Seems to be a common problem even back to star trek at least :/

Do replacements from Marco etc hold up any better? Or are they all sourced from Stern?

I get mine from PBL. But re did mine on Star Trek not to long ago. Yep they are junk and apparently getting worse!

Any place that Stern can take a shortcut for a cheaper product, they do.

Love their games, but I scratch my head when the price keeps going up, and the quality keeps going down.

Hmm...if another non Stern stop is broken too maybe there's an error in the set up...or how long the plunger is?
Of course I agree they suck, many a god dust woman has lived under the playfield.

Essentially another hidden cost-cutting measure to increase profits. Looks the same. Does not last the same.

popbumper rings , metal ramps , scopes , brackets . . . not the best quality like JJP and B/W

Yeah, makes you wonder what other hidden things are lurking that are not so obvious, though there isn't a whole hell of a lot left.

My Star Trek and TWD pro's with that robust Sam board set just feel more durable than SW and Aero pro which feel like a ticking time bomb. Maybe that sounds a little dramatic, but I haven't really heard of any issue with the Sam board set, have heard of several different issues with Spike. Knock on wood, I haven't had any issues yet.

Def sucks when it happens...you just can't do anything other than send a node board back.

Well, playfields have been cost-reduced to softer wood (or eliminated the top hardwood layer, your choice), cabinet wood was cost-reduced to less-dense wood sometime during KISS' run. Drop target shelf plastics were made about half as thin sometime before Game of Thrones, and now it seems coil stops were cheaped out around Star Trek. That's quite a list of savings that went straight to Stern's bottom line. None were passed to the consumer.

I think Metallica was the first when we had a lot of people talking aboot it.

Do believe the negative hype. Like you said, nothing has happened to your SPIKE games yet.

Nothing has happened to mine either. A lot of blown out proportion nonsense.

The metal cabinet run, right?

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/stern-faulty-coil-stops#post-2881050

I was just at Disney World and at Pop Century and Sport resort were two different Star Wars pins. While they worked, they both had the same node board knocked out/section of lights out on the playfield. Disney World is a pretty good test to a Stern pin, as they're on 365 days a year and see a stupid amount of use.

The X-Men and Tron next to it? Despite looking like ass, and having busted flippers and who knows what else, they didn't have gi insert issues...

Being devils advocate, often times it is not Stern the manufacturers fault and often the vendor they use has altered their raw metal formula slightly. I see tons of defects in different companies products built with metal, I deal with it all the time. Good news is coil stops are pretty in-expensive and like others have pointed out I would rather have to replace coil stops after thousands of plays instead of a playfield. I buy my coil stops from Pinball Life, not sure what vendor they are from.

Started to think about it and ever since Ghostbusters it seems like Sterns flippers have been considerably stronger? It may not be the coil stops but the more excessive force that causes failure over a shorter time span? Just a thought

Had the left coil stop on Metallica develop a pile of gold dust dandruff in the bottom of the cabinet. Then the left flipper started sticking. I didn't have a Stern replacement stop; so I used what I had...WMS stops. Had to hog out the stop holes ever so slightly to fit the screws and line up with the bracket holes better but it works fine.

Note that games with upper flippers, especially ones where the upper flipper(s) have lots of play, the flippers are going to sustain more wear more quickly because while one flipper is thrusting the ball, the others are banging away at each other (plunger vs stop) with no ball there to absorb energy. So 100% of the flip energy is transferred to the plunger/stop contact point.

Met was when people started bitching about them, but Tron's coil stops were the same junk as Met's.... I owned 2 Trons and a Met, and all three of them had tons of coil stop shavings in the bottom of the cab.

It seems hit or miss with the Stern games I have on location. This faulty coil stop problem was worse several years ago, seemed to get better and now it is an issue again. In some cases, one coil stop on the same game is fine, while the other one is defective. I don't recall this issue on any game before Star Trek for me, so there must be bad batches of parts that might affect one game on the production line but not another one built in the same run. It is an easy problem to see, just look for the metal shavings or sticking flipper and replace the coil stop.

