BBH making the buck more sensitive

Great write up.

I'm sure it will come in handy for this potential future owner!

Glad to hear there is an easy and cheap fix to such a major issue of this game.

NIce how to article. Do you have problems with the ball getting hung up on the track in the playfield the buck slides through/on? I play one on location and it happens all the time. Just curious.

I think you need to tell the buck to put himself in the shoes of others and consider their feelings before saying or doing something that could be construed as hurtful to others. Tell him to live by the motto: "Do unto other bucks as you would want them to do unto you." :>

wrc225.jpg

Thanks for posting this Eskaybee. Made the modification to mine today and it plays SO much better. Might even convert a couple haters if they ever play one with a more sensitive buck.

Tracy

Remove the balls...from the Buck, not the machine

OK, I know this thread is a year old, but it is exactly what I was looking for, just have questions.

I am in the process of cleaning and fixing a BBH, and this exact problem is one of the main issues with it.
I performed this tip on it yesterday, but to no avail.

The whole time I was asking myself what change adding a couple washers under the nuts would make, I mean, you are really not modifying or changing anything.

I my case, it did nothing to fix the problem, but I see where others have had it fix theirs.

Did I read it wrong?
Am I missing something?

Any advice appriciated.

Bump..

Anyone....Bueller....

I just wanted to give a little update on this old topic.

My buck was also hard to register shots correctly. Especially in the most left position.
So, time to open the assembly...

First I couldn't figure out how to loosen the screws (philips head) that are screwed from underneat in the buck assembly. The long ones that hold the brown casing together on the carriage above the playfield.
You can't really use a screwdriver from below the playfield, because the assembly connected to the motor (below playfield) to move it left and right is in the way.

Here you see I took a simple philips screwdriver and bent it in a way so it fits perfectly in the buck lane.
I could lock the screw this way and loosen it from above at the nylon nut. Same way in reverse when putting it back together.

WP_20151207_001.jpg

In the next picture you see where the sensitivity can be adjusted. The buck works with a ground plate that has a wire connected to it (the green wire), and a pole in the middle with the other wire connected (white wire). The plate is held up by a hard spring so it centers back around the pole. But when you hit the buck assy with a ball, the assy will briefly move so the plate makes contact with the pole and so you get a switch hit. Easy to understand...

WP_20151207_002.jpg

The plate has 4 spacers and is held by 4 nylon nuts. In my case I loosened 2 nuts a little at one side of the plate, so the plate got an angle. As the plate is pushed up by the spring anyway, it doesn't rattle and stays tight. By doing this the plate got closer to the pole on one side making the assy more sensitive.

I actually had to do it 3 times. Because the buck assy can rattle quite a bit (the motor drive is only supported on one side, so it can bounce a bit). The first time, the buck had a phantom hit when it stopped at the most left position. The second time, I had the inverse and it happened sometimes when the buck stopped at the blind position (most right).
Third time now is good. No more phantom hits and a normal buck hit registers the shot, even backhandable.

Hope this helps everyone to understand how it works and what to do to change it.

ps: bend a screwdriver the way I did and it saves you lots, lots of time!
ps: you can install the brown casing for the buck the other way around by mistake, but this is backwards then... pay attention to this before putting everything back together

I just thought I'd throw in my 2-bits on adjusting the buck. First off, thanks to Dave for the starting point.

I didn't have a phillips to bend, but I did find that I could get to the screws from the underside of the playfield with #0 Phillips screw driver.

#0 Phillips screwdriver from the underside

Through trial and error, I realized that mine needed to be adjusted so that the center post is almost touching the surrounding metal at the rear. Here is a picture. It looks a little closer than it ended up being because if you push on the post, the spring evens it out a little. I'd say it is about half to three quarters of a millimetre (whatever that is in imperial) away from the post at the rear. It's close!

Post adjusted. It is very close to the surrounding metal. Less than =<1mm

Here is a shot of what the nuts look like. I had to loosen the rear ones until they were flush with the ends of the screws. I also had to loosen off the front ones a tad so that the spring was able to push the platform up.

Rear nuts loosened until flush with screws. Be sure that the platform raises up: you'll likely have to loosen the front ones about half a rotation.

I used some electrical tape and another bolt to repeatedly test the unit. This meant that I didn't have to put the nuts back on until I was happy with the sensitivity. The tape kept the screws from dragging on the playfield. I'd suggest starting where mine worked and tighten the bolts until you get it to your liking instead of the other way around.

My test unit with electrical tape and spare bolt.

