Techno Stuff
How They Work - Score Disc/Replay Counter

Score Lites

surf club
score lamps schematic

OK, this is actually going to make sense. The manual diagram shows that the score unit is an 8-step unit, and there are 8 score steps on the game (4, 6, 8, 12, 18, 36, 48, 64). To give you an even bigger warm and fuzzy feeling, 8 of the wire lugs on the wiper board are cleverly labelled "to score lites".

The shrewd person would assume that for each step of the unit, a wiper is turning on the successive lamps on the panel. That's pretty much exactly how it works. Looking at the manual pic, the long wiper pointing straight down is the lite wiper. We see how it will move through the lamps starting with #15-1 and ending on #31-2 at positions 26-33. This correspondes to the score unit disc box on the schematic.

The only thing interesting about this wiper is that it is connected to the metal frame of the unit, and the frame is tied to wire #30. Since the whole metal frame is part of the circuit, it's possible for a frayed wire to short against it.

The schematic has more junk on it, though. The spotting disc is also tied to the lamps, and we see that if the extra ball trip relay #2 is not tripped, and the spotting disc index coil switch is closed, the circuit can be completed as the spotting wipers connect to the lamps. This is the circuit that flashes the score lamps when you are playing coins/credits. The flashing is only active while the spotting disc is turning, and it's cut off when playing for extra balls, since the scores can't change at that time - but the spotting wipers are turning as part of the extra ball play.

The only other thing to note is the schematic is drawn with the 12 lamp on. This isn't the reset position, and is not special in any other way. It's just where the guy decided to draw the line.