Thanks for the tips. To my surprise, #2 is what fixed my issue.

However, along those lines, I'm thinking of getting the correct coil bracket for the launch coil. This is what someone had rigged on mine at some point:

20140101_090610.jpg

It looks like a metal bracket was attached to the end and formed into a makeshift coil stop. Can someone tell me what bracket was originally there?

Nevermind. I have the manual...

I totally shopped mine, ensured the coils were correct to the manual and set to factory settings - the top rhs gate is the issue with many games and I just needed to remove, clean and re-assemble.

Here is my video of my game showing all three modes in one game - lol - took about 10 takes to get them in one game.

I believe I tried all of those things and could only get it to work 1 out of 5 times. The issue was not the gate at all for me. It would open fine every time. The issue was the ball just bobbling on the rollover guide before the gate. After weeks of tweaking it drove me nuts and I sold it. I only have room for 3 games tops and I don't have room for games that don't work correctly.

Congrats to getting it working. The only thing I was tempted to try, but I didn't, was putting a super strong coil on the launcher, but I guessed that may cause even more issues since getting the ball there wasn't the problem.

Nice play Swinks! I never was able to get all three with mine. I also suck though.

I am not the best player and that was simply a fluke caught on video

You still got yours Swinks? I remember you selling a nice one a while ago.

unfortunately had to sell a few as lost my job and this was one of them - fully shopped as well so a good buy.

Was working on a new to me Baywatch today and the the gate (top right) would not open . Did a coil test and could see and hear the coil working . But when I checked closer the coil was not opening the gate . The gate opens by a finger on the coil pushing down on the back of the gate . The finger was under the gate ( no workie ) . Someone else had owned it for 10 years . I wonder how long it had been like that ?

Sorry, just saw this. No, I ended up not buying the bracket. I found it on Marco but didn't feel like spending the $20, but the skill shot has been pretty solid. Maybe 1/20 times it doesn't work, which is a lot better than when I got the machine.

I can see that going unnoticed very easily. Especially if you aren't familiar with how the game is supposed to work. It's not like that not working is causing a ball to hang up or the game to go into a ball search or anything. It also doesn't have a report like a switch would if it were bad and hadn't been triggered in X amount of games.

I can’t get my gate to open on time.

It’s to sluggish and opens to late.

Any ideas?
Running 4.01

So I just read post #14 and was wondering why or what told the gate to open ? So after a ball is put into the shooter lane - you select side ramp skill shot - on mine as soon as you push the Launch button , it opens the gate . So it must be something in the programing ? Did you check that little coil ( actualy a magnet ) to see if there was any binding or sticking, dirt or the spring off ? Now for some reason I have had a lot of trouble with that lane switch #16 it keeps breaking the diode off . I can tell when it's broke off as I'm waiting for the skill shot screen to come up the coil will fire twice . Good luck !

V8haha - I should have asked are you having trouble with the top gate or the lower gate ?

first stop do a full clean and service to the mechs of these features if you haven't already - mine wasn't working prior to a shop out and then nicely after a shop out.

The main issue I had with ball launching on my Baywatch seemed to be a basic design flaw.

The "high rise" mounted shooter coil bracket has the shooter lane switch mounted to the coil bracket. I had Very regular issues with this switch failing. Sometimes from broken a wire, other times the switch simply giving out. Best stretch I got out of a repair was a month at best.

Eventually I figured that the crazy vibes associated with this shocking flexible bracket were probably the root cause, so I mounted the switch on a bracket to the playfield instead, the way any smart engineering design would have it. Haven't had a shooter switch failure in almost 2 years now, around 1000 plays.

Also I just probly jinxed the good run by saying it!

These are a couple of pics of the modification...

Baywatch Shooter 1 (resized).jpg

Baywatch Shooter 2 (resized).png

Same experience as swinks re skill shot, after game was properly serviced everything worked great. Although I found that if the coil power was set to hard that the ball would make it to the top gate before it would open, disallowing the second or third skill shot option almost every time. Coil power normal, all works fine.