Introducing... Target Alpha!

Back to 4 machines for the time being!  Picked up this cute little Target Alpha and finally have one of these games from the "drop target monster" games, ala El Dorada, Solar City, Canada Dry, etc.

It's a player's quality game.  The playfield is super rough, but the backglass is in very good condition, and the cab is pretty good.  Side of the head is OK.

laser fighter or 70s rock and roller?

One of the super cool things about this specific game, though?  WILLIAMS FLIPPERS CONVERSION!

Williams coils!  Bridge rectifiers!

one assembly, up close.

So with the Williams flipper assembly, this game becomes intense compared to other EMs.  Sometimes I even restrain my flips or else a ball skyrocketing to the upper drop targets will invariably be deflected and bang lightly on the glass. 
ROCKET POWER!


A few obvious quirks in the game.  I don't have schematics for it (some on order,) but a few obvious things to start on.
First thing I always do is convert the lights in the head too LEDs to preserve the backglass.  Then upper playfield and beneath the playfield will happen later.


Not all of the drops were being counted properly in the bonus scoring sequence.
As luck would have it, this was covered by The Pinball Ninja in a very recent posting, including a great video on this stepper.  
The site requires a login, but lifetime access is ONLY $20 SO YOU SHOULD PROBABLY JUST GET A LOGIN ALREADY.

this is in the incorrect end position.  It should step one further, off the rivets.

This is the corrected start position, beginning on the 2nd rivet.

The rightmost drop (on the bottom) is now scoring properly.  The leftmost drop (on the top) is still not scoring as it should, but I will inspect that further later this week.


The lower drop bank also had this top switch erroneously gapped to "always open".  I am unsure what it was controlling, but hey, we fixed it.  I'll check that wire out once the schematic comes.

Other issues:
Player 3 scoring is way off, so will have to clean and gap all of the scoring reel contacts.
Bottom right drop wasn't lighting the circle in front when hit, but fixed that with some switch stack adjustment.
The game has 2 blank drop targets, but I will see if I can get (just 2) proper printed ones from Pinball Resource.
Other than that stuff and verifying the bonus stuff is perfect, I want to try and repairing/reinforcing any cracked plastics, and then we should be all good to go until something new crops up.