Are you talking specifically about the 20 wires attached to the base plate that the wiper plate rides on?

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Here's a shot with some of the rivet positions numbered. Wiper is on position 0 (1st ball, player 1). The first four radial rows (1st ball, player 1,2,3,4) have 5 rivets each, subsequent rows have 4 rivets. Rows 0-19 are for the game (4 players, 5 balls each), rows 20 and 21 are for reset sequencing.

You are only replacing the wiper? The baseplate is original?

IMG_1742 (resized).jpg

When I took the picture of my wiper, I noticed that it was scuffed up... like it was hitting something. After investigating, I see that there is a clearance issue between the wiper and the head door channel - when the head panel is leaning back on its supports AND the wiper is in an up-down orientation, the wiper is in contact with the door channel. If the panel supports are misaligned or you lean on the panel in any way, I could see that wiper snapping.

Can you add a pic of your replacement wiper?

Nice! You may have invented a new product - The Multi-Rotor!

Check to see if you have that rotor clearance issue... you've put too much time into that to lose it when you're just replacing a bulb in the head.