My Met has $2,000 in mods. 2 inserts started ghosting and the playfield had some dimpling so I sent stern MANY pictures at David's request. It has taken a long time but they are doing an entire playfield swap for me. As long as the mods clearly aren't the culprit of your complaint, stern seems pretty reliable.
Now I'm happy I get a new playfield, but dreading swapping out all the mods, lights and personalizations I've done.

That seems to be his answer on everything. He acted very surprised about the sound issues of this game and then when i called another time he acted very surprised about the Newton balls and said that he hasnt heard of a lot of problems with them. You know what i say to that? Bull f*cking shit! He seems like a decent guy but come on man please don’t lie to me. Im not stupid and i know that these Newton balls are junk and almost everybody hates them and has had some sort of trouble out of them at one time or another.

He may not have heard of the issue (there's more than one tech in support at Stern), but they have feigned ignorance on WELL KNOWN problems before, so it's hard to say which camp he falls into. There is DEFINITELY one clearly-documented person here with the same issue that spoke to Stern and had the whole wireform replaced.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if Stern had a public defect tracking system that all of us could submit issues and navigate? Sometimes I get the impression that they don't even have an internal defect tracking system!

I recently suggested to a Stern rep that they issue a service bulletin on the shooter lane issue. They said the number of complaints doesn't warrant a service bulletin at the moment. So while many of us solve our problems on Pinside, it's important to also contact Stern about our issues. I've played several IMDN's in the wild and the shooter lanes were AWFUL (both manual and auto plunge). Considering the games design, not having this feature work reliably is a show stopper for me.

I think this is David in the Todd Tuckey video?

55:30 in the video

Im not really complaining but in the case of IMDN i kind of am. All of my Stern games have been very solid and if i ever have a problem Stern has ALWAYS went above and beyond to help me out. Chaz and David are both good guys and they have both always treated me well everytime i have called them.

Just to be clear, Stern takes good care of me as well. I still think Service Bulletins are great way of reaching folks that aren't as proactive as some of us (or as plugged into Pinside). Iron Maiden is a special case...I've spent more time on it than most of my games combined (over the past 6 months). If a Stern rep tells me they haven't heard about issue "X" with Iron Maiden, I just have a hard time believing it (as you pointed out in your post).

Agreed, but then again what are they going to say? “Yeah these Newton balls are a total disaster and very poorly designed” lol.....i dont see that happening.

Well, in the event they designed a replacement, they would issue the bulletin and replacement. In the event they decided not to redesign the mech, they would issue a bulletin on how to dial it in (I did several things to mine and it's been really solid...FINALLY). The last thing I did to the ORB newton was to replace the screws with wider screws with lock washers. The very small wood screws don't hold with all the vibration from the newton AND pops. The sarcophagus newton doesn't have this problem, since it's fastened to the PF differently.

I have never heard of this. I would film it. Your phone can probably do film at 60fps and may even do higher, glass off film a bunch of shots, then watch frame by frame to see what causing it.

Go to Diagnostics->GameSpecificTests->GuardianDiverterMotorTests. It will allow you to raise/lower the gate to see how is functioning.

Nothing seem to work for me also... was pretty sure was a power problem,

I will try a stronger coil! Let me know what you put in there

https://www.pinballlife.com/stern-090-5023-ot22-600-coil.html

22-600

Cheers,
Neil.

i will have to order a new one... what about a 23-700? 100 less turn enought power increase?

Anyone else that puts the more powerful coil in, let us know if it works.

Stream with the coil in....

What is the ideal angle you all have your flippers set to? Do you have them at factory angle pointed at the holes or something different? What about flipper power? Normal or hard? TIA

Please forgive my newb-ness but how hard is it to change a coil? I have done some searches but have not found a guide on how to replace a coil on a spike 2 game.

If you know how to solder, it's not a big deal. Not unique to the Spike architecture...

Always use the holes.

WRT power, the default settings seem to work well on most machines. If you are experiencing mechanical issues, it would be best to resolve the actual problem, rather than changing the software settings. Many Maidens had over-tightened flipper parts from the factory, causing the plunger to bind (it seems like the flipper gets weak after a while.)

Should I keep the diode on the coil? The original coil has no diode.

My understanding is you will need to remove the diode and then it's good to.

What did you set the power number to?

About 200 - can check tomorrow night.

Minor problem
When trooper multi starts, 2 of the balls go to the left post and one to the right post. I will try to explain what I see happening.
The first ball (ball 2) auto plunges fine, hits the right post and heads back towards its resting position on top of ball 1 at the left post.
When the second ball (ball 3) is auto plunged, it bounces off ball 2 as it is coming back to the left post, knocking ball 2 back over to the right post.
Balls 1 and 3 come to a rest at left post but ball 2 comes to a rest at the right post.
Hopefully that makes sense to you.
Any tweaking tips?

The mylar up top might have bubbled up, slowing the balls too much so ball 2 isn't out of the way in time for ball 3. OR your playfield pitch is too shallow.

If all else fails, put the stronger coil on the auto launch.

No diode and my power is set to 205

Neil.

Hey guys, I bought this kit and the installation doesn't look right to me (2 photos below).

The plastic seems to be covering half the opto...doesn't make sense to me. Is this how yours looked?

