I'm a new 2nd owner of a newer low play build and while I've had a couple minor issues, these were easily fixed.

One issue I haven't been able to fix yet is with the bowling alley release pin. The pin will be up for the first ball and it releases ok, and then very slowly starts to come back up. After that I get 4-5 balls which roll through until the release pin is high enough to hold a ball for me to shoot the spare.

Comparing mine to the picture in the support manual, my release pin is farther down in the U-shaped cut-out towards the foul line, but doesn't seem to be rubbing on the wood, and I can manually push it down and it comes back up freely. I was going to try adjusting the coil bracket as suggested in the manual to move the release pin farther back to see if that helps. Anything else I should try while I'm messing with it?

Release pin was rubbing and just needed an adjustment to get it working 100%. The pictures in tech support manual helped a lot.

Same thing on mine today. I just got some needle nose pliers, pulled/twisted the end of the spring a bit, and reconnected it to the diverter to get it working again.

And about a week ago the same loop on the end of my left flipper spring broke. I believe the flipper return springs are part number 10-364. Bad batch of springs I guess.

I ordered a couple of the flipper springs from Marco, so shipping was $10, but I got a couple other things too. But not the diverter spring, that I didn't know I needed until yesterday. So far my makeshift spring repairs seem to be working ok. Here's what the diverter spring looked like before I fixed it. Maybe the spring holes have a sharp edge on them that eventually cuts through the spring loops?

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Try this: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-big-lebowski-official-club-thread/page/58#post-6544575

That should get you into the file manager if hitting the windows key and typing terminal doesn't work. I had to get rid of the error message recently and I think I might have had to hit cancel on the error screen after hitting esc to be able to open a terminal window.

I think we can get rid of these pop-ups permanently by disabling the Ubuntu apport service. If I happens again I'm going to try that.

Just don't lock it down to the point where I lose my real Creedence, man.

The person I bought mine from said he saw a couple resets. When I got it home I made sure to reseat all of the USB connections, and I haven't seen any in a couple hundred games, most on the newest software.

My Maude gate sometimes stays fully open when it shouldn't. I'm thinking it is probably the rollover back there not registering and I'm going to check that later. It should always close after a ball passes through, correct?

Thanks. The spring was attached, but the end of the connecting rod, or whatever it is called, was sometimes getting caught up on the edge of the opening (see before picture). I carefully bent it so it has plenty of clearance now.

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Can someone confirm that the RGB Only Test under LED tests has red and green reversed? Selecting red lights up the various arrows as green and selecting green lights them up as red. Blue is correct. This is on the latest .57 code.

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Thanks, that was it. I hadn't done a factory reset since I bought it last month, just updated the firmware to .57 from whatever was on it, .55 I think.

Is there any place we can get replacement pins? My #4 pin snapped off near the top. I'm going to try some superglue or maybe some epoxy on it, but I doubt that will be a permanent fix.

There is a newer, hopefully less fragile version of the pins available from DP, but I'm going to try the epoxy repair/reinforcement too to see how it holds up.

Thanks, I've got 2 weeks and a decent amount of games on my epoxy repaired and reinforced pins and they seem to be holding up ok. This seems to be the best solution for now.

Mine goes to the right flipper now, but only because I got sick of all the sdtm drains a stuck a small piece of 3m tape on the side of the Donnie ramp right at the end so it bumps the ball just enough to the right coming out of there. The side contour of the ramp probably varies some machine to machine.

Another broken spring, this time on the Maude diverter. And a broken #2 pin - 3rd one now and the first since I took them all out and reinforced them all with clear epoxy about a month ago.

Also saw a bug I've never seen before. At the end of Nihilist mode I hit a target just as the 2nd ball drained on wave 1. The wave 1 total screen stayed up, but the game kept going. I did a frame of bowling, and that screen came up, and then went back to the Nihilist screen after it finished. The game then locked up when I started a car mode.

I think the Nihilist bug I saw is very similar to that, except for the switch hit occurring while the mode was ending instead of during the intro.

The springs aren't that big of a deal, I'm just replacing them as they break with what I hope are more durable ones. After I reinforced the pins, I thought there's no way these things are going to break again. I'm thinking maybe glancing hits are worse than straight on impacts, kind of like how you hit tempered glass with a hammer and it won't break but if you gently hit the edge...

