edit, apparently there is a legit way to do it.

Yeah I thought mine worked yesterday just fine and then all the sudden it started acting up after updating to .91. I could be wrong, maybe it was wonky before.
still works for the most part but gets phantom hits at a certain angle.
Guess I'll be contacting stern .

none of my LED boards were getting 5v from node 9 (upper half dark). I moved the 5 volt connection and it solved the issue. Went ahead and replaced the pin and gave the wire more slack because it was super tight with the zip ties. This is the 6th or 7th time I've seen this issue with the connectors on the node boards. luckily I haven't had a node board crap out on me in a long time.

double

nope still getting stuck balls down there, only on portal locks. anyone found a solution?

prolly what it is, I never notice until I drain and the game is still going. When I did see it, it was stuck in the first or middle position.... I don't know if the opto was being triggered. all optos test out fine. I think it's at 6.5-6.6 right now, will mess around with the pitch.

edit
thought it was working, come to find out the arms were binding. There is an adjustment to align the metal part with the plastic part.
As for the ball getting caught at the end sometimes, I just added two washers down the to increase the slope a little. also added a few to the arm mech as well, because the first set of arms tend to slow the ball on occasion when they are in the down position.

Spinning Disc Adjustment Procedure (1).pdf

click on the pic to get the pdf.

my subway, disc and lights weren't working correctly or at all to begin with. Tried a few things, now they all work flawlessly. In hindsight, they were all real simple adjustments. The engineers who designed the mechs usually do with with tolerances built in. Not everything is perfect off the line, it might even get messed up in shipping. It's worth it in the end though.
Pretty rare to get a NIB game, without having to make some tweaks. The main reasons I have zero qualms about buying sterns is their products can take a beating without to much intervention and their tech support is great.

If you don't want to handle the stuff yourself, can't your distro help you out?

there is an an adjustment underneath that aligns the plastic and metal grooves up. on mine the arms or fingers or whatever were getting caught and not coming up all the time (intermittent). Sometimes it had to go into ball search to find the ball. It did this every time portal locks were a thing. I aligned that and also added 2 washers near the end to increase the slope, so it'd drop in the VUK easier. As sometimes it got held up at the end depending on pitch and if it were leaning left at all.

loosen the six or 7 hex screws on the bottom and move the mech up or down. The alignment is probably off on the teeth vs the slots causing them to stick down. if the ball passes all the way through (because the teeth are stuck down), the software makes it behave like a virtual lock.

had the same issue with mine. It worked great for almost 300 games until a weld point broke

Glad the nubs worked for you. I use them on every game with ball traps, they work great and come off with no ill effects.
Saved me from lots of location play grief.

The roll over insert is adjustable (up/down) if it's the one I'm thinking about. It was the same thing in Beatles. I'm not aware of any other inserts that aren't level with the playfield. pain the butt to unscrew the plastic housing though.

take the tooth mech (only 3 8-32 nuts) out with the broken spot weld and go into settings and change the subway to pass through or no entry. Mine is set on pass-through right now, until I get the new mech.

Anyone with the ball lock issues, have you tried adjusting the mech itself? (its only like 7 or 8 hex screws)
those teeth get stuck down a lot, and it can be intermittent. If the portal lock ball isn't on the right opto, the software won't know what to do. I personally only saw the issue with portal locks, and sometimes with balls that went in after.

1) interesting, I'll have to keep an eye out.
2) its pretty easy to align it right? that was like 99% of my issues down there, worked great until the weld broke.
I didn't use any washers until the end to make the slope, but I put 3 washers on the coil mech itself. (the ones where it attaches to the groove channels.)

They were mainly there to help with clearance if the teeth jammed again. Sometimes when they jam they stick out a tiny amount. Since my game is on location I figured it couldn't hurt, since it doesn't impede the mech itself.

I've had to replace mine 3 times now, I hate to do it but I'm gonna throw a superband on the upper flipper.
they don't feel great, but can put up with a lot of punishment.

I had the same thing happen to my star wars, the ball would just pop off the wire form into the outlane instead of dropping in the inlane. Had to bend the end up slightly (not the whole ramp just wire that the ball hits at the end), works now. (but I've seen others where it's more fluid)

it's either that or get with stern to get another ramp.

Just curious did you try changing the coils out for LOTR ones?
It might/might not be a design flaw, it might of worked great in keiths game, but like mentioned something might of gotten slightly changed in production and sometimes the smallest variance matters.
My game has about 3 thousand plays now and I just had to bend the CM ramp to the left slightly because no balls were going up at all... literally 0 out 10 clean shots.
Now Its back to 4 out of 5 clean shots making it.

Was thinking about replacing the coils to help it, worked pretty good on Stranger things Tele-lock. I'll look at the fan and plastic solution next.
thanks for suggesting it.

I put a dab of super glue on mine and it worked for about 1k games, until it fell out again.
So I put a crap ton of super glue on it and haven't had it come out since. I got stern to send me another, just in case it pops out again somehow. Just make sure it goes in straight, otherwise the disk won't spin right. I'd recommend a small plastic mallet/hammer or something.

I don't think there is a good way to press it back in without adhesives once it comes out the first time.

Go into the featured adjustments and increase the coil and magnet power options.
also try to make sure the prongs are hitting the ball at the same time for auto launch.

Like the other guy said portal locks, but stack a multiball with the mode as well. As long as the game has two/three (depending on how many portal locks you have) balls in it the scoring is doubled/tripled for the length of the mode (as long as you have that many balls in play). Bringing a multiball and playfield/shot multipliers into modes is what you do in almost all sterns to blow up scoring.

Or you could always close the outlanes and lower the incline, but there isn't any fun in that.

I rarely touch the front leg levelers, only ever touch the back two leg levelers to get it as even as possible. The ONLY time I ever touch the front two is when the floor is super uneven, or the playfield is janky. I always try to check the side to side level out the playfield btwn the flippers and somewhere in the middle to get an average difference as close to zero as possible.

I don't use phone apps. The accelerometer sensor isn't always reliable and cases for phones are different. If you don't have a level, just do it through how it feels. Always wondered why I see pinballs with front legs jacked up, never made any sense to me. I remember one guy at a show asking why I was leveling a game. He said all he does is stick the front legs on the front and back legs on the back and GTG.

The last one they did a protector on was the grandpa scoop on munsters. I know my deadpool one fell apart and I had to get a new one. They aren't as thick as actual cliffy protectors, but at least it was something. At least you can put the drop target protectors on some of the scoops, like avengers.

yeah, superbands are the way to go with any high impact rubbers/posts etc. That and the upper mini flipper rubber on maiden will break prematurely if you use regular ones. I wouldn't use them on the bottom two flippers, because they feel a little dead, but they have a place. They are a little more expensive, but easily last 10 times as long.

I kind of thought the same thing until I understood the rules a little better. I honestly can't remember a stern where the modes were so different in a while. If you just say shoot the lit shots, sure modes feel the same. If you understand the nuances and why you don't want to just blindly shoot lit shots, then yeah they are completely different.

That space gem really had me confused for a long time, trying to figure it out myself. A combo mode, thats pretty clever... Always thought that bastard was hitting me for shooting the right shots .

I have no idea, but if you figure it out let me know. I used pliers with a towel on mine and marred up the plastic a slightly. i've never seen that tool before, must be something specialty.