Hi,

Last couple of times I've played my STLE, when I hit start to start a new game, the drop target goes up and down 3 times, while the Vengeance drops forward like it's been hit, three times. After that, the ball feeds to the plunger, and the Vengeance resets to normal up position. The drop target stays down, and stays down for most of the time. The first time you get a ball in under the Vengeance, it immediately starts Vengeance multiball. Occasionally, and I say very occasionally, a ball will go in and the target will come up and stay. Unfortunately, sometimes this happens in the middle of Vengeance mode and the shooter at the back of the Vengeance will fire the ball back, only to hit the drop target and fire straight up and hit the Vengeance, or fire over the front of the drop target to land somewhere down on the playfield or crash into something. Once it jumped over into the pops. Not good.

In diags, whenever you hit the select button to bring the target up, it comes up but immediately goes straight back down. If I recall correctly, it's supposed to stay up until you give it a "Down" command.

Any ideas what to check? Seems like a sensor or switch I guess. Anybody else seen this?

Cheers,

FP

Ha, that'd be right. Thanks for the tip, I will check it out. Probably have to go through Aussie distributor to get the part though. Cheers, FP.

Thanks for all the tips fellas, I will check those out as well. Cheers, FP.

Well I finally got a chance to work on her this weekend just gone. Funnily enough (or typically), when I played a game before I ejected the balls, the drop target behaved properly for the first few minutes, then did the down/up/down/up thing a few times.

Anyway, I pulled the drop target assembly out and it appears to have been the latch problem as described in tech bulletin 165 above. I saw the screw that holds the black plastic latch to the metal bracket. At first it looked like it was maybe touching the drop target and causing it to not latch properly but examination under a magnifying glass showed that it wasn't interfering with the target at all... close but not quite. In the end I did what the tech bulletin said - I pulled the latch off and put two small washers underneath to raise the latch by about 1/16". Interestingly, there was a grey card shim underneath when I removed it. This is obviously an attempt to fix the issue, but not quite on the mark. Once I'd put it back together, it all plays as it should, with no spurrious down/up/down/up/downs.

Thanks for all the suggestions, looks like it's behaving itself now, but time will tell.

Cheers,

FP