Hi guys and gals, newbie here. I'm hoping you can point me in the right direction. When the ball is in the mini-PF, the kicker rarely fires and the ball will just lean against it. I tested the optos and when in test mode and their field is broken, it beeps and I also did a solenoid test on the kicker and it fires just fine in test mode. I'm at a loss. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

I didn't even realize there was a Shadow club thread so I will do that, thanks! The kicker makes no noise itself but the audio does make a sound when the beam is broken. That's why I'm stumped. The kicker functions fine in test mode, but when in play, it seems dead.

Thanks guys. It behaves the same way with the glass off. I put it back in switch test and quickly ran a ball from back to front in various points and it beeped every time. The optos seem to be picking up the ball just fine. Perhaps that means it's the kicker itself. I've traced the wires and don't see anything obvious. I guess I need to look a bit closer just to make sure.

Well I feel like a real idiot. I dug into it and sure enough one of the wires on the kicker was broken. I spliced it back together but in my haste, forgot to take a better look at how it looked before disassembing it. Now, as I put the kicker assembly back together, I can't seem to get it to align properly to where the kicker moves in and out smoothly. If anyone could take a pic of the underside of their battlefield I'd be forever grateful. Here's how mine looks now. I don't think I have the metal sleeve and cardboard piece in there right. Anything obviously off?

Thank you!

IMG_9513 (resized).JPG

Problem solved. I had the coil upside down. Boy, do I feel like a dunce!

Thanks for all the help in troubleshooting this. Given all the posts about quirky optos on these I thought that was my problem for sure. The broken wire that I found must have been hanging on by a thread, functioning in test mode but almost never working in game play. Anyway, lesson learned and thanks again!

Thanks! Had I not figured it out those would have shown me right away that I was upside down.

As for your question, you can see the whole metal piece in my pic and the card board is the same shape except it extends to under the coil.