yup, my metallica pro had the same problem. coil stops are being made cheaper now? had to replace after only 8 months.

no, i just ordered a new one. it was sooo wallered out and such, the flipper started to stick so i looked at the flipper mechs, sure enough that rivot was so loose i could probably pull it out with pliers.

good luck, i'm sure they will tell you it is typical from gameplay wear . i just ordered some from marco, i have been donating way too much money on parts with them lately.

I find they have been failing prematurely and wearing much faster, noticing that metal dust accumulating very quick, so I have to assume they are being made cheaper. Not much you can do but change them and hope the one you get is made better than the ones Stern is using.

I thought it was some sort of reward system...?

I opened my ACDC and found gold bars. Play better!

I had this happen to both my stock Stern coil stops on my AVLE. A friend of mine had it on his STLE...

Must be a bad batch of coil stops.... The PBL replacements have been fine so far but to be fair, the new ones do not have nearly as many games on them yet.

That is the correct part. It will be 2 parts, riveted together like your stock parts. It just does not look that way from the picture.

You can also get them from Marco for a little more if you need other parts or supplies that they have.

http://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/515-6308-01

My STLE cabinet looks like a bronze snowstorm and the rivets are ready to fall out of the 3 flipper coil frames. My other Stern games are holding up fine so far.

$4.25 each at Pinballife for part #515-6308-00 for STLE. I hope they are better quality than the cheaper ones that Stern seems to have switched to.

Note: edited to show the correct part number

I don't think you have that part number correct....

Oops.....thats the other part I ordered. Sorry...thanks for the correction.

The number for the coil stop is 515-6308-01.

hehehe, I figured it was a copy/paste error!

Same thing happened on my left flipper on Met Pro. Pile of gold dust on the bottom of the cabinet. Left flipper was sticking too. Took everything apart, cleaned and put it back together. Flipper still got stuck. Had some WMS stops and installed those. Worked fine. Put the Stern ones back in, flipper would stick. I put the WMS stops back in and ordered new Stern stops. Haven't changed them back yet, still running the WMS ones for now.

I replaced with Pinballlife stops. The snowstorm is less but was not particularly impressed with the quality. They look about the same as the Stern ones. I'd gladly pay a few more bucks to get a better quality part that is so important to the game.

Sounds like the WMS stops are better. I had no idea they were interchangeable. Does this confirm it? I would tend to think that any WMS parts are better than the new stuff if its interchangeable. Out of curiosity did you change the sleeves too?

Seeing this on brand new Metallica. There is just a tiny bit, but also under 100 games on it.

Yes WMS coil stops work fine. You can use the 1988 to 1993 version that are probably more closely the same height stop as the Stern. These are just a hair shorter than the newer WMS stops used from 1993 to 1999. The shorter the stop the longer the flipper travel. Also, swap out both flipper stops or you'll have flippers that stop at different heights. Here are the part numbers.

1988-1993 A-12111
1993-1999 A-12390

Have to check my metpro for this

Checked mine last night. Brass Snow everywhere, coil stops are a little loose...estimate around 900-1k total plays? Will be replacing the stops after TPF looks like.

Saw some of these stops out of a STLE last night. Total garbage parts IMHO.

Badly designed part, EVEN IF these were just going into people's homes. Completely unacceptable for a commercial product I would imagine.

All reports above have been for flipper coil stops only? Are any of the other coil stops of this design (I don't have a super new stern to check against...). I am just wondering if it is only a matter of time before more stops go, or if the flipper ones just take that much more of a beating?

Has anybody sent these pictures to the Stern Parts department? Honestly, I think it is in their best interest to get this fixed. We all know and love the magic black pinball dust, but brass shavings eventaully getting everywhere I imagine is not that great for an electronic product...

Had the same issue with my STLE. Replace the coil stops.

I have installed a MET Pro in the lunch room where I work.
The left flipper started to stick after *one month*.

No problems here on Stern coil stops other than the flipper stops. They must have received a bad batch of stops...

Stern factory workers are too lazy to install the spring washers in the correct spot. Every coil stop of mine that has broken had the spring washer installed on the wrong side of the coil. See here for the actual Stern diagram for coil stops for flippers. I believe the spring washer is causing the coil stops to break sooner than they should, but just a theory.Coil Spring Issue.png

Interesting find. Every machine I have seen with a spring washer had it on the coil stop end of the coil. I never looked that closely at the manual to see it is supposed to be on the other end...

Same here..all my spring washers are on the coil stops.

There must be a reason for this. The lug end is turned away from the stops to prevent vibration to them and the wires breaking free. I question if the spring washer is placed at the stop side to further add a bit more vibration padding rather than the coil resting agaist the stop.

All of the spring washers I remember disassembling off flipper assemblies have been at the "coil support bracket" end.

Honestly I was not sure what they were there for, I assumed just to keep the coil a bit more snug between the support bracket and the stop, but I don't remember generally seeing a lot of play here anyways.

This at least serves as a reminder of even the most innocuous looking parts probably have some vital function, best to leave well enough alone if you are thinking of streamlining your assembly somehow

If the coil spring washer is against the coil stop there is a good chance the the coil stop would be at an angle to the coil, if ever so slightly. It could also allow for motion between the stop and coil as the spring is doing its job as acting like a shock as well as creating a gap between coil and stop. This could cause heat, binding etc so it makes sense that the washer be at the coil mounting bracket side to take up any slack in the coil mounting. Better solution is to have the coil mounting brackets holes adjustable.

If they'd get rid of duty-cycling altogether, they wouldn't even need that spring washer. I heard WWE has 3-lug coils (good!), but also heard the flippers are poopy due to crappy power supply (bad!). Has anyone seen the metal dust on WWE yet?

I've never had this issue with original Williams, Data East, Sega, or replacement Pinball Life/Marco parts, especially on such a new game. Leave it to Stern.

none so far on WWE.

I think flippers could use 10% more power but I don't think it is a power supply issue, just a geometry of long outside shots and steep ramps back up to upper pf. When adjusted properly all shots are fine, but flippers are set a little 'flat' and slope slightly down from inlane ball guide for my liking.

Hoping there will be a power adjustment in future code settings??? It woudl be nice to fine tune it slightly.

You might be onto something here. I noticed that the wear on the end of my coil stops was definately not from a "dead on square" hit from the shaft. The wear was off center toward the edge, and pretty much in one spot. My sleeves looked fine but I replaced those too anyway.

Can we get anyone from Stern to chime in on this?

They won't be chiming in here....

Edit: I see what you are saying now.

I have seen this too. Hmm, maybe the issue is that the stops are put on last, and the distance between the front bracket and the coil stop is a bit wider than what is afforded, and this causes the stop to be installed on a partial angle.

I always install stops first, and thus if this was the issue, the bracket would be the piece having to compensate, which likely wouldn't result in any issue.

The reason I say they are lazy is because getting the coil sleeve end through the coil support bracket with the spring washer at the same time can take a little time because the spring washer keeps sliding around while trying to get the end of the coil sleeve through the hole in the coil support bracket. So I'm figuring they just got lazy and figured why not put it on the other end. Well, the design doesn't state this and probably for a good reason. I think that the spring washer is causing too much action on the coil stop brackets and result in the brass piece getting bashed and thus separating from the coil stop bracket. This is what then results in sticky flippers because the coil itself gets slightly misaligned. Only reason I came up with this theory is because every sticky flipper had a broken coil stop bracket with the spring washer on that side.

And I did send to Stern but they never responded (including the diagram I posted above). Probably a 'this is taking too much extra time in production' so they 'altered' the design on the production floor and is now causing issues.

I think the problem is much simpler, cheap metal.