The spring wasn't broken this time, it somehow slipped off of the diverter arm. I put it back on and added a small piece of heat shrink tubing at the end to keep it from happening again. There was a little cap on the end of of the arm's hook before, not sure what happened to it.

Anybody manage to have 4 broken bowling pins or do I have the record? I think I'm just going to keep going until I break all of them before going through the trouble of trying to repair them again. A couple times the broken pin caused the ball to get launched off of the return chute into the cabinet, which was fun to retrieve and put back in the middle of a good game.

What's the word on the newer, unbreakable version of the pins? Are they holding up?

I think I saw your post and epoxy reinforced mine when I had them out to fix the first 2 broken pins. I thought that would work since I put a lot of games on them with no more issues, but unfortunately those 2 broke again along with 2 more in the last couple weeks. Pins 2, 3, 4, and 6. The next time I repair them I might put some clear heat shrink around them too to see if that helps any.

If I buy replacements I'll probably get them directly through Dutch Pinball, but I wanted to see if they newer ones were holding up better since it is kind of a pain to replace them.

New owners, let us know how the bowling pins are holding up. I need get a few replacements if the the newer ones are better.

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I had this issue early on with mine. The problem is the center post of the bowling alley launcher binding against the playfield. It would go down, but struggled to come back up, and until it did the ball would keep falling through and getting fed back up again.

I don't remember exactly what I did, but it involved adjusting the post a bit so it wasn't rubbing on the playfield, and I sprayed a little silicon lubricant on it too. They was several hundred plays ago and I haven't had a problem with it since. There's some good pictures in Rens' support guide.

Are these the correct reinforced targets? https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/A-18530-5R

I started getting freezes over the weekend and eventually determined a couple targets are most likely the source of the issue. They don't show up as stuck switches in the test, but I think the contacts are close enough together that they probably mess up the PROC while in game after one or both take hard hits. I'd tried some manual adjustments to the targets to get the contacts a little farther apart, but haven't had any luck yet. Those targets have taken a beating.

For troubleshooting, I checked the USB connection from the PC board to the PROC and all of the connections under the playfield. I was able to play 3 long games with the targets disconnected so I'm pretty sure I've narrowed it down to them.

I took out the 5 oblong targets, got them bent them back into shape, put them back in, and made sure none of them were sticking. I still had frequent lockups after that. Through a lot of troubleshooting I believe I have narrowed it down to a single target (Light to the right of the Dude ramp - SW17), that when connected and after a hard direct hit, will lock up the game.

The question I have is why would a single target that isn't sticking cause this lockup issue? Maybe a bad diode?

The other question I have for Rensh is about the PROC and that bad powerpin solder issue. My serial number (486) is very close to the range of serials (490-540) that might have that issue. I don't think this is causing my issue since it only seems to be with the one target, but I thought I'd check if you have seen anything like this before. I did the basic PROC troubleshooting, moving the connector over to USB3, reseating the connectors, reseating the memory on the motherboard, and checking the log file (no PROC lost messages there). The only thing I haven't done yet is replace the USB cable.

I saw that on mine when I first got it, and that's a little different than what I'm seeing now. Just guessing, but you probably have 1 or more targets where the contacts are just a little too close together resulting in intermittent sticking, especially if you get warnings and then they go away before you can see what they were in the test report. If it had history log would help since it only shows the active issues. Try slightly bending the blades on any that look like they might be a problem to get the contactors a little further apart and see if the issues go away.

For my issue, I ordered a replacement reinforced target for the one that is causing the lockups. I'm really hoping it might just be something like the screws somehow got through their insulation and are shorting the blades together on hard hits to it, since a simple target replacement would fix that. Seems like a good theory anyway.

I installed the new reinforced target this afternoon and played several games with no lockups. The new target from Marco on the left is a little different from the one I replaced on the right, but no issues with it. The backing foam on the old target had gotten very compressed, and it may have been shorting on the back of the bracket through the insulator on hard hits. I should be able to re-use it after replacing backing foam.

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I had a bad target switch that I replaced that has mostly gotten rid of my lockup issues, but I still get them sometimes during games right after a cold startup that don't seem to be related to hitting any particular switch. After about 10 minutes and a couple restarts they do not happen again.

I'm just outside of the serial numbers that have issues with PROC power connector issue, but I'm wondering if I should just try the powerpin or 2 wire fix?

