i'm having some weirdness with the snake on my metallica. The main issue is that sometimes when the ball is in the snakes mouth the lower jaw sort of shudders (like the mechanism that pulls the lower jaw down stutters) before the ball is ejected. This is also happening when the game starts and at other times. I've uploaded a video as it is hard to describe see here [

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Looking under the playfield it seems like the latch that holds the jaw down (and then releases it) isn't getting pulled out of the way properly when the coil that pulls the jaw down fires. But i'm not really sure how that part should be working so hopefully someone else does...

Any ideas how i could resolve?

Thanks!

_{Post edited by dmj1977: more tinkering}

thanks Squizz - just edited my post to try to make it clearer and added a video. Will try what you suggest now .Thanks!

so two follow up questions if you don't mind mate. Which of the screws is the adjustment screw? (helpfully marked A and B using my advance image editing skills) ;-p
WhichScrew.jpg

Is the circled overlap the lip you are talking about that should be about 1mm overlap?
Overlap.jpg

Thanks again!

thanks Squizz. I did some more adjusting (just loosening the whole lot and repositioning it) and I got it to the point where the jaw mechanism was working OK but then the ball was bouncing out a bit too often and/or not going in as easily. Sort of fixed one problem to create another

I'll try messing with "screw B" tomorrow night. Thanks a lot for all your help!

p.s. i saw someone mention in another thread (http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/metallica-premle-snake-question/page/2) there is a screw which raises and lowers the snake jaw - have you by any chance seen a screw that looks to do that? (a lot of other people seem to be using washers to lower the whole thing and make it a bit easier to hit)

_{Post edited by dmj1977: added link}

thanks mate - seemed to good to be true

wow OK - thats a fair bit of adjusting to do - thanks for that.
p.s. do you know if you can buy slingshot plastic washers anywhere online in australia?

thanks yet again mate

well the plastic washers are on their way but i reckon i can make something suitable using a stanley knife, a hole punch and a plastic container that I'm happy to sacrifice.
I think the snake is working properly other than that so gonna put something together tonight and see how she goes

Having said that i reckon i'll also try to tweak the latch a bit so that the overlap is smaller as well...

(stupid work getting in the way of my pinball habit)

OK, so i got the jaw working perfectly - tweaked the adjustment screw - worked a charm.
I put some (handmade) plastic spacers under the snake to get it a bit lower and the ball is going into the jaw no problem. So far so good...

but something i did messed up the way the ball exists the snake. I've spent 3 or 4 hours tweaking it but i just cant get the ball to feed to the middle of the left flipper anymore. At the moment its hitting the very tip of the left flipper (it seems in the last few games to have worked its way down from the bottom quarter of the left flipper to the tip of it). Still playable but I'd really like to get it a bit higher on the left flipper.

Things i've tried
- adjusting the screws that hold the lower jaw on the pf
- adjusting the screws that hold the coil and latch mech on the pf
- putting some padding on the bottom of the coil that ejects the ball from the snake (to try to soften the shot)
- moving the target next to the snake (near the bottom of the ramp) to make sure the ball isn't hitting it
- levelling the pf perfectly

It seems like the tricky part is that you can independently change the orientation of the two parts of the snake that screw into the pf and you need to get the combination just right.

Anyone got any experience with getting the ball to eject on the correct trajectory to the left flipper?

yeah no changes to coil strength. However, i found out that there have been two screws missing from the mech the whole time (you can actually see which ones in the pic above - to the left of my beautifully drawn red circle). Because my machine came this way (i bought an ex-demo model) i just didn't work it out for a while

But i emailed the distributor (cos i got suspicious when I noticed there were marking on the screw holes suggesting there had been screws in there), they were apologetic and are sending the right screws (they have been great, but they replaced a switch before sending it to me and someone forgot to put the last two screws back in).

Sooo, it seems like i probably got it out of line when i was adjusting to fix the other problem and haven't managed to get it back perfect without the screws at the back...

At the moment, i can kind of adjust the lower jaw angle and the eject mech angle separately - i guess this may go away when i get the missing screws in which will probably simplify the process a lot. Anyways, hopefully the screws will arrive tomorrow - I'll post back the results once i get time to mess with it some more so we can all get some closure

Thanks for your help guys

hey All - resurrecting this post in case what I've worked out can help someone else. Long story shortish - I've tried every combination of all the possible solutions to the snake problem on Metallica (washers underneath, shifting the angle of the whole mechanism, soft material under the coil etc.). Eventually the local Stern tech (great bloke - Hi John! if you read pinside) came out to take a look and decided to try replacing the main bracket(?) mechanism(?) whatever you call it, the main part, inside the snake.

This has largely fixed all my problems. The replacement part is inside the machine now, so i can't post comparison shots, but as you can (hopefully) see in this image of old part - it was built in a way that it isn't "square" - like it was welded together on a bit of a funny angle. It seems that is the cause of all the problem I've had as installing the new part has made a huge difference. If you look where I've drawn the arrows, the two pieces of metal are not parallel (which they should be).

Anyway, if anyone else is having ongoing problems with the snake - might be worth checking how this part looks on your machine... happy to provide more detail or other photos if anyone wants/needs

Cheers!

Snake2.jpg

yes and no, AMD (who i bought the machine from) have a guy does all their repairs around SE QLD (at least thats my understanding)

yeah i have it - not sure if i could bend it properly and/or without breaking it, but i doubt the new one will develop the same problem. I think the part came the wrong way from the factory...

took a couple of hours - very hard to diagnose

AMD ordered the part from stern, and yeah he had to come back

covered by AMD under warranty - I'm *very* impressed by Michael and the team at AMD - they handled it really well (i mean obviously i would have preferred not to have wasted all that time trying to diagnose and fix the fault, but they couldn't have been more helpful)