Yes. The expander turns them on. Make sure there is a incandescent bulb in the light socket connected to it, not led bulb, and confirm it’s lighting up.

If the lower flippers aren't working there is another possible problem. Two of the connectors going to the head can get swapped. If that occurs the game will work but the lower flippers won't and lamps will be off. Look at the smaller square molex connectors and look at the wires to make sure they match. If not they may be mixed up.

I ran into this on my game. The person I bought it from had labeled all the connectors. I made the mistake of believing they were correct. Was chasing down the lower flipper issue and ultimately discovered that the connectors had been mislabeled. Once swapped back it all worked. Would have been better if he hadn't labeled them. Since then I printed off all new nice labels for every connector. They are correct and do help.

But for any new game I don't trust any prior labels or work. I triple check everything.

Thanks, I didn't even think to check the bulb. My solenoid expander relay is rapidly clicking back and forth so I have another on the way. As far as the lower flippers. They want to work, very breifly, enough for a flutter flip. Then nothing after that.

I'll report back after replacing the bulb and solenoid expander board.

I have also ran into this problem on another game and I now find its worth my time to check everything even if it's been labeled.

New Elektra owner here, just looking for a little feedback as I’m no pro. First, the ball eject doesn’t always work right and get the ball into the plunger. Coil fires, just not hard enough? Second, is one of flippers on the lower playfield is hyper firing when in use, other side works just fine. The switches appear to be ok underneath, what am I missing? Any tips is appreciated!
Edit: kicker looks to be broke in trough, replacement part is really 3d printed?

Not certain. That’s one of the oddball Bally parts. The flipper machine gunning means that either the hold part of the coil is bad or, the wire fell off. You can test the two coil windings on each coil with the resistance test on a multimeter or, swap the coils to confirm.

I am working on a playfield set in which someone removed all the inserts. I am requesting assistance in ensuring I have the correct inserts identified for the machine. Please have a look and comment on anything marked incorrectly.

Already several edits on this post. Many videos and photos viewed to get this right. Cross fingers..

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Got today this custom Elektra pinball, hope I get it to work, what do you think, should I try to restore the original art or leave it as is, I kinda like it, but also really curious what's behind under the stickers/plexiglass

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Would anyone know how many each of gi & inserts an Elektra has? I'm making a Comet led order. Thanks

Hi. I have an Elektra upper playfield "hardtop" that I'm willing to part with. 3M 300SL adhesive will need added, and holes need Dremeled out. But all the artwork is here. PM if interested.

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Wondering if anybody has ran across this issue:
On my lower pf during Elektra time, the ball will kick out into play the first time,
but it will not retrigger the coil when the ball drains and time is left.
It was working just fine until I cleaned the lower pf recently. I’ve adjusted the switch multiple times and even swapped the coil (only because I had one on hand).
Bumping the machine to retrigger the switch doesn’t seem to work.
Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

If the coil is launching then there was probably nothing wrong with the coil. You mention you’ve adjusted the switch. But have you actually tested it? First with a meter and also running the switch test for the game. Adjustments don’t matter if a wire is off or broken and the CPU doesn’t detect the switch closure.

Thanks. I follow the logic.
I’m aware the coil was not the issue. Admittedly, I’m a novice with a multimeter. I’m not sure if the switch would have to be taken out of the circuit to do a continuity test?
Power to the lp is killed on startup until Elektra time is active so I couldn’t get the switch to trigger the coil with the playfield up. However, if no ball is present when lp is first active, coil doesn’t fire at all.
I can do the switch test to see if it’s actually registering as closed when the lp is first active. Hopefully I can trigger the switch in switch mode with the playfield up.

Went through the switch test and it is definitely registering. I believe it’s an issue with adjusting the wire attached to the leaf switch that triggers the “lower saucer” as it’s called in the manual.
It seems to be triggering that coil before the ball is positioned in front of that kicker resulting in a stuck/dead ball. The Elektra timer stops counting down as well at whatever number it was on.
That coil is not quick to reset in the solenoid test and only triggers once when the switch remains closed during gameplay.
Leaving the switch closed doesn’t cycle the coil (until it reads open).
There may be more to it as I’m not sure that’s how it’s intended to operate.

Hi everyone!

Just wanted to say that it's been a halt in working on this game. Hopefully I will continue within a couple of weeks.

But as I mentioned before, I think that the Aux Lamp Driver board is the problem here. Thinking about buying a new one. I found out that there is two models out there. One from Alltek and one from Pindoras Box. Do you think there are quality differences between them?
Alltek has been around and I guess is proven to have good quality?

Robotworkshop

My Elektra has never shot the ball up twice. You only have one chance to get points on the lower playfield. But maybe it's a setting for it?

