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

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.