I have a bunch of the heads. I'm just thinking of a practical way to secure them to the kicker arm for the time being. Paper clip, zip tie....I'm thinking it's a horse apiece.

I think its safer to rig the link than the head. You can buy the kicker with a head installed. Or we could both just man up and figure out how to deal with those gd roll pins. Great collection btw, I'm a bit jealous.

My neighbor just showed me how to punch out and install the roll pins, super easy, you just need a vise and a punch tool.

I have a punch tool. I don’t have a vise tho. Damn….

I don't think you can do it without a proper vise because you could bend the kicker arm.

Hey guys! All my controlled lamps failed. I moved some wires yesterday near the rectifier board and the lights came back. Now they are back out. What connectors should I be looking to if all the controlled lights are off?

I don't believe it's a fuse.

Thanks!

It is probably a ground problem with the controlled lamps, they all share a common ground and it is spliced in various places and if one of the splices has a poor connection you can lose some or all of the controlled lights, i had it happen on one of my Skateballs, that i had done a playfield swap on twelve years ago, just run a seperate ground jumper to the controlled lights and if they start working, then you need to trace out where the splice failed or you can just run a redundant ground to the lamps, although the problem could be with connector J1, terminal 7, a blue wire that is the switch illumination bus return, try wiggling that wire and see if the lamps come back, it could be a bad terminal or a broken solder connection on the header pin on the rectifier board

Do the solenoids work? I believe connector J1 has nine slots for 8 pins on the board, so you can mistakenly put it on wrong. Check to make sure it is on correctly with each wire going to the correct pin. If you did put it on wrong, you could have driven the 43V for the solenoids into the controlled lamps by accident and blew them all out.

Yep, it happened to me.

I'm trying to resolve an issue with the shooter lane.

When the balls doesn't rest properly on the shooter gage, it often bounces off the small guard rail that prevents the ball from slipping under the apron.

If I take the time to pull the plunger and the ball rests at the tip on the shooting gage, there's no ussie. If I pull it too fast, it often bounces off the small ramp.

I don't believe there's a way to adjust the length of the plunger where the ball sits before it is pulled.

I'm wondering if the small ramp that I have installed is too much in the way, although it is flush with the wooden rail.

I didn't have the ramp initially. I had to set up a new one. Would really appreciate if someone could show me how it looks on their machine.

I wonder if this small ramp should actually be installed more towards the ramp itself as maybe the ball knocks on the wooden ramp...

Thanks!

IMG_9249 (resized).jpg

I could be wrong…

But I thought the ball slightly rested on the gauge? Move the two prongs out that are on each side of the ball.

Your plunger tip is too far forward. The tip of the shooter rod should rest just behind the shooter gauge cover plate. Your shooter rod spring also looks likes it's pushed too far back compared to mine, not sure if that's what's causing your issue or not.
What type of spring do you have just behind the shooter rod handle? (the oval-ish shaped spring between the handle and the outside of the machine) I wonder if it's the wrong size?

20230412_220938.jpg

Just put a washer or two in front of the spring.

You are absolutely right about the tip regarding the shooter rod. But what I find interesting to see is that your small ramp is way closer to the ramp than mine. Mine is wayyyyy far on the inside and I think that might be the cause of the wiggle fo the ball there.

But you are right, there is some adjustments to be done to the plunger. There is some sort of a washer-lock on the rod that pushes the spring far back. I will also look into this. Thanks for your input! Much appreciated!

I want ya’ll to know that the quality of CPR’s backglass for Paragon is outstanding! 7 years ago, BG Resto made a backglass for me, and it’s fine except that it’s too opaque. I had to use 2SMD LEDs to light it, and it never looked quite right to me. It really stood out in my row of Bally pins. So I finally ordered a CPR BG and installed it tonight. It actually looks better than many original backglasses I’ve seen! Beautiful color, sharpness and light transmission.

Here’s the before (BGResto) and after (CPR). The CPR glass is lit with #44 incandescent, and the BGResto is lit with warm white LEDs. I’ll always be grateful to Steve at BG Resto for giving my game a backglass for the past 7 years. But I’m really happy with CPR right now. I just need $1000 to fall into my lap, so I can justify getting the CPR playfield.
B6ECDFCF-4751-4F3F-B1B8-66FC395EE7DF (resized).jpegD96D0C6D-4559-4E4A-9654-E2674A48C8EE (resized).jpeg

That's good to hear, mine is original and mostly good but is faded and has a little flaking so I want new one to match the playfield restoration. The original will make good wall art.

I tried to tweak the pictures on my iPhone to reflect what I was actually seeing. The CPR backglass looks better than my picture above (it’s not quite that red).

So are you selling the old BG?

Does anybody know the dip switch settings to set electronic sounds?
Thanx
UFO

The switches are S8 and S32

IMG_0242 (resized).JPG

Thanx!

You're very welcome

Anyone have a Paragon for sale in the Massachusetts area? Thx!

