The style of contact plate used in this picture makes life a little harder as you can't immediately see if someone has messed with the reflex unit to prevent it from resetting all the way. You'd need to either hope the reflex unit diagram is posted on the site, or make the diagram yourself.
How the reflex unit works is covered elsewhere, but the basic idea is that as you win credits, this unit is stepping up and disconnecting circuits, making it harder to advance scores and features. As coins/credits are played, the unit steps back down, making the game easier.
In any event, all we care about at the moment is cleaning and diagramming. The reflex unit is the other thing that Bally never provided the details for in the manual. Like the mixers, the schematic kindof shows what effect it has, but you don't know the wiring on the back of the contact plate, so you can't figure out exactly how the game works.
Well, just like in the mixer case, we can fix that lack of information, and the good news is that the reflex unit is generally simpler than the mixers. In early games, there may be only four wires and 10 or so rivets on the contact plate. In later games, the reflex unit is used in a couple places, so you see more contacts and wiper fingers.
Cleaning the contact plate is the same as always - remove the wipers and go to it. Pay particular attention to the wiper orientation, as there is no info in the manual to tell you which way it goes.
The frames mounting the coils can be moved around a bit, and the relay plate travel can be adjusted by the stop screws. One of the classic operator gaffs was to adjust the stop screws so the ratchets didn't turn, then they could set the wipers in whatever position they desired and they wouldn't move.
Verify manual operation of the relay plates moves the ratchets. There are internal stops inside the unit, so if a ratchet won't move, try the other one.
Usually when the operators gaffed the reflex unit, they did one of:
- misadjusted the relay plates so the ratchets couldn't turn
- Added a bolt through the housing to limit the range the wipers could spin
- bent up/removed the wipers
There was one other option that people with a factory blueprint or some knowledge could use - change the position of the reflex unit shaft adapter.
The actual shaft driven by the gearing inside the reflex unit is too small to thread the wiper mounting screw into, so an adapter piece was used to increase the shaft diameter.
The adapter slips over the small unit shaft and is held in place with set screws. There are no flats on the shaft, so it's possible to position the adapter any way you want. You could wind the reflex unit to it's fully reset position as determined by an internal stop, the spin the wipers to the desired position and tighten down the set screws.
You had to be careful doing this, as it's possible on many machines to create short circuits (e.g. example). On later model games, though, Bally painted a green and red dot on the unit, and it was safe for a red-dotted wiper finger to be anywhere on/between the dots when the reflex unit was reset.
This isn't necessary to do. As this information is assembled, the mysteries of how the game works will be revealed. However, there is probably only a handful of people that find this interesting.
After the wipers are off, two or three screws mount the contact plate to the unit. Take them out an turn over the contact plate to reveal the wiring. Just like on the mixers, print out a reflex unit template and fill in the wiring details. Unlike the mixers, this diagram is viewed from the wiper side.
Here is an example for Magic Ring.
Like diagramming mixers discussed earlier, half the game is figuring out what the wire numbers are for the wires connected to the solder lugs. You have to find the reflex unit symbols on the schematic and match the wire colors. If the wire colors are hard to see, verifying the wire with a meter may be needed.
However, check to see if any reflex diagrams are available for similar games. Even if the wire instance number changed, often the colors are the same on many machines.
