So I have been playing a lot of AC/DC lately since it is the newest pin in my collection. I know that No Fear does not get a lot of love, but it is actually one of my favorite games. I had not played my No Fear for about two weeks and when I went to play it, I was shocked by two things.

1st, I consider No Fear to be a very fast game, but after AC/DC it feels like No Fear is running in slow motion. I guess that is good actually. I played really well on No Fear which means AC/DC is improving my skills!

2nd, I never thought No Fear sounded bad, not great either but certainly not unbearable. Well after AC/DC I cannot stand the poor sound quality of No Fear. It sounds like listening to an alarm clock radio. I still love the game play in No Fear so I am going to mod the sound system.

Ordered some new 5.25" coax speakers for the back box and a 12" sub to put in the cabinet. I don't expect it to sound as good as AC/DC, but I had to do something to get some actual bass sound in it and tone down the tinny back box sound.

I have the same problem. I have tried a bunch of things to fix it and it is better now, but still misses a fair percentage of the time.

I have already tried adjusting the shooter lane metal guide, adjusting the position of the shooter solenoid, replacing the coil sleeve, replacing the coil plunger, waxing the shooter lane and metal guide, replacing the coil and finally even modifying the shooter coil by taking 50 turns of wire off the damn thing.

It still does not consistently make the skydive hole..... so, I gave up. I live with it missing the skydive shot sometimes and just save the ball and keep on playing. It does like to head straight for the drain when it misses. I have had it miss and drain then ball save, then miss and drain again and by then ball save is over so I got nothin for that ball. Very annoying when that happens.

The problem on my game is not one of alignment. When the shooter kicks the ball out at normal speed, it goes straight into the skydive hole. It is just that maybe one in four shots, the shooter goes off weak. I have no idea why it does this. When it fires the ball weak, it almost always misses the skydive hole.

Markmon, what kind of mechanical problem should we be looking for?

Like Chet, I have begun to suspect the drive transistor(s) is weak. But don't know how to test that other than just replacing the main and pre-drive transistors. Rather not do that unless someone with some expertise or experience thinks it is likely / possible to cause such a problem.

My game is definitely shooting the ball out at different rates. It is completely obvious when it kicks the ball out weakly. The ball barely reaches the top of the playfield when it happens. The normal shot is boom up the guide and into the hole - no doubt it is going right in. The weak shots do not correlate to anything - they seem to be just random events. But you know it was a weak shot before the ball even reaches the top of the shooter lane so you get ready to try and save it cause you know it is not going into the skydive hole....

And my game plugs into an outlet right off the main circuit breaker panel. 12 guage wire from the panel - only about 3 foot run, then a 14 Gauge 12 ft long extension cord to where the games plug in. I do have 4 games running on that outlet, but this problem happens even when no other game is turned on. And the other three games have no indication of any voltage problems at all.

For some reason I was thinking the driver board was different in No Fear than my other WPC games. It is the newest Williams game I have. I know the MPU board is a WPC-S which is definitely different from my other games.

So, is the driver board interchangeable between WPC and WPC-S games? If so, I will swap the boards and see if the problem goes away.

Mine does that also and I have determined it is not binding - the bell on the plunger is magnetically sticking to the coil bracket. Not sure how to fix that problem.

I finished my sound upgrade project on No Fear today. It is an amazing improvement! The skull's voice is rich and full now. Bass is strong and solid. It of course still does not sound as good as AC/DC, but with the upgrade I can at least enjoy playing it again next to AC/DC. AC/DC just has me spoiled I guess.

Anyway, I went with parts from MCM. Bought the MCM Audio Select Series 12" woofer - 4ohm, plus a set of each of the Lanzar VX520 and VX320 car speakers. Total cost with shipping of just over $60. Plus I have the other speakers left over from each Lazar set to do another Williams game.

The VX520s bolt right in. The VX320s mount different from the original right speaker plus they are a little bigger so I had to make an adapter. For the woofer, I pried off the old speaker mount plate and bolted the new woofer straight to the cabinet bottom. I did reuse the grill and just put in screws on the inside of the cabinet.

My first attempt at wiring was per the directions here: http://dziedzic.us/wpc_speaker_sound_info.html

I did not care for the way that sounded. The back box speakers were too quiet compared to the woofer and they did not seem to have much high frequency response either. My guess is that the coils in the speakers tend to filter out the high frequency spectrum plus the 8 ohm load cuts sound level quite a bit.

So I wired them in parallel and put a 200 mfd capacitor in series with the 3.5 speaker to prevent overdriving the amplifier chip with too low load impedance. It then sounded much better but there seemed to be a null when listening from the center of the speakers. This usually indicates a phasing problem so I swapped the polarity of one of the back box speakers and that fixed it right up.

Overall the sound is now really good and for a few hours work plus $60 in parts I am completely happy with it.

Missing the shot and draining is not nearly as frustrating as making the shot perfectly and then draining (AC/DC bell shot).

It makes it most of the time now. But I have not played it much lately. All my play seems to be on AC/DC for some reason...