I don't know what that means. The 29 is the gauge of the wire. F is the type of bobbin that it's on. So it's a relay coil instead of a like a flipper coil or something. It doesn't have a sleeve through it. And then 1150 is the number of turns of the wire. So it's a 29 gauge wire that's turned 1150 times. On Williams games, they used a very similar coil that was a 281150. And then later they started using a 281200 to cool it down a little bit. So I think what we might do, if I can find one, is replace this burn up coil with a 281200 like the Williams games have. I did work on that old Pitchin' Bat and it had very similar parts to this United in it. So a 281200 would probably be better and not get quite as hot. So I think what we'll do is we'll turn it on with the play field up. See what we see now that we can look at the bottom of the play field. And then we'll test that on that off switch on the front. It's not really an on switch, it's an off switch. Turn this back on. Transformer is powered. I believe that's the off switch. Everything's dead. That would be the lock coil. Lock relay. So the shuffle switch, the way it works is whenever you push in the quarter or the dime or nickel, I think it was the nickel, it hits this which is going to move this little thing which is going to allow this to open and close that one, right. And it's going to make a bunch of noise. So watch it is. I pushed it in too far. I shouldn't have pushed it that far. Okay, so what is, there's the lock relay. It's locked in. What else is locked in? Anything? But what are we hearing? Yeah, so that gate has opened. Or has it? Yeah, that gate has opened to allow the balls to pass out. And maybe there's a switch they hit or something. Or maybe that just stays like that. So the ball gate is open. Okay, I like that better. The ball gate is open. Do you want to? You know you want to. Oh, and by the way, that little nut was loose. That's why the flipper was loose on the top. So they're not loose anymore. But let's see if it'll flip. Just barely. That's going to need some help. That's upside down too. Okay, so it's flipping. Very cool. Let me show you how these pop bumpers work. Okay, there is a wire that is attached to that little pin that is in the center of the pop bumper. And then there is a ring that's attached to the other wire that's wrapped around the pin. So if you... Let me see if I can do it without electro-killing myself. If you hit the skirt, it touches the two wires together. And you score points. See the sparking? That's just how it was, people. It's not a pop bumper. It's just a... It doesn't pop. It's just a bumper. So I think we're good. Even the lock coil is working. It's just scary. You know what I mean? We need a better one. So I think we're cool. Let me see about this ballgate. Oh yeah, so it's off now. Maybe when I scored a point, it turned it off. Let's look that up just so I know. It was just hanging down because we've got the play field back. So let's look up the ballgate coil and see what turns that on and then what turns that off. It may be as soon as you score a point it turns that off. Okay, so when the start relay pulls in, it closes this switch which is closed when energized, which will send power this way and turn on the ball release gate. And again, this is on a serenade. I assume it's the same. The ball release gate is going to stay energized as long as this open when energized bumper interlock relay is still closed. So an interlock relay means that it will stay locked. So like if it trips, it stays tripped. So that's probably on that big bar on the side. But let's see if we can find it on the schematics. All right, on this serenade, this is really interesting. Look at all the trouble they went through for all of this. Well, I guess they didn't really. But there's all these little switches on the play field. And this is again on a serenade. It's not on a specific one, but this one's very similar. So there's the number one hole switch, the number two hole switch, the number three hole switch, the number four hole switch. There's the one, two, three, four, five, six, two, two, seven, and two, eight, and one, nine, and four, ten, and three, and number ten. Well, that's the number ten relay. But all of these, if they connect, basically it sends power through to one or the other. And eventually it hits, it turns on one of the relays. Well, if any of these relays come on, it turns on the bumper interlock relay. And so as soon as that coil ever comes on, it closes the ball gate. So basically it just stays open until you score a point. Makes complete sense. While I have the schematics open, let me show you something beautiful. Okay, so here is the common or whatever. And then right here on the end of the schematic, they have added a line at the very end. And it goes to a flipper coil. And then there are two flipper switches. And that connects it to the other side of the power. So the original design, at least from United, this is the Paradise schematics, the earliest ones I've got. You just hit a switch, and as long as you're holding that in, this coil is in. Right? Now here's the part you'll really like. So this is a Serenade, which was just a little later, a few months later. And it was made right after this Blue Skies. You got the same line. And it comes up here. And you have a flipper resistor. And you have a flipper open at the end of stroke switch. And so this was bypassed if the flipper button wasn't pushed in. And then you got the flipper solenoid and the two flipper switches. So this is the same. But they added a resistor and an end of stroke switch so that they could make sure that the coils don't burn up. Because apparently they were already having people that would just hold the flipper coil in until the thing burnt up. So they ran into that problem immediately. So one set of schematics, it doesn't have it. And then immediately afterwards, it does have it. Let's see if on our machine it has it. It does not have it. So they had not invented the end of stroke switch yet when they made this game. Some of the other companies may have. United wasn't the biggest company. I mean, Williams and Gottlob and some of the other companies were making a lot of these new things. What a hell of a little mech though. Think about that. What a place in history. They figured out, hey, I'm going to put a button and it's going to pull in a coil and move a lever on a play field. And look what that's turned into. Crazy. So let's see if our off switch works. The only way we'll be able to know is by that one little light bulb you can see up there. So I'm just going to push in this switch. Yeah, that's it. So the game is turned off, but the transformer is still powered. It would be so cool to leave it like that, but I just don't think it's all that practical in somebody's house because you wouldn't really know if it's on or off, you know. Yeah, so we got to think of a better way to do that because, like, how would they know if it's on or off right now? We might just have to tell them they need to keep the thing unplugged. It's probably not going to do anything, but it's turned on, you know. Either the hold coil or that ballgate coil are really loud. It was the ballgate coil. So it's kind of doing its thing. I was concerned that it wouldn't light up that good, but it really does. It's got a lot of lights on it. Now that's the hold coil, I believe. No, that was the... that's whatever coil is holding on some of those bonus lights. So I think it's going to end up being a beautiful machine. Very cool. So we still got a long way to go, though, but it's already working. So I think the previous owner had it pretty much doing its thing, but we're going to see if we can get it playing a lot better and looking a lot better. So hope you enjoyed it so far. Make sure to give us a thumbs up for taking the trouble to film it for you. I don't think there's that many videos of repairing United machines online, so hopefully this will help people save some of these if they run into one. All of these things deserve to be fixed, you know. Some of you... well, if you watch this late in the video, you probably love this stuff, but some people wouldn't really appreciate this just because it's so old school, so old-fashioned. But these things have a complete style to them, you know. It may not... you may not want it as the only game you've got unless you're, you know, you just love history and you just love the look of these things. But if you've got a collection, you should have... you should have one of these if you can find one. Makes you wonder how many of these survived and how many they made. At one point, back when these were being made, the 30s and the 40s, you know, arcade games didn't exist yet, or video arcade games didn't exist yet. So there were... these were very popular. I mean, lots of people played these back in the day. So I hope you enjoyed it. We'll see you on the next video. We'll get a little farther along on the next one. Make sure to check out my brother Donnie if you don't know about him. He has his own channel here on YouTube. There's a link down below. We work on arcade games, pinball machines, and jukeboxes. My brother Donnie works on old buildings, old vehicles, things like that. I'm with him over on his channel a lot. So I will see you over there. And we'd like to thank everybody that's been buying one of our t-shirts. If you don't know about that, you can see those on our website. Go to lionsarcade.com. We've got some t-shirts that we've been selling and enjoying and getting lots of good feedback on that. So we appreciate everybody that's reached out to buy one of those. Email us if you'd like one, and we will see you on the next video. Take care.