Although it isn't all working quite yet, mainly the lower right pop bumper needs fixing, I haven't been able to resist playing it more than I am fixing it

I have noticed one issue I'd love some advice on. I have some ideas but I'd love some feedback too.

When playing, a fast moving ball into the 2 lower center flippers is, more often than not, climbing the flippers and either banging off the glass quite hard, or in some cases actually jumping the flipper and/or ball guides into the drain. This only happens on really fast movers. Average speed balls are fine. Of course, with BH a lot of the balls are fast movers!

I casually checked the window when I was waxing and cleaning and it seemed to be sitting pretty well flush but I haven't measured the 1/64" the manual calls for. I also got to wondering if it was just that the flippers are too low, though they clear the playfield quite well.

Anyone else have this problem and solve it?

Thanks!
Dave

Me too, but this is a LOT more than a tap. It's quite frightening and then the ball just hopping right over the flipper into the drain lane is a bit unfair to the player on an already difficult game.

I have all new rubber coming from PBR so we'll see if that makes a difference. I have noticed in looking at a bunch of online photos that the machines all seem to have standard red rubber on the flippers. The factory flyer shows them that way. Mine has some sort of funky blue rubber. It looks nice, but maybe that's my problem right there.

Thanks for the tips!

Yeah, it seems to be happening most on the lowest right flipper. The left lower will do it now and then, and I can live with that, but this other one is almost unusable.

On an unrelated note, when you lock a ball in the upper playfield capture hole, does it tend to sit high, and can you easily knock it loose if you send another one up there? It almost seems to me that it is sitting too high but other than that it scores and ejects when it should at the loss of a ball.

When I look at the upper left captive hole, there is a nylon plate under the playfield cutout. It has a slot in the center where the kickout arm protrudes and then 2 nylon ridges that stick up on either side of the slot. When the ball gets in the hole, it is sitting on these 2 nylon ridges. I'm beginning to wonder if the nylon plate isn't upside down.

I was looking at the air ball problem today, having the day off for Veteran's Day

The lower edge of the window was sitting too low, in fact a rare slow moving ball actually got stuck at the edge and wouldn't fall to the flipper. So I went and got started taking the window off. Of course, one of the previous owners had cross-threaded one of the hex head screws so as I went to remove it, it stripped the T-Nut. I'll have to figure out what to do about that now - I guess I could just put a nut on it from the bottom as a temporary fix. I went out and got some thin foam weatherstripping until I can get the proper foam washers. I'll put that in a bit later as I'm spending some time cleaning down there - it was a mess.

Happy to report the air ball problem has been fixed. Raising the lower edge of the window until it sat just a whisker higher than the playfield, as detailed in the manual, resolved the issue. I guess what might have been happening was the ball was getting slightly airborne hopping the ledge, just enough to then hop the flipper. I had to replace the stripped T-Nut with a 6-32 so that's a bother as I'll need to keep track of one screw separately but it worked well enough. I used some rubber washers in the absence of foam, so I will revisit this once I get those parts in. I'll probably get a new window too, as they're cheap enough.

Glad to have that one done - she's much more playable now.

Hey Greg - yeah, it's doing well. Had a bunch of guys from work yesterday for our usual "Pinball Wednesday" lunch and they got suitably introduced, and humiliated

I really only have 3 issues left to resolve - the one rollover lamp on the upper right is out and it's not the bulb. The lower left pop has a broken coil with the lugs snapped off. Lastly, the upper captive hole lets the ball go if another ball goes up and hits it. Other than that, working nicely and, as desired, a real challenge!

The playfield cleaned up nicely, upper and lower. I'm replacing the spinning disc motor with a different one that can be powered directly off the original connections, rather than being patched back to the little display driver board. I may eventually go for a set of Swemmer boards - the Ni-Wumpf is nice, but I'm not sure I like the idea that it's really running an emulation. I'd rather run the real Gottlieb EPROMS. That's a long-term minor thing though.