For years now my Lethal Weapon 3 pinball game's pop bumpers only activate when the ball hits them with medium or hard contact. Soft contact and the ball just rolls off them and the pop bumpers don't activate. So I did some research and decided to try adjusting the switches on them. Two of them seem better now. But the third one went from weak to completely dead. I did the game's switch test and confirmed the switch won't closed. The coil works but the switch itself doesn't trigger the coil now at all. Since I was trying to adjust the switch and it went from working to dead it surely seems like I damaged the switch when trying to adjust it. Before I order a new switch and swap it out I'm wondering how to verify it's a bad switch.

I can see where the plunger on the playfield hits the switch. Is there a way to move up the switch a couple inches with a screw driver or something touching both leads and thus closing the switch and making the coil fire? Or is there a better way? I'm a novice at repairing my pinball game. thanks for your help. I appreciate it very much.

Hi. I did that yesterday on all three bumper switches and I could visibility see some dirty removed. I intentionally bent the switches slightly yesterday because I thought changing the gap on the switch would make it more reactive/sensitive.

What is the switch spoon? When I have the playfield in the upright position to expose the underside the switch doesn't activate when I push on it directly with my finger. The other two pop bumpers. So I think that rules out the bumper skirt being the main problem, right?. The skirt is clearly damaged on the playfield top though. I'm not sure about the bottom until I get in for a closer look.

Thanks for explaining the spoon. I didn't even know that was in there. I'll look for it. And I'll take some picture but I won't be able to post until late tonight. I want to do the wire test as you mentioned. when you say touch the wires to the switch lugs is that like the attached picture in red?

wire test (resized).png

Thanks everybody. I will let you know tomorrow how it went. I appreciate you all.

Good morning. I tried jumping a wire between the two lugs. It worked but only a couple times. I unscrewed the switch and it fired a couple more times but not still not consistently. When I held the switch in my hand at different angles it seemed to fire off more often. I'm thinking the wires just need to be re-soldered to the lug. Visually I can't see that the wires came un-soldered but I think the contact isn't solid. Make sense?

switch (resized).jpg

Thank you!

I'm bad at soldering and haven't had a chance to work on this again yet. I bought a Pin2DMD and hooked that up today. And I'm upgrading to LEDs. So I've been busy improving my game.

Two of the pop bumper lights don't work. I tested for voltage on the top and bottom of the playfield and only found voltage on the 1 of 3 bulbs that works. The wires are soldered to this little board. What should I check next to troubleshoot this lighting issue? Thanks again!

pop bumber lights wiring (resized).jpg

I'm learning so much. columns and rows in the lamp matrix are daisy chained. So if the entire column or row is out then then it could be an issue with the wire at the board, the board itself, or a break in the wire that causes everything downstream from that point not to work? If it's just specific bulbs, like in my case, then it could be the bulb, socket, or soldering for that bulb, right? Do both the column and row wires contain voltage? If they both have voltage then does than mean there isn't a ground? Or is the light socket itself the ground. If they both contain voltage how should I test with my multimeter? One lead on the wire (either column or row wire) and the other to what? Newbie questions I know!

Sorry that was a lot of questions

Okay I referenced the lamp matrix and verified the only bulbs NOT working are the two pop bumpers. The matrix told me the wires for each pop bumper and I can see them from under the playfield as well. I used my multimeter and the voltage was about 6 volts before the diode but only 1 after the diode. Could this mean the diodes are on backwards? or broken?

My issue is resolved. As suggested I cut the wires back an inch and resoldered. The bumpers and lights work great now. Thank you!!!