That is the type of outhole where the ball tends to land such that it is not properly seated on the cradle. See the two pics showing the fix for this problem using an old switch blade. You should make this mod first and see if that clears up the problem before doing anything else.

- TimMe

FIX1 (resized).JPG
FIX3 (resized).JPG

You mentioned that the ball got stuck on the switch at the right end of the return trough. That should never happen. If you want, you can try adjusting this switch to put it back to factory spec while you have the card holder (AKA apron) off of the game. It's not that difficult to adjust, but it might take a bit of futzing to get it right.

Turn the game off and put the PF down into the normal playing position. Set the ball on the return trough, to the right of the peak in the trough, and to the left of where the switch wireform protrudes up into the trough. Let the ball go. Gravity alone should start the ball rolling to the right, over the switch wireform, and into the shooter lane. If the ball doesn't roll out of the trough from gravity alone, the long switch blade of the trough switch is pushing against the wireform too much. Adjust the pressure of the long switch blade so it isn't pushing quite so firmly. When you have the blade adjusted to a low enough tension, the above test will work and the ball will be able to roll over the wireform from a dead stop just by gravity.

On the other hand, you don't want to make that long blade tension TOO low, because then the vibration of the game play might cause the switch to close when it shouldn't. So you need to have some tension on the blade, and a decent switch gap, but also have the switch so that it makes a good solid closure when the ball rolls over the wireform, and also so that the ball can't get "caught" on the wireform. Like I said, you may need to futz around with it a bit, but it should not be that difficult to get it dialed in properly.

That additional red wire was just some hack someone did to try to fix some problem, or make some mod. Later, someone else (thankfully) removed the hack. In any event, you don't need to be concerned about the red wire as long as it doesn't touch anything. You probably should clip it off.

- TimMe

Great, thanks for posting the results of your repair work. That was a good catch for a somewhat unusual problem. Hopefully that will be helpful for others in the future who have a similar issue.

As for your take-away on the mod where a clipped switch blade is placed under the ramp, raising the ramp is not the purpose of that mod, and I agree it was not a useful mod for fixing your problem.

That little clipped switch blade is a mod to fix a different problem than the one you were having. That mod is supposed to make sure that the ball will always land in the left side of the outhole, so it will be seated properly on the cradle arms where it should be.

Thanks - TimMe

Those double-arm kickers were standard for the ball return (outhole) on all Gottlieb EM pingames from the end of 1966 until the end of 1974, when the company switched to using a single-arm kicker for the ball return. So, the double-arm kicker was in production for about 8 years.

The double-arm kicker was only used for the ball return. It was never used on any kick-out holes located on the playfield, which always used a single-arm kicker.

- TimMe