There's a picture of the EX relay opened at
https://www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=447&picno=72373&zoom=1

Does this help?
Royal Flush Ball Gate (resized).jpg
Not a lot of travel in these...

/Mark

I found I'd have to adjust it periodically. It was finicky on mine I had for years.

I’m having an issue with the switch too, I think. There is a big blue spark when the contacts close, and a loud buzz. On the Playfield side sometimes the gate opens and sometimes it doesn’t. It closes all the time when it directs the ball back to plunger. I’m a noobie and don’t really know where to start. I tested the coil and it is at 15 omh. If I knew what a little more return pressure on the contact finger means, I could do that. Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks

Of course now that I messed with it, it works even less well than before. I thought the spring wasn’t tight enough so i thought I could just twist it a rotation tighter but that just warped it. I’ll have another go at it tomorrow and maybe pick up a few springs to experiment with. I’m assuming I’m the spring can’t be too tight or the switch won’t close to open the gate. In the pic above it looks like the spring has been relocated. I guess I could try that too.

I wouldn't go by that picture. That looks more like a modified paper clip than the original spring.

That paper clip thing is not what I was referring to. Although I saw that too. Look between the two brown screws, screwed into the base of the post that the gate is attached to. It looks like there is a spring there. There is also a spring that connects the armature to the bracket that holds the coil. I was thinking that that spring needs to be tighter, but now I’m thinking that the spring is not really for tension as much as it is just to hold the armature in place while giving it the ability to move back and forth. I was going to clean the coil to see if that helps but when I pulled it out I couldn’t really figure out how to clean it or even determine how it works/what it does. Can anyone explain. Also I noticed that the gate closes either (1) the ball goes in the drain and then back to plunger or (2) the ball goes through the open side rail as the gate and back to the plunger. When it is (1) the gate closes again easily, but when it is (2) the gate has trouble closing back up. I wonder why those two switches have differing effects. When it is (1) there is more jostling of the machine because of all the reset sequencing, but not sure if that would help create a stronger effect to open the switch that moves the armature and the arm that moves the base of the post to which the gate is attached.

Ohms are 15 on the coil when gate is closed and 10 when gate is open.

Here are pics about the post

A41985B6-C066-4B1C-ADBD-6EA0BF4D451B (resized).jpeg

BD75E9D4-0701-48F0-AEE5-213137595509 (resized).jpeg

That spring between the 2 screws is someone's kluge to attempt to make it work better - it is not stock. If the assy is adjusted correctly, it should work fine as designed. The only spring involved is the small one on the armature you point out and it's only purpose is to pull the armature away from the coil. Yes, the spring can be "too strong" (if you modified it too much or it's the wrong spring to begin with), but you should be able to tell that by the fact that the armature won't pull in all the way when energized. Make sure the contacts on the hold-in switch are clean and closing positively (the moving leaf should visibly deflect the stationary leaf a little) because that's what keeps the coil energized (you may want to close the gap just a little bit - looks like it may be a little too wide from the picture). Assuming the armature pulls all the way in, the rest of your assy looks fine, you just need to play with it so the linear motion of the armature is translating to proper rotation of the gate via the wire link. That might involve making minor adjustments to the the wire link (slightly bending it one way or the other while pushing the armature in by hand and observing the result of the adjustment - then, repeat until it works correctly).

The other problem with releasing the gate back to it's normal position is probably just an adjustment to the runway switch. It is a normally closed switch, and you just need to make sure it opens properly when the ball rolls over it to break the circuit.