I was hoping to find a general maintenance section site, but it seems it's spread out among the various pin tech sections. So... I bought an Spider-Man back in Nov of last year, then put all new rubber in Dec. We've dwindled off a bit, but I'd say we average 5 games a day.
I bought one of the rubber sets from pinballife (https://www.pinballlife.com/index.php?p=product&id=486), and I'm already seeing more significant wear than I would expect. Granted, if I could do it again, I would have simply ordered to spec out of the manual. Looks like I won't be using a lot of the rubber included.
My experience:
- probably had 5 of the 7/16 OD rubbers break off loose on the playfield (varied but 50-150 plays, some kept on breaking)
- 2 3/4 ID rubber (for the triagular bumpers near the flippers) seem to be chewing through very quickly (already replaced a couple of them with about 200 plays)
- some of the 7/16 OD rings some serious wear (shreading)
- flippers and the rings have significant black marks quickly (new pinballs, I did wipe them down, but is this machine oil or something?)
The machine came with white rubbers for most of the rings, which from what I can tell from the manual should be black...
Questions:
Should I be moving to black (and white is somehow less durable then white)?
Did I screw something up installing the 7/16 OD rubbers making them break so easily?
Should I be looking for some other brand of rubbers? (Perfectplay from PL or another vendor?)
Thanks for any advice.
Hagerstown, MD
Charlottetown, PE