In the end, all you need is the #0 phillips, a ratchet-driver and something to force the screws away from the playfield. I used a little nail puller to give the screws some pressure so that I could work with them.

The tools I used.

Knowing what I know now, this 2-hour+ adjustment would take 20 minutes tops! The buck now registers all relatively light hits, but, to my surprise, it still won't drop with really light shots, which is exactly what I wanted! If you're not a good shot with your single ball buckshot, you really shouldn't drop a deer, now, should you?

I just did this too, wanted to take it all apart and check everything, found a break in the wire and repaired. Unfortunately its now a bit short and knocks out one of the lamp sockets from that cheesy style they have.

Guess Ill have to redo the wire harness soon but at least its playable now.

I found easiest way to remove it (since i wanted to pull it fully apart) have the Buck all the way to the left and you can take off the 2 nuts then move it back to the right (but not all the way) and you can remove the small screw for the wire and the mech pulls right out through the top of the pf.

Sorry to resurrect this, but having some trouble with mine after doing all of the above and curious to potentially get some help.

I have completely disassembled the Buck mech, but in switch test it still registers sporadically even when I am directly touching the parts. For the others that have taken this apart, can you confirm that it should register quicker?

I am thinking I need to check the wires for continuity, but I wanted to make sure it should be registering faster before I do that next.

Thanks!

Bump...

Anyone with Bucks adjusting experience able to answer if it should trigger quickly and often?

Trying to adjust buck on this friggin bitch, jesus impossible to reack the rear under-screw..

And suddenly this white wire is loose... where does this go?

20181209_160145 (resized).jpg

Why do you have it all apart in the first place??

Ya i have never pulled it completly apart either. I did what was recommended earlier in the thread. I took an old screw driver and bent it. And i just leave it in the coin box all the time.
I find when adjusting you dont get a judgment of any adjustment until it is fully re assembled

Agreed. It gets quicker as you repaeat the process though!

Okay.. To be able to adjust the plate above the spring inside the brown housing, you need to screw off. And its possible, but insanely troubelesome getting to the innermost screw below the buck. But managed to do it. But yeah the wire was loose, and I finally found out that it is supposed to be fastened to the screw beneath metal rod. So everything must off, and extended the wire with a yellow wire(since the original was too short now) and tried to wrap it around the screw and then tighten.

So more fiddling, managed to get sensitiviy good, but then when putting back the housing, it is too tight and always stuck again. Then after some tries and fails, it ends up being always on, and this is due to the wire fastened to the metal rod touches close to the metal casing around the rod(or the vertical plates below), and when opening it up the wire got loose again:

Sigh.
Any good tips on how to fasten the wire to the screw in an effective way?
Also...is there something which is broken on the brown plate where the rod is fastened? It seems like some platic stuff broken around the screw.
As mentioned, the wire was loose so It had to be taken apart to be fastened again.

Having a tournament this weekend, aah..stressing to get it done

20181209_191531 (resized).jpg

20181209_191612 (resized).jpg

20181209_191743 (resized).jpg

I don't have that game anymore (miss it, but it needs code!), but I think that looks normal. The wear is from the spring, I think. How was the wire originally connected? If there is a zone of the screw that doesn't require the threads, I'd hit it with some flux and see if it will take some solder. It probably won't, but it won't hurt to try. You could also consider one these or a similar strategy:

serveimage (resized).jpg

double post

I did not see how it was originally attached, since i did not open it until I saw that the wire was loose. then I saw some ..wire-thread remains around the screw.
But here is the exploded view, it looks like the things in theimage you posted is what stern has used (nr 4, lower wire in my attached image)...do you know where to get those?

bbh metal rod (resized).png

Any local hardware store should have them

Or electronic store like radio shack or harbour frieght

Since you took yours wholly apart, any idea on this:

After I tried adjusting my buck the last time, after playing a few games to see if the buck was registering properly, the back plastic part started digging into the playfield and scratching it. I turned it off before it made it through the clearcoat and into the playfield itself, but you can clearly see the clear scratched off on part of it. I cannot figure out how to adjust it to not scratch, so it's just basically been broken ever since... :-/

Any ideas on how to do that? It's one of only two games that I have that aren't working right now and I want to fix it!

Thank you VERY much for this. I have a high-profile NFL player client who owns this machine. We fought with it for 2 hrs before we gave up on it, and chalked it up to "Well, that's just how it is!".

Now that I see this, I am going to call him up and get a service call scheduled in with him and feel confident that it'll be fixed when we leave.