I have two weird things happening with solenoids on my machine. One, occasionally the solenoid which pushes the balls from the trough will just bounce up and down slightly while playing the game. It makes a noise because it is moving a chambered ball, but otherwise it is not applying enough power to get it into the shooter lane.

Secondly, I have a kicker that pops balls from the subway under the playfield and back into play. About 5% of the time, it will take 2-3 fires before it can push the ball up and out.

Do I have bad solenoids or a wiring problem? Can anyone talk me through how I might diagnose something like this?

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I disassembled this coil and cleaned everything. I don't see anything wrong with the coil sleeve or other parts. I really don't see any way for this thing to give a glancing blow to the ball because it's all enclosed and aligned for you. I can't see any evidence that the ball is making contact with the plywood of the table either. The ball popper issue is just weird to me :/. I attached a picture of that assembly.

Ok, so I see what's happening here...basically the ball does not always roll into the final resting position in the trough. If the game doesn't detect a ball there, but it does detect them in the other spots of the trough, it seems to pulse the solenoid for the shooter lane until the balls shake loose and one is seated correctly in the chamber. I'm really not certain what could have changed that allows the ball trough to occasionally catch a ball. I'm going to try to clean it, but it looks super clean already. :/

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They are brand new. Nothing magnetized as far as I can tell.

This is very occasional. It almost seems like one of the balls is defective, based on the frequency which this happens. I'll dig around in there tonight and see if I can't find out what might be causing it.