newbie needs help with Hi Deall pinball issue

[MrTy]

I have a Ballys Hi Deal  machine that has been in my possession for about  20 years. I turned it on the other day and when the machine loaded its first ball it keeps trying to load it over and over.If I put the ball into play it will start counting down balls to game over. If I reset and try again it does the same. I can't find anybody local that works on these. Any suggestions what to look for would be appreciated.

[Fourbyracer]

Sounds like to me you have a stuck or broken contact (switch).  I bet if you prop the board up that it will be the contact/switch right at the plunger.  It could also be a broken wire right there but either way, it should be pretty easy to find and fix.  What is happening in laymans term (since I am no expert--just work on my 3), is after the coil fires to send the ball over to the plunger, the switch right at the base of the plunger tells the machine "its here" and so the coil no longer fires.  So its either the switch at the base of the plunger, or the switch at the coil where the ball started.  Start there and hopefully someone smarter than me will jump in and carry the flag further.   

[slotsteve]

also could be sw on ball return

[David B Fowler]

Also check the outhole switch for being stuck.

[Mr. Dinoman]

Being it is a EM machine, there could be 6 thousand different reasons for this to happen...Every relay contact must work or strange things happen...EM's can be very difficult to trace out the problem if you do not have the schematic...I once spent over 80hrs trying to find the reason my EM would not work right and finally found a "cold solder Joint" on one of the relay wiring connections...That's all it takes to make a game go south...