First, make sure the cup is centered underneath the captive ball's post exactly. The bracket can be bent slightly. If you don't have a leaf adjustment tool you eyeball the two contacts with the captive ball in the resting position and push the metal finger behind the bottom leaf switch past the contact point and release. Reevaluate the spacing and repeat if necessary. When you are finished you want a tiny amount of space between the contacts. To test, move the captive ball very slightly. The top leaf should move and the bottom leaf shouldn't. Any more and you should be able to see the bottom leaf move. This ensures you do not have it stuck on.

Not sure why I posted this here as I'm hoping this thread will die and people will just post in the owners thread.

Your shooter rod tip needs to be centered on the ball side to side and vertically.

If your ramp has a weld "bump" causing the ball to jump over I'd recommend contacting your dizzy or stern to get a replacement.

I think Icarus, hallowed, and fear allow it. Aces and rhyme are multiball and do not.

Yes, remove the wireform.

If your auto plunger or auto plunger AND manual are off, adjust the ball launch metal guide as described above. If your manual plunge is off, make sure your plunger is centered both horizontally AND vertically on the ball as it rests.

Is your auto plunger self-centering like it's supposed to? The other thing is if it's firing before the ball settles and is still on it. If your full plunge travels correctly 100% of the time I would think it would be one of the above two issues, or possibly another adjustment needed to the shooter lane guide.

If it's the auto plunger messing up dont mess with your manual plunger. Don't know if you mis-typed...

If it's your manual plunger make a mental note of where the plunger is contacting the ball. Put a ball in the shooter lane and press the plunger forward until it contacts and make a mental note. Lift the playfield, loosen the three screws until the plunger assemble can be moved. There's not a ton of play but it should be enough to get you where you need to go.

Here's the hard part. You gave to either just SWAG it into the right place, tighten, drop the playfield and check your work or drop the playfield with the plunger loose, line it up, and tighten two of the screws enough with the playfield down and sticking your arm in through the machine so that it'll stay in place while you lift and fully tighten the whole assembly. Both methods suck but shouldn't take too many tries.

The auto plunger should be self centering. I think you're going to have to try it again.

You can test it without putting everything back together. Coil test the trough coil for auto, remove the balls and shut it off for manual. You can try to beat the auto plunge to test the manual but if you aren't positive it's settled in the shooter lane before hitting it you'll get bad results.

I would think the issue would be more the ball hitting the shooter lane switch, then bouncing back up away from the auto plunger. I could be wrong, I guess I'm assuming the auto plunge is due to the switch and not on a timer off of the trough coil. This calls for scientific experimentation (when I get home tomorrow).

You'll probably have to take it apart and look. Sounds like the drop target isn't catching where it's supposed to, maybe its spring is hung on something or the plastic is misshapen or broken. Does it ever stay up? Can you manually pull it up and forward and have it stay with the game off.

Check the switch gap on that pop bumper Groo

Compare the EOS gap on that switch to the others and adjust as necessary

My autoplunger has a small amount of side to side play so that it automatically moves to center on the ball when it comes to rest. Do yours that arehot resting on center have any side to side movement or is the adjustment maxed out?