Thanks, I did reseat the USB connectors at the MB and PROC. I think I'm going to try a different cable first and if that doesn't work I'll reflow both the USB and power connectors. I'm sn 486 so pretty close.

A different USB cable seems to have fixed things so far. No restarts after several games over multiple days. It could be that the connections at the motherboard and PROC are a little tighter now.

In the new 1.0 code version are there any stability improvements for issues like this where the game could recover from an intermittent USB disconnect or PROC power loss while logging the problem as a detected issue ("USB connection loss" or "PROC power loss")?

Did you happen to start the multi-ball while still within the original "start of ball" ball save time? I'm wondering if you still had a couple seconds of initial ball save time left (paused/held when you played multi-ball) when you drained that 2nd ball, and the code is just not expecting to ever be in that state.

Don't know how it could be an older one, unless...

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"Obviously you're not a golfer."

It just means you haven't bowled for that many games. The software has checks for unused switches to alert you to potential problems.

Maybe a new owner could create and share a drive image for us? I'm curious to see if it fixes that static audio issue that happens when you have the game on for a while since it seems like that could be a driver problem.

I know a handful of people have seen it now. And it is possible that running modified music may cause it to happen sooner if it is a memory/resource related issue. The fact that rebooting fixes it is telling. I've never tried to see how long it takes to show up, and if there's a difference between just sitting in attract vs. playing.

Rens said they didn't want to deal with the support of people re-imaging. But I'd be willing to sign some I agree to assume all risk disclaimer.

It would be as simple as buying a replacement drive (I bought the exact model of my drive for $25), writing the image to it with Macrium Reflect (free - Rens has instructions in the support guide), and swapping the drives. The original would be your backup just in case.

Would you be willing to create an image of it using Macrium Reflect or HDD Raw Copy Tool and share it? If so, I can PM you a google drive link to copy it to. I would share it there for others that want to use it to fix the "system problem detected" messages and maybe the static sound issue.

This is an exact replacement for the original drive in mine: amazon.com link »

They could use different models, and just about any SATA III SSD drive will work. I've used a 10 year old drive I had lying around when I was testing music updates and it worked fine.

Close, but not that close

Here's some instructions if anybody wants to give creating a backup image with HDD Raw Copy Tool a go.

TBL_Backup_Image_Instructions.pdf

Check if the right flipper is interfering with the ball launch since they are very close together.

My Donny lane has never returned to the left flipper on fast shots that come around that orbit like the rug skill shot, and for months I've had a small piece of 3m tape and the end of the metal guide so it would get bumped over to the right flipper instead of going SDTM. It has always bugged me because the guide alignment is good. After taking a closer look I found that there was a very small, almost invisible, imperfection right in the middle at the end of the metal guide that would bump the ball out enough to cause the issue. After filing it down the ball goes to the left flipper now. So something to check for people having that issue with the guides on either side.

Thanks, plan B was to either shave down that post rubber or finding something thinner to go around the post to get the guide in farther. It was surprising how much of an effect a very slight imperfection at the end of the guide had on deflecting the ball towards the center of the table. I could barely even feel it when rubbing my finger over it. I guess when the metal guide was originally cut it wasn't 100% clean.

I don't remember exactly what I did, but there's a bit of left/right adjustment in the scoop itself. Check the screws/nuts that secure the scoop coil to the playfield and see if you can twist it slightly so it goes to the right flipper every time.

On mine with the front leg bolts all the way in and the back leg bolts almost all the way out I think it was about 6.7. I've since put the back legs at about the half way point and it seems to play a lot better. I don't know what it is now 6.2-6.3 maybe. Is it "correct" that way? Probably not, but it is the highest I can put it where I can backhand both Jesus and the Dude, and make it up the Walter ramp most of the time from the left flipper, with the flippers at default power.

If that's a short spring it's probably this one: https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/10-389

If it broke at the hook at the end you can probably just use the broken one by bending it make another hook.

After epoxying my many broken pins back together for the 2nd time, putting clear heat shrink around them, and using rubber rings as limiters they've held together for the last 3 months or so. Well except for my 5 pin which somehow broke at the ring part.

I had that happen on the new code when I got a mystery award for a bowling ball that also completed the set of 5. What you can do is open the coin door, pull the interlock, and manually fire the scoop coil to kick the ball out...and save your good game.