My Elektra has never shot the ball up twice. You only have one chance to get points on the lower playfield. But maybe it's a setting for it?

I know I am quite late to post about it here.
But the fault was the auxillary board. So now the lower playfield works perfect!

Yes that’s a setting! You can select once or multiple times until the time runs out.

Does the hardtop replace the plexiglass? Or should I order a new Plexiglass as well for a restoration?

The hardtop is only the upper and lower playfield. You can get the plexiglass cover from CPR

No, the hardtop is all three playfields. It says so on their site and I have seen it on this thread.

The hardtop set does have all three. I have a set to install. My upper and lower is trashed. Since the middle usually doesn’t get trashed that may be optional to use. But in either case I believe you still need the thick plexiglass playfield surface.

Thank you!

Making progress finally. One of the two is fully working. I have fresh rubber and plastics on the way to finish it up.

The second one is close but it is being a pain the butt. I'm trying to get the lower playfield flippers to work but not having any luck. My test button is broken (see picture) but when I jump the leads together they still don't work. The top four flippers continue to work even though the ball is being ejected onto the playfield below.

I've replaced the solenoid expander board with no luck. Looking for the next steps in the schematic.

Anyone know a good source for the broken test button?

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Solved.

Thought I had already rebuilt the connector to the expander board. One of the crimps was not making good contact. That's all it was.

Only downside to working on two machines side by side is swearing you've done to machine A what you remember doing to Machine B. Haha

Won't be long now, have a few blown lamp SCRs that need swapped and a couple connectors to rebuild and these two will be good to go.

Hey all, I recently acquired an Elektra and have a persistent, game-killing switch issue. Switch #2 ("left and right of outhole") registers as closed no matter what I do. I have ensured both #2 switches are properly gapped and no diodes or leaf edges are making improper contact anywhere. Also the diodes on both switches tested fine, but I replaced them with new 1N4004 anyway. When I unplug J2 from MPU, the switch stops registering as closed, so at least it's not the board. The wires have become mangled near the coin door, and some of the insulation was breached. So I removed the zip ties and patched any exposed wires I saw with elec tape. Someone on a FB group suspected the solenoid expander could be at fault, though I don't see how. To rule that out as a possibility I removed the connector on the expander during the switch test, and the switch still registered closed. I'm hoping someone here can help! I am at a loss. My only remaining theory is that insulation is breached somewhere else along the way, but I don't exactly want to remove every zip tie along the way to check. Other thoughts?

For quick reference here is the existing FB post about it: https://www.facebook.com/groups/pinballrepair/posts/7535510083137800
And the schematic: https://www.ipdb.org/files/778/Bally_1981_Elektra_English_Manual_with_paginated_schematics.pdf

Did you check your wires all the way back to the board? Continuity good on them? Nothing grounding out?

I just tested, there is continuity on the white/red wire from both #2 switches to J2, as well as on the brown/yellow wire on both #2 switches to J2.

I also tested ground to all 6 of the leaf edges on both #2 switches, no continuity on those.

Is that what you mean?

Fellow Elektra owner here, trying to handout some advice. I’ve had to replace a fair amount of switches on mine, really only thing that would work. A lot of wiring and mechs on this game so it can be hard to trace what is causing issues but mine had a couple switches grounding out others and previous owners had messed with the wiring schematic in the back box and put it back wrong so the tension in the connectors was bad in areas. Basically had to disassemble my game to get it back right, but it’s been working great since. I don’t know what to do on these older games besides just try to replace switch/coils sometimes.

This generation of switch test is goofy the way switch test works and will only show the lowest number active switch. So I suspect another switch is shorted and is making all switches active in the row/column but #2 is the only one showing because its the lowest number in the row/ column.

You can try cutting the brown yellow wire at the switch to see if any other switch numbers come up in test afterwards. But this will disable all the other switches on the brown yellow line.

Switch #8 should show closed if there's a ball in the lower playfield.

However you choose to go about this. You'll need to isolate the issue to a smaller area and then narrow it down until you find it.

When I disconnect the brown/yellow wire from the molex on A4J2, I get no other switch errors. That tells me that #2 is the only problem here, correct? I feel like the only conclusion at this point is that there is breached insulation somewhere between the switch and the board, and I don't really want to remove every zip tie to find it. So I'm leaning towards rewiring the circuit from scratch. I don't know what else to do! Open to other ideas before I do this last-resort approach.

If any of the switches causing problems have small capacitors on them you can disconnect a lead to see if the issue goes away. I have to replace some of the switch capacitors on my Elektra.

Do you have a long jumper wire with alligator clips? You can cut off the wire between the A4J2 connector and the switch and try the jumper. This would definitely rule out whether or not your run in between is breached some place. But if the problem is further downstream, the issue will remain the same. Worth a try.

