When I first got my slugfest, homeruns could be made a good 75+ percent of the time with a clean shot to the ramp. However, I just turned it on recently and found that I can not make home runs at all anymore with a straight shot up the ramp. The ball will simply smack right into the bleacher plastic. I then took a ruler out to measure the angle of this ramp, and there is no way a ball can make it over this bleacher at the angle of the ramp in its upmost position.

I went under the pf and made sure all the mechanics were working properly and everything is clean and functioning correctly, nothing bent, cracked, or snapped. The way the ramp works is a motor rotates a diamond shape plastic which will push the ramp up and down. The diamond plastic has holes inside it that tell the optos which position the ramp is in. It seems like the diamond stops about a quarter inch short of its furthest point (which would extend the ramp all the way up), however, I can't see any way I could make an adjustment here. Any ideas would be awesome.

What I'm thinking of trying is adding a little upper lip to the end of the ramp so the ball will get that little extra angle it needs to clear the bleacher. The downside is when the ramp is flat, it can still hit that lip and become airborn causing who knows what kind of destruction.

hahaha, if I can't get it fixed, that'll definitely be a good re-theme for it.

I'm curious to hear your measurement. In the picture, the ramp is currently in the up position. You can see if the diamond was just rotated a bit more, it could push the ramp up farther, but the optos prevent this.

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The problem lies purely with the ramp's position. At the position you see in the above picture, the game's ramp is up. At that angle, it is absolutely impossible for a ball to make it in the bleachers. I did manually inch the diamond plastic to its furthest tip against the ramp rod and throwing balls up the ramp make it into the bleachers perfectly. The question I'm trying to figure out is how to make this diamond always be in that position when game puts the ramp in its up position. Being that this diamond plastic controls the ramp but is also what the optos see makes this problem pretty hard for me to figure out.

Man, I honestly can't remember how I fixed this. I had done something with some washers, giving it a little extra height on the back end, so when raised, it could easily make the homerun area. However, this made the back end of that flap not completely flush with the playfield when in its lowered position, but that didn't matter to me as it didn't effect gameplay. I sold the machine a while back so, unfortunately, can't get any pix of what I did below the playfield.

It’s alive, it’s alive!

That tape fix to trick the opto is a great idea. Glad to see this being referred back to and helping people one way or another.