My Balrog is loose somewhoe and wiggles left and right on its post. So when it goes into retracted mode, it is not tucking itself far enough out of the way of the ring ramp shot. This is causing the ball to hit the side of the Balrog fairly often when I'm trying to make the ramp shot. The post he is on doesn't seem to be loose enough to account for the amount of wiggle (it does have a little up and down travel and almost no left to right slack.) Is this a common problem with a known culprit? Is there a way to tighten the left-right travel of the overall mechanism and make sure balrog retracts far enough? Thanks!

It has about an inch give around the pivot post that anchors it to the motor. The post itself has a little give, but the balrog assembly on the post has much more give. I have two pics here that show the right and left extremes of the horizontal travel as I push with my finger. At rest, it stays more to the left, which is why the ball hits the edge of the bracket.

balrog left (resized).jpg

balrog right (resized).jpg

Thanks, I am hoping that will do it. Will give it a try tonight. The post seems good, but it had a lot of abuse and constant movement during a prolonged malfunction, so I may replace it anyway.

Screws didn't have desired effect. I loosened and then tightend the hex bolt in the coupling interruptor, and it tightened the give a little, but the hex bolt seems overtightened (it's boring into the clutch plates and is close to being stripped). The motor is clearly not moving as far to the retracted position (right side of table) as it had been, since the wear mark on the playfield extends more than an inch beyond the point that the motor is reaching now. Balrog gate bracket (18) is also wiggly loose on the shaft, which exacerbates the problem. I will order a new bracket to see if it fits more snugly over the shaft. I don't know what to do with the motor and interruptor.

I'll look at the switch. The wear came from a mis-installed balrog, which was scraping the playfield, before I bought it. fixed by putting washer below the bracket where it was supposed to be. Thanks again.

Rebuilt the mechanism with new coupler, shaft and bracket, which was much tighter. Works fine now. The metal just got worn out and loose. Thanks for the advice!