Repairs and upgrades at Wildhorse
One of the most important upgrades at the bowling alley was to replace the worn-out pins and bands on the lanes. This, our customers told us, was more important that resurfacing the lanes, or anything else. So over the last two weeks, we've replaced the pin-sets on five of the six lanes. The sixth lane remains out-of-order, as I have yet to repair the motor-controller board for that lane.
The problem that we encountered was that in replacing the pins, we also shortened the strings on the pin-setter by two or three inches on each pin. The next step is to adjust the machine to compensate for that, which in itself is a pretty simple process; there's a little reel of string for each pin, and you just turn it to give some more slack, or tighten it up if it's too loose. The problem we were having was that some of the pins wouldn't come back down when the reset button was pressed, and it took a while before we (I) figured out what the problem was.
I knew that the problem was in the little brake-shoe that clamps down on the string to keep it from moving. What I didn't know, was exactly how it worked. Yesterday, I finally got a pretty good idea as to the workings of it, and today I was able to confirm what I thought. When the brake is engaged, the pin is supposed to drop an inch or two until the wedge of the brake holds it from falling any further. When the reset button is pressed, the brake will release, but it needs to be pulled backwards again to disengage. The problem was that I had adjusted the strings to hold the pins too high up, so when they were reset at the pin-setter pulled on the strings, there wasn't enough travel to disengage the brake.
It took some twiddling to find the sweet-spot where there would be enough travel to release the brake, but not so much that the pins would dangle too low. The sweet-spot is about 2 inches below the centering-ring; that keeps it well above the play area, but gives enough travel for the brake-shoe to be fully pulled back when released. Once I knew what I was doing, it took less than half an hour to reset all of the machines properly. After that,
trixstir and I bowled a few frames on each lane to make sure that everything was working smoothly. We're planning to re-open the alley to full hours on Tuesday, and we've placed ads in the local papers announcing that and inviting people to come in and set up their teams for the leagues. The advertising is not inexpensive, so here's hoping it pays off! :)