What Bublhead did over the weekend to his MBrLE-
Scoop VUK coil needs a spring washer to snub up the coil and prevent it from shifting back and forth in between the housing and the coil stop. Also, Lermods recommends a small piece of foam in the throat of the assembly can gently redirect the kickout, and you can also bend the scoop ever so slightly and get it to reliably kick out to the left flipper. That is if and when the hardware fires the coil with the same current each time. Not sure what causes a less than full power stroke of the coil to happen every once and a while but it does happen, and ends up “pooting” it SDTM.
Slow rolls down the right orbit hit Drac’s feet and bounces the ball SDTM too, I found a small wedge shapped piece of foam added on the right side of his feet gives the ball enough deflection to end up on your flipper, but there is a point (and you can find it pretty easy) where with just the right roll up and back it will STILL send it SDTM... the key is to find that thickness and angle of the foam to make it happen as few a times as possible, but it can not be eliminated 100%, that is just pinball.
The left Bride ramp wireform not seating in the routed playfield inset just means they were probably breaking them when tightening them on the line, and they were then told to snug them down and stop in order to prevent breaking off the wielded threaded mounts causing a lot of rework. I think adding pressure from top while tightening from below might help, but haven tried it yet, mine sticks up just enough that you feel a slight reject force as you slide a ball across the transition. If it wasn’t for removing chrome, a little filing would be the only thing required, but looks like I might have to just “force” it down using my brutish strength and snug up the nut bellow.
I put up my first #1 HSTD but have yet to knock George off of GC... but now that all my shots are pretty smooth, reject free, and way less SDTM from scoop ejects and right orbit slow rolls, my high scores should start rising. I also noted the outlane posts were almost just finger tight, they had shifted a little in the slot to be more open when I went to narrow them up a smidge. So they were maybe 3/64ths off middle of the slot in the open direction and I set them back to middle of the slot and tightened them up which was how they used to ship them in the day.
I turned on an 8 second ball save only because the slow roll out of the pops and then off Drac’s feet had been starting every game with a house ball and pissing the other players in the arcade off (i.e. the wife). MB is too brutal without it (eh Munster’s owners?)
I added the interactive trough light, but I am still thinking the center playfield is still too dark to play in a completely dark room like my wife likes to play. I am still turning on the overhead lights, albeit I dim them down for atmosphere. I set the tilt pretty liberal but still on the bob. I had to tighten the leg bolts after 2 days due to all the man handling we were doing, and also to reduce my tilts during multiballs, of which I am notoriously famous for.
Other than your basic playfield hand tuning, this thing is pretty solid, well made, beautiful, fun, engaging, enraging, and all around entertaining machine to own. Definitely recommend it to those who like campy horror, old drive in horror movies, and to every classic Universal Monster fan who likes Pinball.
I like to imagine what a Dracula, Frankenstien, Mummy, Wolfman, and Bride of Frank machine would have been like if done in a manner of CFTBL. Those woould have been intersting machines to see the old B/W team tackle back in the day. Hello?, CGC? Stern? API? JJP? Bueller? Bueller?