I dread lifting and lowering the playfield. It always gets blocked by the lockdown bar latches. And I had to remove my coin box, because that also stopped the playfield from sitting down properly. Please change your design Spooky.

My apron also extends out too far on the left, which will occasionally prevent the left outlane from fully draining the ball. Any recommendations on bending the apron back without ruining it?

I think you better wait until you get yours. I have one of the earliest ones, the ONLY issue I had was the VUK and the skillshot ballguide, both of which I fixed in about 2 hours. Not to say there's not one or two that came off the line nerfed, but by now the design issues have been fixed.

Can anyone help this guy? He keeps getting the set up utility when powering on the game.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/halloween-pinball-nighmare

So I’ll start by saying I do love Halloween. But it is making me pull my hair out lately. I haven’t been able to play in 3 weeks.

I have a switch matrix out. It affects the right sling, the right orbit switch and likely one or two more I haven’t discovered. I traced the ground back to the main board. I removed the connector, removed the ground pin opened it a bit and tightened the crimp. It played for most of one game and then failed again. I did the sequence again and used a meter on continuity and from the connector back it tones as a complete circuit. No better.

With the mass amount of wires I really don’t want to open up that loom and run a new ground. Plus I am not convinced it’s a wire issue. Anyone have similar issues?

The real bitch is with my crazy and excessive work schedule I can’t get home in time to call spooky tech support.

I’ll take the quirks from Spooky over other’s playfields falling apart or being ignored with a bricked node board for months…thanks. Gotta pick your poisons.

Ok , I guess my distro doesnt take cc. How do you "wire" funds? Didnt realize it was the 50's and certainly wont use them again.

Mail a check? That's what I did with my distributor. Your bank should know how to do the wire transfer, but I've never done it and the bank will charge you.

Really?? That is odd, very odd. Even if they require a surcharge for cc I would never wire money. It's worth the protection.

Thats my thought. Pinball bros. I specifically asked and the said wire or check. Like I want to send a $9000 check
through the mail, when I could just call and have it done in 5 mins. Very archaic.I guess paypal is on option, but damn I can afford it, But I just soon not have a $9000 chunk of money out of my bank account lol. Whatever. Cant wait for 920

I will, but is this the 50's? Let me saddle up to the teletype and morse code my "wired funds'

Lol

Are those your only two options? No credit card I get, some business don’t want to deal with the hassle and the fees. You could do a certified check I suppose, still will take some time.

Bank wire transfers are one of the safest ways to send money. The seller provides their banking information and then you access your bank and enter their information. It's a straight transfer between accounts. It may take a few days to clear and their may be a charge depending upon what level of service from your bank account. This is not an 'ole fashion wild west' type of transaction and is done thousands and thousands of times per day.

Yea im moving money to my account to setup the wire transfer. To be clear, not saying my distro is wrong or archaic, I clearly didnt read the full terms at time of deposit.

So pumped for 920!

Typically a bank wire has a $35 fee associated with it but it’s definitely one of the safest ways to transfer large amounts of money. Some distributors do take cc but there’s a 3.5% fee attached to it most of the time.

This is very true. Another interesting thing is the fee for wire transfers is usually zero if it is in a foreign currency. Works great when you buy a game from Nitro in Canada and have it delivered in the US.

Add the distributor as a payee in your online banking and pay him like you pay your bills online through your bank. It sends a standard check in a fairly nondescript envelope.

Banks in New Zealand stopped issuing checks 5 years ago. You can’t get one even if you want one. Nobody used them anymore.

rd

Was he referring to just the old one, or both as being subpar?

Sadly- both. I wanted to get my replacement armor powered in clear like the manufacturer recommended but couldn't because Spooky already sprayed them with satin 2 part automotive clear. So my opinion was to redo everything (sandblast and start over) or put on a better coat of automotive clear. I choose the clear coat opinion. It turned out pretty good. Time will tell. By the way, I went gloss and like it way better than the satin finish.

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I thought the powdercoat/clear issue was resolved. No?

I too am receiving replacement armor. Can you please explain what you used and the process to clear?

Couldn't agree more! I used my tape on the left side of the coinbox and both sides of the glass. Much better!

What is this tape you speak of? That rattle is annoying! The glass slides in ok with it on?

What tape and where do you install it? The rattling of this game is pretty excessive.

Buy a can of this on Amazon. It is pretty nasty stuff so take care when using it. The product spays very well. I did 3 coats about 25 minutes apart. Used about 3/4ths of the can on just the side armor and the lockbar.

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It sounds like Spooky started hitting them with some kind of clearcoat (or maybe were all along?). I'm sure they got a ton of these done ahead of time and the shop that did the powder just did a really lazy job. The extra clear will help, until it doesn't. At least the 2 part clear (posted ^^^) seems to be helping better. Too bad it will dull the shine a bit, but it's better than the powder coat rubbing off entirely!

Did you get replacement armor, or did you remove yours from the game? I have a can of 2K that I think is still good (unopened), and I'm anticipating having to clear mine too.

