That paddle wheel opto is a nightmare and never seems to work right. I tried replacing both receiver and transmitter and that didn’t fix it. Also tried moving them a bit closer but still didn’t make it reliable. Those are also $40 to replace and you need to remove a pile of stuff from the top of the playfield.

I decided to replace it with a cherry switch and wired gate to trip the switch. Took a little bit of work but now works perfectly

Mike V

Here is a photo of the assembly. You can wire it directly into the switch matrix. You wont need the opto power anymore

Mike V

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Very cool RacingPin. Any sort of tutorial about how to make that modification?

Here is the back shot showing the wires

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Basically what I did was twist the existing wire gate end up so it can trip a switch. Put in a small cherry switch with an extension bent to get hit by the wire gate end. The trick is to position/bend everything so it is not to hard to trap the ball and not to light that the switch doesn’t get tripped long enough. When I got everything right I screwed down the switch. If you want to make this mod completely reversible you can double stick tape the switch in place and use new white/green wires that lead to the disconnect underneath.

Mike V

Thanks MikeV, I'm getting the idea more now. You are using the existing gate and adding a switch to it and disabling the original opto and using one wire sets to the original optio.

What is the function of that original gate? It doesn't look like anything is hooked up to it.

Excellent question! I’m guessing it it is to stop the ball from accidently bouncing out of ferry queue. And indeed the opto power is not needed anymore.

Mike V

Yes I changed both of my same thing didn't work at all but most things from the topside have too come off its not easy too do but it's the only way too do this and after I did my they worked great now