Hi Pinside!
I have a Solar City bonus stepper that doesn't want to be 100% accurate. Some of the things it occasionally does. It misses counting the first bonus. It misses counting the last bonus. It gives random 2000 bonus instead of 1000. It gives a 5000 bonus burst for the last bonus.
I've re-adjusted the stepper position 20 times, and never found the sweet spot that will get it to perform 100% every ball. Eventually I settled on around 90% accuracy and left it alone.
None of the issues are constant. Some games they happen. Some games they don't. This leads me to believe that no matter how many times I add or remove a millimeter to the steppers position, it's more a reliability issue, than a misaligned contact disk.
I've rebuilt a Williams stepper recently. When I did that, every instructional video I watched on the process included a greasing of the contacts and contact springs. The couple of videos I've seen working on Gottlieb steppers didn't include that step.
I'm looking for any advice in general or specific on this issue. I've seen questions asked about these steppers before, but they're usually more specific. Mine probably needs a tear down and rebuild, and as of yet I haven't been able to find a good video on that. Thanks if you can help.