I'm currently rebuilding the flippers on a Bally Centaur and I'm having some issues. I purchased two of the Bally Flipper Rebuild Kit - 05/1980-03/1988 kits from Pinball Life that are said to work with Centaur along with Xenon, the next machine I'll be working on.

I'm having a couple of issues. First off, the coil stop screws they supply are bigger than the ones both my Centaur and Xenon use. Also, the 3 holes for the nylon flipper bushings don't line up completely. You can get two of the screws in but not the 3rd. I would have to drill out the hole on the nylon flipper bushing a little bigger to get it to mount properly. Also, I could not use the #6 screws that are supposed to be used with their nylon flipper bushings as my mounting holes in the flipper base for the bushings use a #8 screw. I guess it's possible someone used a bigger screw at some point to mount the nylon flipper bushing. Also, the nylon flipper bushings are a bit longer than the originals on the end that sits below the playfield. PBL supplies two nylon washers which I'm not exactly sure what these are for. Are they spacers to use on the top side between the flipper bat and the nylon flipper bushing?

Has anyone used Pinball Life's kit on a Centaur or Xenon and had the same issues? I've read of people ditching these linear flipper parts and going with the older SS/EM Bally flipper parts as well.

This is actually the first Bally of this era that I've had to rebuild flippers on. I've included pictures of the flippers from my Centaur for reference. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks.

centaur-left-flipper (resized).JPGcentaur-left-flipper2 (resized).JPGcentaur-right-flipper (resized).JPG

In the end the parts they supply will work I'll just have to reuse some parts (such as the coil stop mounting screws and the nylon flipper bushing screws) and not use the screws they supply. I'll also just need to drill out 1 of the 3 holes in the nylon flipper bushing to get all 3 screws to line up properly.

Did you also notice that the nylon flipper bushings they supplied are a bit longer on the end that sits on the bottom side of the playfield? This causes the pawl to sit further away from the groove in the plunger shaft.

Did you use the nylon washers they supplied?

Have you noticed that they were a bit longer on the botttom as well? The top length that sits above the playfield is fine.

I’ve emailed Terry at PBL about these issues and it’s interesting that you say all the screw holes on the plate are #8. This was his response when I asked about the #6 screws he included for the flipper bushings:

“Someone in the past has must have drilled out the holes to a larger size on your base plate where you mount the nylon bushing. All nylon bushings are mounted to their baseplates with a #6-32 x 3/8" screw. This has been stand for almost 50 years.”

I have let Terry know. I ended up reusing my original flipper bushings as I was afraid of binding because the crank will sit lower inside the groove of the plunger.

I found the same thing as well so I reused the original nylon flipper bushing. I could shave that end of the nylon flipper bushing that Pinball Life includes down a bit to get it to the correct length.

Oh wait, you said the coil stop. I didn't have an issue with the coil stop, just the nylon flipper bushings being too long on the short end that rests against the pawl.