Hello Billy, i have one for sale, but i am on Long Island in New York, a bit of ride i know, i usually go visit my daughter up there, during the summer, she is in Ayers, Massachusettes, so it would be a couple of hundred miles both ways, if you are interested in picking it up, it is a 100% working players machine, it has some playfield wear and the back glass is cracking and flaking a little, the cabinet is nice and solid with a little paint fade, plastics and rubbers are new, i also have a bare, spare playfield, which i was going to touch up and clear coat and swap out, but i will never get around to it, i can include that, if you are interested in making a trip to NY, then you could check it out yourself and decide if you want it, let me know either way, i completely understand if you would rather find something more local, have an awesome day, George, Trainmonger

I traded it to a friend for a Foo Fighters translite.

Thanks for the offer but looking for something a little higher grade. I appreciate the offer though

Does anyone know if it’s possible to get just one decal for the inline drop targets without ordering the entire $40 set?

Thanks for getting back to me, Bill, no problem, of course you could always make it a perfect machine if you wanted, CPR makes a playfield and back glass. if you have the time and resources

You can order individual drop targets from The Pinball Resource. $4 each.

Selling my Paragon if anyone is interested.

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/784450659955570/?mibextid=dXMIcH

What playfield pitch is everyone running?

All the way up in back, all the way down in front on all my games.

Same. On mine I think that equates to about six degrees.

Same. Sometimes I'll put rubber feet under the back as well. For even more pitch.

Games were set up in the factory with the bottom of the cabinet leveled. For a faster play I personally adjust the rear legs halfway up.

I know this is pretty subjective but how often are you guys generally rebuilding your flippers?

I bought my Paragon a little over a year ago, and rebuilt the flippers with all new parts shortly after.

Today the mini flipper locked up after playing a few games. I lifted the playfeild and I could manually move it but it was binding pretty bad. I tore it down...the coil sleeve, and plunger linkage were filthy, but otherwise looked in decent shape.

I cleaned everything up well, polished the plunger, put in a new coil sleeve and spring, and cleaned/filed the EOS contacts while I was there, and it works great again.

The other two flipper mechs look equally filthy so I'm going to give them the same treatment.

I played the crap out of it for the first several months after buying it but it's slowed down to probably only being played about 10-20x/wk.

I was just surprised the flipper mechs already looked so dirty, but maybe that's about average time a rebuild lasts?

I have never rebuilt flippers in years of playing.

Really? That's interesting. I was surprised with how dirty mine were. For comparison, I've had my judge dredd for over 2 yrs, I play it probably just as much as paragon and the mechs look fine. Otherwise I haven't kept any other games longer than a year so far so it's hard for me to guage how long rebuilds should last.

Remember, solid state games have no EOS switch spark, thus no soot
that can get accumulated relatively easy with older EOS switch designs
of yesteryear.

That makes sense, the flipper mech was covered in what I thought looked like soot.

Same here. I’ve had to replace a miscellaneous coil or a flipper part, but I’ve never rebuilt my flippers entirely. I may have been lucky in always buying games that were partially shopped, and if the flippers are working ok, they are unlikely to wear out quickly in a HUO environment.

You can get used to worn flippers. Every old Bally I get in my garage shop has badly worn flippers assemblies. Never seen one that did not need work. I buy my kits from pinball Life. If you haven't done so try rebuilding one, you'll be impressed by the results.

I rebuilt my flippers. They immediately had a ton more power. Then within the first few games I cracked the small plastic over the center middle target off a flip.

Still looking for that plastic by the way.

I haven't been that lucky. All my machines I've bought so far hadn't been shopped in years. I've rebuilt the flippers on every game I bought so far, and they all definitely needed it. The flipper strength and the speed of play was always drastically better after the rebuild.

I just put WPC style flippers and all new parts on my new to me firepower, with a fresh coat of wax and new balls that thing is nasty! You can easily loose track of the ball.

Might have one. PM me and I'll check tomorrow.

At the risk of sounding ignorant, how can you tell if your flippers need to be rebuilt?

I've rebuilt flippers on 2 games but they had obvious things wrong with them like binding, excessive slop and damage to components.

Pull the coil stops off and inspect, take the coil off and inspect the plunger/linkage. Any slop or wear, rebuild. At a minimum I'd replace the coil sleeve as well. Make sure the end of stroke switch isn't blackened and has some meat left on the contacts.

And an easy rebuild. Buy the whole mechanism already built from Pinball Life. Lol. Ensures everything is new and it's done.

I'm having a strange issue with my Paragon. The first 15 or so minutes it's powered on it plays fine, but after a few games the ball ejector coil won't work. The game will make the sound when it should be firing the ball out but nothing will happen. If I manually actuate the switch, it will try again and probably kick it out. After 30 minutes or so of the game being on, the coil won't work at all.

I also noticed it sometimes will kick out weakly before refusing to kick out at all. I can confirm that the switch is not the issue.

common cause of something like this is connectors

Paragon trivia: If you press both flippers at the exact time that the outhole kicker fires, the ball won't make it to the shooter lane, and will roll back to the outhole, where the outhole kicker will fire again. I learned this as an obnoxious teenager in the arcade.