Definitely.
If you are handy with a soldering iron, you could bend the pin out slightly and solder a spare pin from some dead chip onto the back. Otherwise, order a new chip.

So, I just joined the club. About to buy a rubber kit. Any consensus on whether white or black looks/plays better on this machine?

Pulled it out of a warehouse where it has been neglected for years, at least. Going to strip down the playfield while I'm waiting for a rubber kit(went with white from Marco). Lot of dirt, rust on the ramp flaps and the cab has some rough spots. But it plays, the dmd is working fine and I don't see any damage to the various mechanisms.

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Cleaning up while I'm waiting on LEDs.

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Finished buttoning everything up today, and played a few games.
So, I have a dead switch in the shark hole. I thought I had a dead center lane switch, but it responds to a switch test. Just, the vast majority of time, it doesn't respond to a skill shot. Also, after a ball search, the trough eject keeps firing a few times and then the auto launcher fires. This happens even after a ball has been found and had hit some switches. Software bug?

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I'll give it a shot.

I am not. I need to find someone to burn a ROM for me.

Also, when I got the machine, the post that mounts in the gap between the left inland and out lane was at the bottom of the cabinet. It looks to me like I need to pull the long red trough off of the machine to get to that spot. Is that correct?
For cleaning that trough, is removal the only method?

Ok, so the switch problems are resolved. The shark hole was a broken diode lead, and I just had to bend the lane wire up higher to work. Prior to pulling the under playfield trough, I just put a rubber band between the post and the wire guide, and it worked fine.
Edit:
I still have to fix the weird behavior with the ball eject. I suspect that it is one of the switches on that assembly.

Since I live a few blocks from Cliff, I had mine installed last week. I'll post some pics shortly.
There was one change. For those who got their sets before last week, at least some, if not most or all, of the playfields have a post that goes through the playfield that is riveted to the guide that curves behind the earthquake VUK. There is no hole or notch in the original protector for that post. I had to snip out a piece of the cliffy to install it. Cliff has started snipping out that piece on new sets, but you might need to do that if you had already received one.

I've got a set of Chad ROMs ordered. I'm currently running v3.

Here are some pics. The first is of the back of that guide I mentioned. You can see where I had to snip out part of it for the guide support post.

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Definitely worth the money. You have to remove a couple of parts on the bottom of the playfield, but it was trivial while I already had the rest of the playfield torn down for cleaning.

Check your trough opto, too. Mine was dirty and caused it to keep trying to eject phantom balls.

Nice catch. I had to resolder that switch on mine, too.

Lol, I posted about Ron Jeremy too

The front ball ends up in the kicker area, and instead of a mechanical switch, it uses an opto sensor. Clean it with a qtip every once in a while, too.

"Best office" is the when you start a 2+ player game during the intro sequence.

Write Cliff. He has them, he just hasn't updated the website.

You could put in a pin2dmd. That's relatively cheap.

You can buy one premade and drop it in. I've got a run of the v4 controller boards on their way from Taiwan right now, so I'm going to be experimenting with one in mine.

Anyone ever have trouble with the launcher by the shark flipper? Mine is hitting a rail near the pops about 30% of the time, which ruins the third skill shot option.

Hmm, maybe I can 3d print a guide for it.

Nice! I'll try that.

Left side from which perspective? Looking down on it like I am playing the game?

Cliff(of cliffy protector fame) just made some new ramp flaps, for anyone who might need a set. The bubbling you see is the protective film. The flaps are stainless steel.

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I just got a new switch for the shark hole from pinball life. It was pretty loose and would fail to recognize balls about 50% of the time. While I have it open, I'm going to put in the plastic piece to fix the skill shot.

I'll try. I'm going to try to install it without removing a lot, so it might be hard to get a good shot.

Swapped the shark hole switch and cut a piece of PCB to fix the shark hole. Installed it with a piece of double sided tape. Didn't have to remove any plastic. So far, 100% of the shots work. Thanks for the suggestion!

Once I put in a piece of plastic on the left side of the launcher channel per the messages earlier in this topic, I haven't had a launch failure. But mine wasn't hitting the launcher gate. It was spinning a bit and hitting the wireform by the pop bumpers.

I agree, it's a great shooting game. The shark hole from the shark flipper is brutal. I maybe hit it 5% of the time.
I'm still having some trouble with the shark hole switch. I replaced it with the big Y shaped one, but it still fails to sense a ball occasionally. That's about the only thing that keeps me from rating this game higher. I wouldn't mind too much normally, but it always seems to happen when you are in a mode with a countdown, forcing you to waste time while the game flips to a ball search.