In the beginning, Spooky was powder coating and then spraying them with gloss clear (not 2 part automotive paint). That had issues so they started spaying in 2 part automotive paint. Spooky couldn't source gloss in bulk so they went with satin according to support. All new armor has that satin look now. The problem is that they aren't putting enough on. The coverage is really bad (at least on my replacement set). I heard others complaining about the replacement armor still having issues so I did the only thing I could without doing a complete redo. My action is either a $25 band-aid or a $25 fix. Time will tell. The photo is a shot of my replacement armor with the MAX 2K gloss spray applied.

So I had pretty consistent problems with the Loomis lane subway ramp door getting stuck in the up position preventing balls from going in. Doing the loosening of the posts and pushing it down would sometimes fix it briefly but still it was constantly happening. So upon further investigating, it seems the problem is the ramp was installled slightly crooked, what was happening is the ramp when going up was sometimes catching and getting stuck rubbing against the slingshot rubber on the inside. Just pushing in the rubber band slightly and the ramp door would fall back down, even see a little rubber wear where it sometimes was sitting so I gotta watch those rubbers now. So undid the posts and shifted the ramp and now it consistently works.

You only need to wait 5 minutes apart.no reason to wait 25 minutes. The paint needs to be tacky so each coat will stick. Sounds like you sprayed each coat pretty heavy if you did 3 coats and used 3/4 of the can.

Do light coats and wait 5 minutes between each one. This is per 2k instructions. Build up your layers and take your time. Sprayed mine a few months ago and still holding.

Anyone know when we will start receiving our fang club membership?

Code recommendation:

You can lock the ball pretty easily with a full plunge and letting the ball bounce from the left flipper to the Judith lock. If you drain, the ball is released. If you hit the target while playing, the ball is released into play for a 2-ball game.

I’d recommend a stand-alone 2-ball multiball with unique scoring and rules if this happens. As it stands now, if you release the locked Judith ball, you just get an extra ball and kind of flail. It doesn’t really work given how the modes are coded. A unique 2-ball multiball would add some risk/reward with releasing the locked ball vs. avoiding that area and letting the locked ball auto-release when you drain. FWIW

Spooky also said they would have Rick and Morty adventures from seasons beyond seasons 3. We're still waiting.

Thanks for clarifying, so essentially the 'new version' still has the same powder coat issues of the metal not being prepped correctly, the application subpar, and the powder wasn't heated to the right temperature or length of time. But Spooky is now applying a satin automative clear coat on top of the powder coat as a band-aid solution... Is that right?

Normally, I would agree with you but in the case of the replacement armor the finish wasn't smooth at all. My original set was but not the replacement. It had a sandpaper feel to it. That is why I went on the heavier side and painted it lying flat (not hanging). I wanted to recapture that smooth feel. A lot of product gets wasted on the MAX 2K paint when you are spraying something thin because the nozzle spay pattern is set pretty wide. The can has a lot of pressure it because it does lay down nice. Better than my paint gun actually.

In my opinion, that is correct. Here is a shot of my coin door. The black marks are fingerprints on the bare metal coming through. The metal wasn't prepped correctly. It bugs me but not to the point of doing anything about it yet. My apron and display panel metal have prints too. I love the game but would love it more if they found a different powder coater. Probably not a lot of options where they are located.

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So if my armor power coat is wearing off and turning black, I can get new armor? Do I just contact Spooky for these?

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It is thier call but your powder coat looks defective to me. Give them a call and see what they say.

I got the same thing going on the speaker panel

hwnfingerprints (resized).png

No idea what to do except wait til Spooky finally figures out their powdercoating issues then ask for a replacement. They've sent me a replacement lockdown bar already, which is still in the box because I've not had time to deal with spraymax 2k yet. Got blue painters tape on the siderails, hoping to salvage the originals but they were also starting to show wear.

Holy shit!!

No, it wasn't like that at first.. took a month or two for the fingerprints to start showing. Like mad-dog said, it's bad prep that doesn't show up til later.

I think I'm good with my standard.

Isn't it when you unlock the trapped ball, you get a 2x multiplayer active till you lose one? I thought that's what the code is supposed to do as the reward for recuing it.

Hmmm, I’m not sure, actually. I didn’t think so, but I could be wrong. If that’s the case, it may be a good idea to have a callout.

It's listed in the game flowchart on spooky's site: https://www.959224spookypinball.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/HWN_rules_flowchart-1.gif

Yea I don't know if there is a callout or anything, or if it even is working? If not then yea some kind of callout would be nice thing to add, I've never actually noticed the 2x modifier on the board in any way so not sure if its working.

Very informative - I appreciate the detail. Let's hope that 2K max does the trick!

Wow. That is epically bad on the part of the powder shop. What. the. Hell. I'm really sorry, that is a bummer

If my HWN 908 doesn’t hold the 2K Max, and IF fingerprints start showing up, I’m going with strip and dip routine with HotRod arcade. He’ll fix that shit up all permanent-like.

Reminds me of my lotr LE. Gold plating came off right quick after taking out of box.

The warranty on the powder coating apparently only applies to the original owner. This is what Morgan at Spooky told me after inquired. Caught me a tad off-guard as they have been excellent on other issues, and have sent me numerous parts under warranty.