Have you taken the assembly completely apart and just did a good cleaning? Before I replaced my targets I took the assemblies off and completely torn them down along with the resetting arm that hooks up to the coils and even the coils sleeves and wet sanded all the metal with 400 and 600 grit and then waxed it all with carnauba. Drops and resets as smooth as butter now. Not exactly a mechanical fix but it helped mine out.

in most cases this kind of problem is typically caused by the rubber ring located behind the targets

either too thick or stretched with tension on opposite side of targets making the target side of the rubber looser than it should be causing the targets to rebound off the rubber when hit and not actually drop

You can mess with the strength of the drop target springs too. Make them looser. But too loose and they might drop right away upon reset.

So it looks like the target is hitting the wood of the playfield then, and not the rubber....
It looks like if you were to hold the target up and push it back the back of the target wouldn’t touch the rubber but the way the fixture was screwed in to the wood on the under side was to close to the back on the left. Is that what you are saying or seeing?

I wonder if you could take the assembly off and either file back the wood of the playfield, or shave it back with a dremel or jigsaw. Maybe use the black line behind the targets as a guide.

That’s a major surgery though :/

You could also try loosening the screws on the drop target bank and see if you can slide it to make more clearance from the wood.

i found some machines have a lot of playfield screws on bottom playfield are loose . from the picture looks that might be your problem

Denis

if that's the case go over every bracket that has a coil . that will help game play

This is a common problem. When I worked in the lab at Bally we actually purchased a crude Polaroid Polavision 8mm camera system to study the problem. Under super slow-mo we discovered the target would bend backwards into the rubber and bounce back into position before the spring could pull it down.

The fix is to use thinner rubber behind the target and/or double up on or use stronger springs.

Or go with what the game design team did back then, change your slogan to, 'That's not a bug, it's a feature!'

You can try this yourself. Film it. My Samsung device has a setting for save at at 1/2 or 1/4x speed. Helps solve these problems.

mof

from your pictures above, to me it looks like you have the incorrect style of drop targets installed - those appear to be the "hooded" type (which are for in-line drop targets where the ball has to roll over the target when its in the down position) when you really just need to use the "tombstone" style which are skinnier/thinner and will fix you right up!

and for all others with similar problems ..... one thing of note when replacing original drop targets with new ones is that many times the new ones have a slight curve to them where the originals were completely straight, they should be straight / flat

if yours are curved they can be straightened by heating and bending them - i have done this by dipping the curved ones in boiling water bend straight & drop in cold water

not saying this is your problem (you have wrong style of drop installed), just saying i have seen it in almost every instance of new target replacement

for all others to trouble shoot this problem you would pull the rubber rings behind the targets off and see if your drops fall correctly, if not, then loosen the drop assembly and see if it will slide forward and try again

I think all drop targets were changed over to the 'hooded' variety by the time EBD came out.

when I get my PF reassembled after clear coating, if this happens to me I think what I will do is drill out the holes in the drop target assembly where the screws attach it to the playfield to make the holes slightly longer (oblong). This will allow the assembly to slide back and forth on the screw and then pull the assembly slightly forward to give more clearance in the back. Other than that, it sounds like you would have to find a way to alter the wood of the playfield which would be a nightmare, or shave down the targets to make them skinnier, or put on a different style of rubber.

There are very few target styles anymore that are available as true tombstones.... Red Bullseyes & maybe a few others.... I know I just got Stern blue S's for my Trident drop targets & all I could find was the hooded style... I don't like them, but that's what most manufacturers have gone to...

You could try filing the backside of the drop target near the top.