Any help would be appreciated. If the designer of this mod is on this thread, please help us understand the rationale of this mod...

Thanks!

IMG_1239 (resized).jpeg

IMG_1241 (resized).jpeg

I had exactly the same thoughts as this is how mine looks as well.

So, how does it work?

If I/we can't get some kind of explanation, I'm taking it off. Covering the opto just seems wrong.

That's how mine looked when I installed it and thought it weird it covered the opto's like that, but have had no problems and registers every time. Don't know the science behind it, just know it works.

Thanks for sharing. I guess I'll finish installing them and see how it goes. Still wish whomever designed it would "weigh in" on why covering nearly half the opto is goodness Another option is too simply update the website I guess. The photos from the website don't appear to cover as much of the opto.

My GUESS (and only a guess) is that it focuses more of the beam to the top side of the opto because when a ball misses sensing, it's usually because it went so fast it rode up on the guide rail.

I don't recall having any detection issues on this though. touches wood.

Well this company also does playfield protectors so having one of them installed raises the ball height on the opto right away. They obviously come up with this design while testing it out I reckon.Lots of missed loops with the protector on.I have both installed and it works amazingly well.

No diode for sure on the replace coil solution.

I was having loads of problems with my auto launch and plunger. Ball was making the upper loop perhaps 10% of the time.

If been reading all sorts of complicated solutions here, and they all seemed quite finicky.

My solution was dead easy, and it took me all of about 5 minutes.

I removed the ramp. Removed the plastics.

With a nut driver ON the tightened lane guide nut, I used the side of the nut driver to torque the angle of the lane guide.

That moved the upper edge of the lane guide towards the trough.

I used a wide flat head screwdriver to fine tune the angle from the top left back side of the guide, again using the nut driver ON the nut as leverage.

EDIT-I should add that as I tweaked the guide angle, I was constantly testing the new position by full plunging a ball. My goal was to at least get it to work while the upper left flipper was in the up position. Lucky for me, I managed to nail the angle, and it is working perfectly with the flipper down or up now.

It’s now working 100%.

I will take some pictures if anybody finds this difficult to follow.

Photos would be nice. When you say it's working 100%...over how many games? Whatever solution I've tried (and I've fiddled A LOT), has worked well for awhile and then gone South. The only explanation is the guide is very finicky (a fact) AND it's poorly fastened to the PF (which seems to be a theme with this game).

Clunky auto launches ruin this game for me...

I’ve only put a few games on it since fixing it. I suppose it’s possible it could go out of alignment again.

When it wasn’t working, I didn’t really care though! That’s why it took me so long to try to solve the issue... I was having too much fun playing the game despite that feed not working correctly.

I should add that as I tweaked the guide angle, I was constantly testing the new position by full plunging a ball. My goal was to at least get it to work while the upper left flipper was in the up position. Lucky for me, I managed to nail the angle, and it is working perfectly with the flipper down or up now.

I disagree that it’s a game ruining shot though. Mostly because you are never credited with that shot from a ball launch anyway. It’s merely serving the ball in to play. Many people soft plunge too. It killed the choreography of Trooper MB start. That’s about it for me.

At the moment, my manual plunge seems 100%. The auto-plunge is more random. For me, it's not just Trooper MB...it's all MB's (and as you know, this game is very generous with MB's). Having the ball auto-plunge into the left upper flipper is just clunky. Having it fly around to the upper right flipper (as designed) just gives you much better opportunity for flow, loops, etc. Just disappointing that something as basic as the shooter behavior is so error prone. I've owned a lot of games, and this game seems like it needed a couple more months of development/testing. So much tweaking.

My manual plunge works like 100% of the time, though I do short plunge almost all the time to try and get the secret skill shots. My auto launch works 90% of the time. The 10% it doesn't work seems to be when it auto launches a bunch for ball save on a multi ball. It's like the more it launches, the coil heats up and maybe gets weak because after I play for awhile it goes back to working since the coil has time to cool down. I might have to try the more powerful coil I've read about and see if that fixes the problem.

I installed the new coil as you suggested. Big improvement. Since the default coil setting was on 255, it seems like the original coil just didn't have enough power. I have it set on 245 with the new coil and Trooper MB rocks. Will play with different settings.

Thanks for the suggestion...

It also greatly affects the players ability to make shots while the ball saver is active during MBs. Other balls are bricking and blocking the way up the middle, instead of being in the loop where they are supposed to be.

Ruins the start of Aces High and Rime as well, both aesthetically and strategically. On Rime, you should be able to triple big loop the auto plunged ball and have the jackpot ready before the first ball is even released to the mini flipper.

put the new coil... 22-600. set on 255, big improvement also! 23-700 was not enought

Did you guys request any info from Stern before the change? I think the bigger coil is a fantastic idea and I am interested in what Stern said.

I didn't consult with Stern on changing out the coil. I've spoken to them about my shooter woes in general, and they never suggested adding a stronger coil.

I find that Stern support is more helpful for very specific requests. When it comes to fiddling with different solutions, threads like this are more helpful (to me). Changing out a coil like this is benign...worst case, it doesn't improve things (and the original coil could be put back).

Stern should change the design to my coil choice and put my initials on the power jackpot in the next code as a reward -> "NJM"

knowing my luck they will now make the game shout "asshat" when my initials go in

Good stuff