So in switch test, if you take the balls out of the trough, no switches should be active. Is that switch registering as closed?

Yeah, you can see it in the videos on the Facebook link he shared.

So using a long alligator clip per Flashball I did go straight from A4J2 (brown yellow wire) to various points on that circuit to try to isolate where there might have been an insulation breach. (What I did was remove the molex pin from the connector and stick my multimeter needle in there instead, and attached alligator clips to that.) No matter where I did that, switch #2 was somehow no longer an issue but #34 was every single time. They are on the same row in the matrix. I disconnected the capacitor on #34 and the game plays perfectly. I’m confused why, but it seems to work. Why did #2 magically fix itself when I shorted that circuit??

I do have replacement capacitors on the way, but do I really need to install one? #34 is a standup target and it seems to register just fine without it.

Perhaps related - I noticed there was some green grease all over the J2 connector. It’s a new MPU board (from Linkpete, game came with it I’m not familiar) and it’s not corrosion it definitely had a grease consistency. Perhaps flux? Not sure, but I cleaned that up as best I could, thinking that perhaps it was conductive. That’s my only theory why #2 seemed to fix itself. [EDIT: the green stuff per pinwiki is the insulation breaking down or something, common thing apparently, will replace those molex pins]

If switch 34s capacitor was a dead short, then you were having a row shorted out and that explains why switch #2 was showing active.

Switch matrix shorts are tricky and they happen alot because of those pesky capacitors going bad. Replace it if you want, or don't, it won't hurt anything. The purpose of the capacitor on a switch is to help register a really breif switch closure.

Crazy, so in the future if I have a similar switch issue it might not even be the switch that comes up in the switch test huh? It could be one of the caps along either the row or column? How fun lol.

So if/when I do replace the #34 cap, the issue should be fixed… right? I’m having a hard time understanding why a cap failing would short the whole row. I didn’t even think it was in circuit I thought each one was on a dead end. If anyone can explain that I’m all ears but I think what I gotta do is scour the pinwiki since this is my first Bally from this era. It’s pretty intimidating!

So, for anyone who's shopped an Elektra and had trouble getting the bulbs out from the sockets that are deep in the plexiglass. Here's a cool trick my friend suggested. Get some 10mm diameter heat shrink tubing. Place it around the bulb and shrink it. Then give it a few minutes to completely cool off. They pull right out after that.

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Anyone needing any plastics and don't want to buy the whole set? They aren't in perfect condition but may help someone.

If I have what you need I'm happy to help. Send me a message.

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I could use the plastics for the lower playfield. One is broken but I don't recall which one. Will have to check tonight.

Hey all - I just installed the Alltek lamp driver board. There is minor, livable strobing on some of the GI, but there is still serious strobing on the lower playfield. I suspect it has something to do with the auxiliary relay that controls the lower pf. Is there a way to eliminate strobing on the lower playfield? I thought the Alltek would take care of that.

For context I replaced all lights with LEDs except for the 3 that are not for the playfield. Each of the 3 auxiliary boards have a bulb associated with it and my understanding is that those need to remain incandescent.

Did you just replace the main lamp board? What about the aux lamp board?

I just replaced the main board. I didn't consider any other boards I'd need. What else do I need to buy?

EDIT: I see now that I'd need to buy both the $120 main board, plus the $90 aux board. Pinballlife should make that a little more obvious. I'm going to opt for the Comet adapters instead since my lamp board works fine. I can't justify the cost difference for Alltek in this case, but I will say that their tech support got back to me right away.

This is the one I bought and Elektra was listed
https://www.pinballlife.com/alltek-ultimate-lampled-driver-board.html

You probably don't need a brand new board. Just get one of these auxillary board adapters instead, it's a lot cheaper.

ebay.com link: itm

Swapped mine to leds and using the adapters on the boards helps for sure. I had problems with some lamp sockets on inserts on the lower playfield and swapped them out for pcb boards or Yoppsicles led board instead. I couldn’t suggest those enough on these older games, they really work great.

I have an Elektra in my shop that the flippers for both upper playfields are always on. Meaning they always work when you press the flipper buttons. No matter if a game is playing or not.

What the heck??

Upper /lower flipper selection is controlled by the solenoid expander board. Perhaps a problem with that board or maybe it was bypassed?

Are you SURE all the cables are plugged in correctly? There are a couple that can be swapped. Game will still work but the lower flippers never will. When the connectors plugged in check the wire colors and locations on each side. When I bought my Elektra a couple of plugs were tagged wrong and ended up being swapped.

Also make sure you have an actual bulb placed in the under playfield socket near the relay. If the bulb is missing or LED installed the relay won't work.