Pinball Repair in Your Home

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Need a pinball repaired in your home? And you live in the Detroit metro area? Then contact us, we can help! You can send us a REPAIR REQUEST or call/text 248-390-5382 or email Info@DetroitPinball.com and we will get right back to you!

We have 30 years of pinball repair experience and are ready to help you! Located in West Bloomfield, Michigan (and Brighton) and we serve the west side of Detroit, all the way west to Lansing, north through Fenton to Flint, south through Ann Arbor to Milan. Basically the Michigan counties of Wayne, Oakland, Livingston, Genesee, Washtenaw and more. This includes Farmington, Bloomfield, W.Bloomfield, Franklin, Royal Oak, Ferndale, Southfield, Birmingham, Livonia, Redford, Westland, Garden City, Canton, Plymouth, Novi, Northville, S.Lyon, Wixom, Milford, Commerce, Brighton, Howell, Highland, Whitmore Lake, Ann Arbor, Dexter, Ypsilanti, Belleville, Dearborn, Saline, Pinckney, Taylor, Milan, Waterford, Fenton, Linden, Flint, Grand Blanc, Holly, Fowlerville, Williamston, etc.

Stern Harley Davidson pinball repair

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Went to Fenton today to fix a Stern Harley Davidson pinball. The game would turn on, but the dot matrix score display would not show any of the game’s graphics… Just a boot up message, and nothing more.

First thing examined was the three AA batteries. The owner never changed them, and they were leaking. The leakage did not look bad… the CPU board (where the batteries are mounted) showed barely any corrosion from the batteries. One pin on chip socket U213 was tarnished, so out of caution, replaced this socket. Also replaced the AA batteries with a cr2032 Lithium coin battery. But the score display still would not show any more than a boot up message.

Examined the dot matrix controller board, and found the problem! Massive battery corrosion on this board. Now how did battery corrosion get from the CPU board to the dot controller board (which is probably two feet below the batteries)? The answer is simple… when AA batteries leak, it’s not always corrosion juice that causes problems. Then “out gas” too. And since this corrosive gas is heavier than air, sometimes the dot controller board takes the corrosion hit.

To repair this board required neutralizing the corrosion, and physically removing it. After this is done, the traces in this area must be “buzzed out” to make sure none are broken. Sure enough, two board traces were open from the corrosion. Repaired those with some wire wrap, and now the game fully worked!



Dataeast/Sega Maverick pinball repair

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Visited Ann Arbor where the owner had a 1995 Sega Maverick pinball that needed repair. Problem was the riverboard in the upper left corner of the playfield. This is a common soft spot for Maverick. The ball loads into the riverboat where there are two optic switches that tell the game a ball is lock (for multiball.) The top most optic switch was not working… which means the game would get confused, and not release the ball(s).

After taking the riverboat apart and examining the optics, it was clear as to the problem… the optic itself had a cracked solder joint. Resoldering the part fixed the issue, and now the game would recognize when a ball was locked in the riverboat assembly.

In addition to this problem, the power supply also had some issues. Four cracked fuse clips had to be replaced. And the 100mfd and 330mfd capacitors also where leaking. This is pretty standard maintenance on a Dataeast/Sega game. Finally the three AA batteries were replaced with a Lithium cr2032 coin battery, to prevent any future battery corrosion.



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