I thought about grabbing a spare assembly, drilling out some holes, installing some optos and making a little LM339 board, but that seems like a lot of work for one switch.
The solution I'm considering right now is to spot weld two little tabs on the Y shape actuator and bending them upwards. It will make a lot more contact with the ball while staying out of the way of the launcher.

Anyone running the pin2dmd color DMD on this machine, by any chance?

I had that, too. Cleaned the optos and it went away. But if it persists, I'd change them out.

Ok, just to be clear, there are two mechs here. The mech that shoots the ball from the trough into the shooter lane, and the mech that launches the ball into play. The first one is an opto set that are looking for balls in the lowest part of the trough. If either isn't working, it will think that there is a ball in there and try to clear it. That happens to me on occasion, and cleaning the optos and/or reseating the connectors fixes it.
The other would be the shooter lane firing. That would be the switch in the rail.

EDIT: I would try replacing the actual opto components before changing the boards. That shouldn't be very expensive.

Yes. It's the staging area, for lack of a better word, that occasionally kicks on mine. So far, cleaning the optos with a cotton swab works. If it ever fails, I'll replace the optos, then the board if needed.

So, this weekend, my launcher started acting weak. I thought it was just misaligned so didn't immediately do anything. Then, I realized it was locked on and smoking....
I let it cool down, then I tried clipping out the diode. Replaced it, no change. In fact, lots of solenoids weren't working. I changed out the fuse and got that sorted. Still locking on. Changed the coil to one I happened to have lying around. No change. I changed out Q44 and it's still doing it. I've got some pre-drive transistors coming, so I'll swap that next. Any suggestions on what else to look for in the meantime?

Turns out, it was the TIP36C that had died.

Are you sure it's not just hitting a guide on the side? I had that problem and solved it with a piece of plastic taped to the inside of the launcher.

I would note that on my Baywatch, there is no physical switch like that video shows. It's an opto.

I have a weird problem. The balls in the trough get wedged forward sometimes, and don't quite hit all the switches. When this happens, and you drain a ball, you have to wait for a ball search, which will cause the balls to reseat. I attached some pics to show what I mean.
Any ideas on fixing this?

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No, it is just wedged up at the front. That's the problem. The action of the ball search jogs them all back into place.

Good idea. I'll replace the balls. I would think that a shim would make the problem worse, since there would be less room for the balls.

I'll try this, too. Maybe I just need to polish the heck out of the trough while I'm at it.

I'll check it out. It's in an arcade right now, so I can't touch it. The owner mentioned the problem, and his tech took the pics while trying to diagnose it.

I used the Y lever. Works fine, as far as I can tell. The most important part was getting the switch nice and tight on the bracket, so it wouldn't slip down slightly.

Funny you should ask. It was on route when it got the worst, and I passed the information on to the arcade tech. Apparently didn't work, so rather than continue to work by proxy, I just swapped it out for SMB and brought it home. I'm busy with moving a BK2K out of the shop, so once that's out of the way, I'll open up Baywatch and see what's going on.

It looks nice in color:

It's not a colordmd, and the original panel is for sale.

Yes.

So, after building the color display I took a break. Came back and tackled the trough issue. Problem 1 was a piece of a zip tie lodged in there. It was still binding up, though. Disassembled it, and the trough was dirty and had some rust spots. Cleaned it up with a piece of steel wool, then wiped it and applied some wax. Then, I bent the ball release bracket a little and made sure it was aligned. Finally, I waxed the game and played it for a while without the apron to watch the mechs. Works great now. Played 10 games in a row without a ball search.

I jinxed it. After a bunch of flawless games, I invited my wife to play. And, boom, ball drains and the game just sits there.
I look, and the ball is actually missing. What? I let it do a ball search like normal, and it ends the ball. I look again, and all the balls are there. What?
Happened again, and I start poking around. I discover 2 balls in the vertical kicker that is on the end of the trough. So, not sure how they got there without being found.

Yeah, I did all of that. Had to pivot to a Scared Stiff problem, but are there optos on that upkicker? I haven't had a chance to look.

This is the kicker on the left side of the machine. When the ball enters the guard house, it rolls own to this kicker and comes up under the apron and rolls into the trough. I had a chance to look at it. It's a microswitch.

I suspect a programming bug, actually. Normally, sinking a ball in the shack works great. I've never seen a shot to that failed to get over to the trough. BUT, I kinda suspect that with polished balls and fresh wax, a ball can roll over to left and drop into that hole from above. I say that because I can hear some balls roll that way and take a long time to roll into the trough, arguing that some of them make it all the way to the hole. The question is, will the game autodetect this and kick the ball out, or will they sit until a ball search kicks them out? Perhaps a question for ChadH

I agree with you. I think you were thinking of the quirk comment above(not mine). As someone who operates a couple of games, the ability to turn off a problematic mech and keep the game playing is a bonus, in my book.
I'm going to pull the apron tonight and attempt to get to the bottom of this. I'll roll the balls into the hole from the top and see if it's aware of them.

