Hi everyone,

Picked up a Doodle Bug machine on Saturday (my 2nd pin! yay!) for dirt dirt cheap.

But, cheap has its drawbacks....

The disappearing post between the flippers is curious.

As well as being installed 180-degrees backwards and jammed into the "on" position at the time of purchase, the plastic armature is being pressed incredibly tight against the metal assembly structure; requiring quite a large amount of physical force to move the coil plunger up and down.

Is this normal? I've attached a photo.

I haven't played the machine yet as 95% of the playfield is covered in black yuck but thought I'd just write to you all just to get some initial thoughts.

Thanks.

-Bob

disappearing-post-guts.jpg

Thanks for the help so far, everybody.

I'm attaching two more photos because, after looking at the image that way2wyrd posted, the mounting bracket for this coil is not a flat bracket, it's angled a little off the middle and I'm wondering if this is what's causing the problem. Should it be bent or flat like in way2wyrd's photo.

Also, looking at the mounting screw holes, it's actually not possible to screw in the left and right screws because there's a major alignment problem in respect to the middle screw (which I can't remove because the bracket's bent in such a way that even a ratchet set can't get to it).

The profile photo shows the post resting at not a straight angle and will not mount the orange circular ball-stopped flush to the playfield. It appears that the plastic armature is pushing the post's rod off true alignment.

The coil's sleeve was removed in this photo in order to show a little more detail on what I'm dealing with.

disappearing-post-assembly-profile_w_t.jpg coil-mount-closeup-w-text.jpg

Awesome. Thanks for the help folks.

It's whacking day!

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Wow! That parts supply reference website is amazing.

Spectacular! Thanks.

Update:

After some hammering and pulling on the mounting bracket with some vice grips, the disappearing post works perfectly! Thanks for the tips everyone.