New Life Games Tech Forums

New here. My first post.
About a month ago I was looking for a refurbishment project when I found a Summit for sale cheap. It was in need of some work, but looked decent and the price was right. It was advertised as “lights up but non-working. All parts, complete”. I'm one of thoses guys who likes to fix things, so a new project. How hard can it be?
In truth, if I had found this site first I would have known the bad rap Summit’s get and passed on this one.
Lucky for me, I found newlifegames later.

Can I get this attach picture thingis to work for me, thats the hard part.

bob

One thing I never knew is how unbelievably heavy slots can be. I think the anchor on the Titanic was smaller. I'm not a small guy, little larger than average, but even with a dolly it was a two man job to get it up the porch steps. Advil time.
Bob

Nice looking machine Bob and welcome to NLG! :244- Do you have any before pictures? What kind of things did you have to deal with to get it running?

First thing to fix is the power cord. In all my years I have never seen a cord in this bad a shape. Even cords that had been ripped out or hit by mowers were better. 
It was a little scary just plugging the Summit in.
The pictures don’t show the worst of it. Electrical tape all the way to the plug. Any exposed rubber crumpled like sawdust.
Two before pictures.

I don’t know about bringing the power out the bottom.
If it was me I would have put some kind of cord guard under there. Maybe there was at one time, I don’t know. Anyway, replaced cord, and moved it from the bottom to the back. It won’t get squished again.

Bob

It's pretty common to see where someone wasn't paying attention and set the machine on the cord that way. That slot on the bottom was the only protection offered as most commonly in the casinos the machines are bolted to a cabinet with a matching hole in it for the cord to plug in where customers can't get to it, so there were no damage worries

Thanks cowboygames.
That is actually the before pictures, the machine looked good, except for the reel glass. I'll post more about how I got it working.
bob

Talking about reel glass, here is a before close-up. Lots of flaking on the top. I did my best to restore it, but that story is for another post.
Bob

Now that it is safe to power, I can get into the guts.
All lights come on. The coin accept works, one to five coins. The handle is good. Reels spin, but reel three does not auto-stop. It slowly winds down and the seven segment LED display shows “33-“.  After putzing around a bit I broke down and found  a schematic online.

The reel stop mechanics look good and the solenoid Ohm’s right.  Examining the driver board I found that the circuits associated with reel three have been reworked in the past. Not a good sign, but the workmanship is OK and it checks out. The CPU board has had some work also, but again no problems located. I was pretty sure it was not the CPU anyway since most everything else CPU related works. One thing I did find is that one of the reel position signals was not getting to the board.

This Summit has three small reel position assembles with two phototransistors each, which detect slots built into the reels. One of the phototransistors had a bad solder joint. It must have been good enough to make contact 35 years ago, but not today. Fixed solder, now reels work, spin, stop when they should.

Here is picture of the offending reel sensor.
I'm getting long winded in my old age.
Bob

That's some good detective work Bob. Keep us posted on the progress :89-

Next problem.
With any win, the machine ran continuously for five second then stopped and displayed “-8-“. About 30 coins popped out, more or less.

The coin out switch on the hopper checked OK with a multimeter, but the signal was not getting back to the CPU board.
At first I suspected another bad solder, but a wire brush to the harness connectors and a cleaning to the board connectors made the problem go away.
I now have a machine that works. Mostly.

Last known problem, occasionally a coin sticks in the hopper output. Display shows “-8-“, then changes to “-9-“ when the coin is cleared. I guess I’ll make a weekend project to strip and clean the hopper, just not this weekend.
Bob

Hmm, the fun part, glass.

The reel glass is in poor shape, I knew that fixing the top part of the reel glass was going to be hard.
I’ve restored old pinball glass, but only filling cracks, holes and scratches, not large areas.

First, I removed the glass and sprayed the back with a liberal coat of Krylon Triple Thick Glaze. This preserves the paint in the current state so nothing else will flake off. After setting, I scanned the glass, so that I have a good before image.

Next is a trip to the local artsy-craftsy store for an assortment of acrylic paints. Small paints are cheap, so I got a bracket of colors.
Now, fill in the cracks, let dry, check with light, repeat as necessary. After a long while, this is what I get. It took about a week of a few minutes a night.
Not bad, but not good either. Some cracks are just not fixable, and the blue on top will never be even.
Maybe I could scrape the “not fixable” cracks down to glass and repaint, or scrape the top blue to glass and spray, but I’m not going to.

I did all that work before I knew I could buy replacement glass on line.
Bob

great job! :259-

K+ from me, too.  I would have been too afraid to tackle one of those.  Nice work.

Beautiful machine Bob!  :131-
I like what you did to it! :89-
That machine will be worth tons someday!  :91-

Thanks, but it's not about being brave, it's about not knowing any better.
Bob

A couple of more pictures.
The coooling fan wasn't so much a "whisper fan" as it was a "screecher". So replaced it.
Bob

There is an operator reset switch on the side, but the Summit didn't come with an operator key, so needed to replace the lock.
Local stores didn't have a momentary lock, only two position locks, where the key can be removed on either positions..

In the original design, the lock has an arm that pushes down on a momentary switch. Seemed like extra parts to me.

I replaced the lock-momentary switch with a momentary key switch found on Amazon.

Here is the before and after of the reset lock.

Me again.
The Summit last known issue was that the hopper would have an extra coin stick under the payout counter switch.
That is, if the payout was ten, ten coins would come out and an eleventh coin would sit under the switch.
Reading the various forums here (every helpful) it sounded like the hopper brake wasn't braking.
Here are a picture of the hopper coin counter and the brake.
The brake looks like it was lubed then dusted then dusted again.
Bob

I took the mechanism apart, cleaned it with alcohol and slapped it back together and POOF (like magic), now it works.
Just in time, the grandkids are descending on the home this weekend.

Bob

Good work Bob,  :244- :244-
Now it's time to find another fixer-upper...