So, I finally bought my first pinball table. A 1973 Gottlieb's Hot Shot. The machine works great (after tweaking a tilt relay and sanding some score switches) but there's this goddamn green plastic on the right side of the play field where, if the ball falls or flies up with little to no momentum, the ball will get jammed.

Looking at the issue, I don't know if the rubber is too thick, pushing the plastic outward or if the green plastic is just bowed too far out at the ends creating too much friction and stopping the ball?

Looking at some Big Shot pics, their posts are actually titled inward eliminating this wedge issue and the left rollin lane totally works fine.

I order a new set of rubbers, hoping that they will be smaller but if that doesn't work is there a way to safely soften and bend the plastic back, so it stops blocking the ball.

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

hotshot3ballstuck.JPG

So file the washer down on the right side?

Oh, and that's not a picture of my table. That's a picture from IPDB. I'm working right now so I didn't have time to run over and take pics of the table.

My table does look great though. The plastics are a bit faded but otherwise the playfield looks awesome. I have some mill wax coming in the mail, so it should look better once i clean it.

Here's a somewhat stylized pic of my playfield that I took for an instagram post.

HotShotplayfield.jpg

Do my rubbers look puffier than the other table in the 1st picture? I can't tell.

I honestly don't know. Is it possible that the guy I bought it from put the wrong plastics in? Because the bowed out shape of the plastics just don't make since, unless they were for Big Shot, because big shot green lane guides angle inward unlike Hot Shot.

Where would I get the correct lane guides?

Thanks Garrett. Is Carnuba over Millwax due to the type of table or is this preference a general recommendation?

Peel the rubber back?

I don't think I understand. Oh, and nice refurb on your Hot Shot, I saw it earlier when I was lurking.

Jesus, some kid just threw 50 cents in the empty coin slot and it somehow jammed up the reset switches. Fuuuuuu

Since I have the attention of so many Hot Shot owners, what's your favorite technique for keeping the ball from draining down the out lanes?

My new rubber kit should be arriving soon, I'll keep your suggestion in mind when it does. Does anybody else know what Juggernaut meant by "peeling back" the rubber?

Ohhhhhhh.. I see. Manipulating the rubber into the right position during the mounting of the guide. I'll give it a shot here in a bit. (waiting for a slow traffic time in my store)

I tried bunching the rubber deeper behind the guide to alleviate the slack. It works when I'm holding it but there's not enough tension to hold the rubber in place and it just slides back to it's regular position. If there was a pin, inside there I could wrap the rubber back, but I'm hesitant to put pins into the board where they don't belong.

My other idea is to just get a razor blade and to shave down the rubber around the guide. Is that a horrible idea? How did you get the rubber to stay pinched back like that? Hot_Shot_bullshit.jpg

Maybe? I mean his other tables were a Power Shot and a Jokerz. Did those tables have different sized balls?

I bought the table from a tournament player so hopefully the ball is the right size. I don't have a caliper but I'll run it by him when he stops in next week.

I was able to alleviate the issue somewhat. If you look at my "F U Plastic" picture you can see that the metal side rail is a bit mangled. A buddy of mine noticed it in the picture. So I took some padding and a wrench and pressed the rail back as best I could. I also stretched out the rubber a bit more to make it a little more thinner while pressing the posts as far apart as I could and tightening it down. Combined the ball now passes through way easier but I have yet to knock the ball up there at the perfect momentum to see what it does at the apex. As of now, if I set the ball there, it will stick but otherwise it passes through fine.

Fuuuu

Every fix I try is temporary. I'm convinced that it's a combination of a mangled guide rail, a narrow roll in lane, and a flimsy plastic lane guide that gets Pushed out too easily. Even without the rubber the ball can get stuck. I'm just going to cut the plastic until I can get a new metal rail.

I wonder why they made those rollover lanes so narrow on the Hot Shot iteration of the table? They seem to be angled inward on Big Shot.

You were dead on correct.

Before actually messing with anything I decided to order new plastic guide rails. Compared to the old ones, the new plastics are straight, firm, and actually have a slight inward slant against the rubbers. I compared the old ones and the new ones side by side and the old ones are so bowed out and warped that it was obvious what the cause of the problem was.

New plastics in, problem solved.