Installing your Shaker and Knocker in an American Pinball game

American Pinball·video·7m 33s·analyzed·May 4, 2023

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.011

TL;DR

American Pinball shaker/knocker installation guide for Hot Wheels machines

Summary

Dave Brennan from American Pinball provides a comprehensive technical walkthrough for installing shaker and knocker components in Hot Wheels pinball machines. The video covers physical mounting procedures, wiring connections, service menu configuration, and testing procedures via the coin door interface.

Key Claims

Hot Wheels machines have pre-drilled holes for shaker and knocker mounting on the cabinet bottom
high confidence · Dave Brennan, American Pinball Tech Service, installation walkthrough
The knocker operates at 48 volts and connects to J10 on the add-on board
high confidence · Dave Brennan, referencing Hot Wheels quick reference guide
The shaker motor operates at 12 volts and connects to J3 on the add-on board
high confidence · Dave Brennan, referencing Hot Wheels quick reference guide
Knocker intensity can be configured as low, medium, or high via service menu settings
high confidence · Dave Brennan, service menu walkthrough
The shaker motor requires rapid successive button presses to activate due to momentary pulse design
high confidence · Dave Brennan, testing procedure description

Notable Quotes

“All you're going to need for this are a 5/16 nut driver and a Phillips screwdriver for the shaker and then a quarter inch nut driver for the knocker.”
Dave Brennan@ 0:16 — Tools and preparation summary
“For Hot Wheels we made this very simple. If you look in the back of the bottom cabinet, look for the wiring harness, you'll see plugs that match up with the shaker and the knocker.”
Dave Brennan@ 3:30 — Design philosophy highlighting ease of installation for end users
“keep in mind that all of the power is actually just a momentary pulse so in order to get the shaker going you're going to have to rapidly push the start button or the select button on the inside of the coin door to get that to function.”
Dave Brennan@ 5:53 — Technical quirk explanation for shaker testing

Entities

Dave BrennanpersonAmerican Pinballcompany Hot Wheelsgame

Signals

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community_signal: American Pinball providing detailed technical installation content and support resources (quick reference guides, email/phone support) for machine owners
high · Dave Brennan directs viewers to American Pinball website support section and provides contact information for additional assistance
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product_strategy: American Pinball emphasizes user-friendly installation design with pre-drilled holes, color-coded wiring, and simplified connector system
high · Dave explicitly states 'For Hot Wheels we made this very simple' and demonstrates matching color-coded wires and pre-positioned connector plugs

Topics

Hardware installation proceduresprimaryShaker motor technical specificationsprimaryKnocker mechanism installationprimaryService menu configurationprimaryWiring and electrical connectionsprimary

Sentiment

positive(0.85)— Informative, patient instructional tone emphasizing ease of installation; no criticism or complaints present. Dave Brennan presents procedures clearly and repeatedly emphasizes that American Pinball designed the system to be 'very simple' for end users.

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.023

Hey Hot Wheels owners, Dave Jeff Brenner with American Pinball Tech Service. Today I'm going over the installation process for the shaker and knocker on your Hot Wheels game. All you're going to need for this are a 5 16 nut driver and a Phillips screwdriver for the shaker and then a quarter inch nut driver for the knocker. So once you have everything you want to power off your game, remove the lock bar, slide your playfield glass out, and then pivot the playfield all the way up vertical, resting it on the backbox. Now with your playfield lifted, let's start by mounting the shaker and knocker to the bottom of the cabinet. You'll notice pre-drilled holes where these go. First thing we're going to do is we're going to mount the strike plate to this vertical wood piece here and you'll see that there's already pre-drilled holes. So take two of your quarter inch nut driver head wood screws and you're going to attach the strike plate to the pre-drilled holes. Now that the strike plate is attached, you want to screw down the knocker mechanism. Now we move on to the shaker Position that over the holes Take your 5 16ths nut driver and attach all four of them. Now take the plastic cover and place it over the top of the shaker so that the holes align. Take your Phillips screwdriver and attach it to the shaker. Now for the connection points to hook these up to power. Your knocker will come with a connector where you connect the black and brown wires. So black goes to black, brown goes to purple, and you plug it in. And then we'll feed this into the back of the cabinet. Same thing goes with this for the shaker. So let me reposition the camera and we'll show you where those plug in. For Hot Wheels we made this very simple. If you look in the back of the bottom cabinet, look for the wiring harness, you'll see plugs that match up with the shaker and the knocker The shaker motor should have SM for shaker motor and it matches up with these colors So yellow to yellow black to black and just plug it in And then same thing brown to brown, black to black, and plug it in. Now with this done, you can put your play field back down and power up your game. Now with your game powered up, you'll want to open the coin door, get into the service menu, hitting the black button, go into settings, and then go into standard settings. From here, scroll down to knocker. All of the factory settings are going to be highlighted in bright green. In order to change them, hit the black button to select it. Use the red buttons to scroll over. You want to hit mechanical. hit the black button to save the settings. And then below this you'll see the knocker usage. The factory is medium so you can select this to be low, medium, or high. If you go down even further you can see the shaker intensity and the shaker usage but these are already set to on. So now that you have that selected you can back out using the green buttons and then go into tests and then you'll want to go to coils then from here you'll need to pull out on the interlock switch just inside the left bottom of your coin door this will activate 48 volts for your knocker so you can test it so now scroll down to to knocker and you can either hit the start button or the black menu button to activate it Now you can scroll down to the shaker and this keep in mind that all of the power is actually just a momentary pulse so in order to get the shaker going you're going to have to rapidly push the start button or the black button on the inside of the coin door to get that to function. Now that you've verified that they're working you can back out of the service menu and you're ready to play. If you're curious about where your shaker and knocker are plugged in on the circuit board. To get a better visual of this, you can actually check out the quick reference guide. If you go to the American Pinball website, you'll go to support and then scroll down to Hot Wheels and then click on Hot Wheels quick reference guide. Here you can see that the knocker and shaker are plugged into the add-on board which happens to be located in the backbox behind the monitor. So you can see that the knocker is run off of 48 volts and plugged into J10 and the shaker motor is running off of 12 volts plugged into J3. If you have any questions along the way during the install process on anything that I didn't cover in this video, please reach out to me at the email or phone number listed at the bottom of the screen. Thanks for watching!