With Stern flipper parts, just keep a bunch of spares on hand. Everything in the assembly will break at some point--EOS actuators, EOS switches, coil stops, return springs, coil stop fasteners, flipper bats and buttons, though I haven't seen a baseplate or nylon bushing break in a long time.

Don't think you can totally blame the vendors.
If your making coil stops and it cost you @.50 apices to make, and your selling them to Stern for .75 each, but Stern says no,
I'll only pay .65 cents each, somewhere/ somehow that vendor has to make up the 10 cent difference.
Who's really in control of the cost and quality?

I have a Rockwell hardness tester I could check some coil stops on. But if they are not consistently bad, it won't help much unless I actually have a bad one.

Stern. If they are willing to pay .65 each, the vendor can say no if they can't make it at a profit with acceptable quality. When it fails WAY quicker, it goes back on Stern, not their anonymous vendor.

When sterns the only game in town, who else are you
gonna sell to?

If all you're making is coil stops, it's time to rethink your approach to diversification...

Stop thinking outside the box!

It would be good to test a bad one.

You never know when a supplier of raw rod stock to the vendor may have mixed up stock and inadvertently created some sub par parts.

The vendor can't test every 10cent part, Stern is certainly not going test every 10cent part.

A few years ago you might get one flipper filling the cab with gold dust, and the other totally fine.

LOL

That is so bizarre. I just replaced my XMEN coil stop to fix a sticking flipper. Thats been going strong since 2013 but the nub came loose exactly as you described.

Started around ACDC release if I am remembering correctly. That is when metal parts on Stern games seemed to get cheaper and fall apart more in general terms.

Funnily enough just had to change my KISS flipper coil stops - couldn't believe how quickly they have mushroomed.

And yes, the difference is huge as can't backhand the right ramp unless flippers are strong.

The metal must be softer than the B/W kits.

But the Stern flipper re-build kits cost more

Ryan, did you ever do anything about your super chipped playfield on Dead Pool?

that thing was really messed up after like 4 days.

?!?!?!?!!????

Chipped pf on Deadpool????

Please tell me it is not happening again...

shooter lane was really chipped out but there may have been an issue with the auto plunger, cant recall.

Haven't seen that problem too much on my ACDC LE, it has around 9,000 plays and other than normal maintenance and a broken bell clapper rod, no metal issues of note. Lets hope it stays that way!

1400 plays? I replaced blown out Deadpool stops with 400 plays. The replacements I put in seem to be holding up better so far. Maiden did a little better... think I made it to around 1500 plays before one stop took a dump—replaced the second soon after. The factory parts are one step up from garbage. Fun games though...

My Iron Maiden coil stop broke after about 1,500 plays. I have heard similar issues on Iron Maiden and Deadpool from others. Star Wars lasted about 7,000 plays, so at least in my limited data set, the problem seems more recent.

What about the sorry ass flipper buttons? We had a IMDN that had the flipper button separate and fall on the floor in the first two weeks on location. Then just a few weeks later, during league night, flipper buttons fell out on the floor on BM66, Star Wars, and Aerosmith. All on the same night!

Flipper buttons falling out???

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Let me explain, you see after lunchtime everyday in the stern factory there is a high concentration of sulfur rich methane gas from the high volume of burrito consumption...this gas permeates the offices of Gary Stern as well as other high ranking stern officials and causes them to make erratic and sometimes poor decisions.

Coil stops - When you get a new stern in you need to move the compression washer to the other side of the coil. If you do not move it, it will wedge under the coil stop striker and pop it loose then cause these issues.

Flipper Buttons - Add a 5/16 E clip on the inside of the button shaft on the inside of the plastic lip so the plastic lip doesn't wear out and allow the button to pop out.

Do all newer Stern flipper assemblies come like that now? I helped someone with an Aerosmith that had that very same problem (my first time getting into a Spike machine).
The one I worked on had the compression washer cutting into the stop! I just thought this was a single incident.

None of my compression washers were on the coil stop side. The e-clip was something I thought of already but it wouldn't stay either. I'm going to try one more time but I'll make some slots in the button for it to fit into and see if that will keep it there.

Sounds like maybe you need a different size eclip? I've done a lot of them, on location, and haven't had any come off.

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