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Reflex Unit - Setting &
Mechanical Stops
Reflex Unit Reset on a Bally
Tahiti and Bally London
 
To “step up/tighten up” the
Reflex you would need to hold the Relay on the Top Coil and cycle the “step
up” gear as Keith explains!
_ Keith’s Email String _
Keith Nickalo
Aug 13, 2011
To Me
I actually just use generic scotch brite
scrubbing pads I get from Dollar General. I think I get ten pads for a
buck. I usually go through one or two pads per machine. I spray some
alcohol on it and then scrub it. I hear a lot of different opinions about
this. Many people say that scratches the buttons (rivets) or wears them
down. The scotch brite pads do have some abrasiveness to them but how much
really? Think that's equal to maybe a 1000 grit sheet of sanding paper?
That's kind of what I'm thinking. I’m a qc inspector in a machine shop. I
have access to some awesome measuring equipment. I was wondering one day if
it does indeed wear down the rivet heads to use scotch brite pads on them
so I took a junk contact plate. Measured it carefully. Put a scotch bright
pad on a cordless drill and put it down to the rivets on high speed for ten
seconds. This would have put far more stress than I ever would just
scrubbing them with my fingers Then I re-measured. The results were
interesting. The drill spins the pad in a circular motion and the rivets
that were on the outside edge of the circular motion (where the pad would
go on and off the edge of the contact plate) wore down about three
thousandths (.003) of an inch. The ones on the inside didn't wear nearly as
much. On one rivet I saw only about a half a tenth (.00005) of wear but
most of them seemed to be worn about eight tenths (,0008) So the critics
are right. Scotch bright is somewhat abrasive but come on....it's
negligible. I'm only going to clean them once like this.
Well anyway...that was a lot of babble. I do get tired of people saying you
can't use this or you can't use that. You must do it this way. I say fuck
it. It's you machine and your time. Scrub it with you ball sack if that's
what you wanna do. Seriously though...everybody has their own methods that
work well for them. I've asked Bingo Joe before how he does and he doesn't
seem to want to say either. I don't think he wants some know-it-all telling
him he's doing it wrong either.
Hey when I take a wiper off I use a yellow paintstick marker to mark one of
the fingers and then mark the bakelite where the finger is
"pointing" to so I can put them back on in the same spot. That is
absolutely critical. Most all of the wipers only go on one of two ways. So
you either got it right or you're 180 degrees off. If you went through the
whole game cleaning steppers and not making sure they went back on right,
numerical probability says half your steppers are 180 out. Good luck
figuring that out. The problems that develop from having just one wiper
installed backward is a real pain.
I'm worked all night. Five pm to five AM. I'm tired and babbling. Off to
bed.
Keith
From: Keith Nickalo <keithnickalo@g>
To: Danny Leach <bingopinballs@
Sent: Saturday,
August 13, 2011 7:08 PM
Subject: Re: reflex unit
Hi Danny.
Did you get his repair videos? I kind of wanted to but fifty bucks seemed a
little steep. Maybe they'll come down someday.
I'm going to attach a few videos of making the mixer loose.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_33RMGfrGI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cfgt8ju3J0
In one of the videos I talk about the pins inside the reflex unit. Those
pins tend to either come out or are taken out. If they aren't in place, the
reflex unit will end up stepping itself up or down and end up "Out of
Range" as I call it. In the video I used a Tahiti reflex even though
the Tahiti has no mixer, I made the comment that the position of the number
one mixer will cause a short. Not on Tahiti but certainly all the older
games. I've actually had this happen to me three separate times. Really
that's a lot so I thought it might be worth mentioning.
I also attached a few pictures of
the retaining pins I was talking about. It wasn't very clear in the video
and I wanted to show those pins a little better. If those pins are missing,
the game will short.
In my opinion or maybe I should say from my experience, there is really no
chance these games will work after sitting for years. They need cleaned up.
The steppers need cleaned and lubed. The control unit and mixers needs
cleaned and lubed. If you don't clean them, it just makes for constant
problems.
I took a Miss America '75 once and tried to just simply plug in and then
fix whatever was wrong with it. It was indeed easier to get it running.
However, then it just started breaking constantly. Maybe the number three
would light then next minute wouldn't. Then the fourth step on the red odds
don't light. Then it won’t pay off when there’s a ten in the win. It just
went on and on. Eventually I had half of it serviced from doing it one
stepper at a time so I just stopped and serviced the whole thing. If you
clean and lube everything, then give it a bunch of test plays, these games
can last a couple years without needing anything at all. It seems like if
you just try to fix what is wrong, you end up constantly chasing down
faults with no end in sight.
One of the problems I have had before is a wiper having bad contact in a
stepper after I cleaned it.
Normally, I take the wiper off. Clean the wiper and all the rivets. Adjust
the fingers on the wipers to make sure they are all on the same plane and
then reassemble the stepper. I find that even though I made sure all the
wipers were on the same plane and should all be touching the
rivets.....Somehow I must have bent one of those little devils putting it
back on. So I got a tip from a friend who suggested I tap the top of the
wiper fingers once the stepper is back together to see if it makes any
noise. If it is silent then there is good contact. If it makes a slight
tapping noise, there is a gap in between the rivet and the wiper. You can
adjust that out real quick and wont have to solve that problem after it is
powered up. Here's a video to help explain. It's been real good advice for
me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebrzSRT5FvQ
One thing I have had big problems
with....The Jones Plugs. Those suckers have to be cleaned off. I clean all
mine to the point of obsession and still end up with faults from poor
contact at the Jones Plug.
Getting everything cleaned and lubed is really a must if you want the game
to play for a few years without breaking twice a week.
…at you later.
Keith
On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 1:42
AM, Danny Leach <bingopinballs@>
wrote:
hi Keith,
I am looking on Phil's site,
but... Did you shoot a video on how to zero (reset / loosen) the reflex
unit? If so, ( I seemed to have lost it) Please shoot (email - send me the
link - etc) me another copy,
Thxs,
Thank you Keith …Excellent`
Associated
Links
http://danny.cdyn.com/reflex.htm
http://danny.cdyn.com/unitedreflex.htm
http://danny.cdyn.com/bernie5.htm
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