Ok. Then I'm probably looking at a faulty kicker switch, too. Thanks for the confirmation.

Ok, I popped the apron off and verified repeatedly. If the ball goes into the shack, it gets popped out into the trough everytime with no errors. If it enters the hole from above(by rolling too far to the left) then the ball is lost until a ball search. I suspect that this happens most often with two rapid drains from the right outlane. I also saw it bounce a ball from the trough back into the hole when it had 2 balls loaded. This could be problematic if it happened multiple times.
So, solutions are:
1) a ROM fix to find this errant ball and kick it out, regardless of the preceding shack switch event. Without knowing a lot more, I don't know if this is feasible. Only knowing x86 assembler at this point, I would think that it would take a few lines of code(check switch state, trigger solenoid) which may or may not impact the larger game.
2) Add a wireform to the area to act as a one way gate. Not too keen on physical hacking without having spare parts to back out changes.

Once I waxed the playfield, a few did. It's not constant and not always an issue, but it really sucks to get it stuck there when you still have a ball save timer, since the timer will expire before the ball search kicks in. There's never a reason for the balls to stay there, so if I were patching the ROM, I would add a check for that switch during the switch reading look and immediately kick the solenoid.

I thought about it, but I really don't want to make physical alterations. I'll just chalk it up to a quirk of the machine and call it a day. Other than that, it plays excellent, and the color display puts it over the top.

I usually set my playfield to between 6 and 7 degrees. I'll have to recheck. What I was seeing was a ball rolling fast enough from the right outlane to bounce up into that hole.
Now, maybe I'm mistaken and the switch isn't working. I'll do a switch edge level test today and see what it's doing. If not that, then I'll look for a setting.

OK, so I fiddled with the vuk switch and now it's registering and gives me the ball back. Down to one problem. The ball will occasionally get stuck on the top switch on the right ramp. I think it's fleeced a bit, and I need to get it registering without binding.

My wife had a mini screwdriver kit that had one. I'll get the details when I get home

Ah I never did get that info. My apologies. I'm pretty sure it's this set(or a clone of it): https://www.amazon.com/STEELMAN-41800-Precision-Screwdriver-16-Piece/dp/B01J5026/ref=sr_1_15_sspa

On other news, I fixed the VUK problem. I fiddled with the switch and got it working. Now it properly detects a ball and kicks it over and gives you a ball save.

I did a light buffing with some steel wool. Didn't seem to take much of the finish off, if any.

Oof. Sorry to hear that. I've got a Flintstones on route that just started having trouble. I think that the chips on the mpu all need to be reseated.

So, start simple. Print out the table showing the switch matrix and mark down what is not working. Verify the wiring on that segment. Look for loose or broken leads inside the molex connectors. If you have a switch tester, like the siegecraft one, you can see quickly if it's the board or the wiring, as well.
Given the time line, I'm guessing this is mostly connector issues. Try buffing the headers with some steel wool before reinserting.
And upload a picture of the marked up switch matrix so we can see it and make suggestions.

Mine is actually working great right now.

So, there is this one: https://www.siegecraft.us/presta/index.php?id_product=14&controller=product&id_lang=1

But you'll have to make up your own harness. You might ping the guy there and verify that it should work.

Barring that, you can buy the grandaddy of all switch matrix testers here: https://www.pinitech.com/products/64switch_tester.php
That one is really pricey, unless you get the DIY kits for the board and harness.

I have one of the siegecraft models. Shouldn't be hard to adapt it to Sega.

Well, I was having trouble with the ball making it to the left ball exit. But it was partially because of the switch was not adjusted. That fixed it.
I'm not in the club anymore at this point, having passed the machine on to another family.

Just light up a blunt in the parking lot and laugh over the fact that we are all spending money on toys that throw ball bearings at shit like David fucking Hasslehoff.

I can't speak for most of it(since I left the club recently), but I can vouch for the ball lock and the gate on the right side both being loud. Glass on, it wasn't really noticeable. Glass off, it was loud.

Take off the flipper rubbers, and stick a toothpick in the holes that Soulrider911 mentioned. Then, loosen the clamp to let the flippers rest on the toothpicks. Tighten them back up(being careful not mess up the flipper location while tightening) and reinstall the rubbers.

I'm casting my mind back to when I owned mine. I think I had to adjust the bracket and make sure that the machine was perfectly leveled. Once I got it dialed in, it spent quite a while on route and was a favorite.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xZocmA6MZud1ZMt-mUAkabTApzPe8HmU

That is some fine work! I love crisp edges on a cabinet rebuild!

Aren't those usually left for things like bill acceptors?

Phenomenal work as always!