Up until recently I hated the thought of trying to repair E.M's but after last week end that has changed.
A friend of mine has a GTB drop a card and a WMS hot tip (E.M) and both were doing all weird and wonderful things including blowing fuses and coils locking on.
Last time I was up at his place I tried to repair the drop a card and after spending most of the day not getting any where i gave up.
In between the last time I was there and last weekend I had a quick flick through marvin's E.M. repair guide (but if you read the first few paragraphs it tells you not to do this but to read all of it properly)
I pulled down all the steppers, score reels and so on, cleaned and gapped everything as per the guide and only lubing what parts the guide said to lube with the correct lube, and after spending a full long day on each, hey presto they both work perfectly first time I turned them on.
Apparently both have not been operational for at least 10 years. Fortunately there wasn't anything that was worn beyond use which made things easier.
Pretty much every moving part was coated in grease which had gone nearly rock hard which accounted for 95% of the problems.
one of them even had a lamp with an internal short which was causing one of the fuses to blow.
I have turned away quite a few E.M. rebuilds in the last few month but won't be doing so again. All of them have been E.M.s that have not worked for years.
I don't class my self as an E.M. expert but the next email of phone call I get from some one asking me "do you repair / rebuild E.M.s and if not do you know some one on the gold coast who does" my answer will be different.
