Measuring a flipper coil's windings
Steps
- Game off, meter on ohms.
- Find the common lug: on FL11630 coils it is an outer lug with both a thick and a thin wire; on FL23/600-30/2600 coils it is the centre lug.
- Common to the thick-wire lug: a little over 4 ohms (the power winding).
- Common to the thin-wire lug: about 4 ohms at rest, rising to about 160 ohms when you push the flipper up by hand so the EOS opens.
- More than about 5 ohms at rest means a pitted EOS switch; clean it for full power.
- Readings far from these mean a bad coil; the hold winding fails more often than the power winding.
Systems
Related tips
- Flipper coils have two windings
- How the two windings of a flipper coil work
- How a System 11 flipper coil works
- Flipper coil numbers carry two windings
- Replacing a flipper coil
- Removing and checking the flipper coil stop
- Replace an elongated flipper coil bracket
- Williams flipper coils from weakest to strongest
Source: Repairing Williams System 11 Pinball 1986 to 1990, Part Two, Clay Harrell (pinrepair.com)