The answer is basically ALWAYS no.

Lubrication and EM (in fact almost all pinball) basically is a no go And the parts that are the very rare exceptions would work fine for years in a home environment without lubrication anyway.

It just creates gunk and attracts dirt and makes things worse.

If you need lubrication to solve a mechanical problem you have to take the components apart and clean them and then you will not need lubrication again unless you spray it in there and it later siezes up (and it will).

Use google-
search here-
there are probably >40 threads asking the same thing from different perspecrives. The safe bet is NO LUBE.

If you have to ask- the answer is no- thats correct 99.9% of the time.

You can find all sorts of “solutions” and novel ideas and new approaches and operators are allowed to do whatever they need to to keep theor games earning money and know well the consequences of lubing this that or the other. So if you search- basically you will find “support” for or against lubrication of almost anything. The fact is that if you clean it really well (take it apart completely and polish all metal etc) lube will not be needed.

You can also cut coil sleeves pretty easily with a very sharp rigid razor or thin knife. It works so well you will be hard pressed to know after polishing up the cut end with a tiny bit of novus 2. I actually bring them into the kitchen and use a nice cutting board to cut them- getting through the first mm or two cleanly is key, once you break through the top layer it cuts like butter.

I wish Gottlieb Schematics were available to help... it sounds like you may still have issues with the switches or a switch on the stack that runs from the 100's 9th position over to the 1,000's. I know you have checked but its really only those switches that affect this but I am going on memory from a different Gottlieb game so if you have a schematic consult that to be sure.

As for the reset, is it not trying to fire the coils to move the reels? What happens if you take one of the reels on the player 2 side that are not resetting, and by hand index it two positions and then turn on game and try to reset it? Does it move and then stop at the same position it was "stuck" at before? I am sorta wondering if you may have a reel set up weird such that the reset is working mechanically and electrically, but the numbers are not lined up with the mech. Its been a while since I had a Gottlieb score reel in pieces but I think it may be possible to put it back together a little wrong and get this behavior.... someone who has done this recently will be able to tell.... but look really carefully a the mechs and compare player 1 reels with player 2, are you sure they are identical?

I don't know that I would say you should just order longer coil sleeves and cut everything to size, but I can tell you that I always order a bunch of longer ones because you can do that... so its really a matter of do I want to order the right one and wait or do I just cut it to size and use it. There is absolutely no negative effect to hand cutting. I will say the pipe cutter idea probably is something I will adopt. A razor is easy and probably faster but getting a perfect vertical cut is hard without a jig- the pipe cutter idea should be retained in your brain- thats a good one.

Just remember the first rule of pinball repair. If you “fixed” something that was working and now it’s not... the reason it’s not is because you changed something. So if this was fine and now is not- its very unlikely a new problem started up while you were working on the reels.