So my taxi cannot plunge past 50k on the spinout. Spinout has a hairline crack but ball movement is not impeded. I cleaned the spinout ramp, metal wire ramp. It seems that the plunger is not lined up on the middle of the ball, it's slightly above. Problem is, the shooter bracket is positioned as low as it can go.

Replaced plunger, spring, sleeve and c-clip already. Using the red spring.

I checked the brackets that hold the playfield in place, they don't appear bent. I could shim the playfield up a bit but that seems like a hack. However, when testing while shimmed the ball does make it to 100k.

If I do shim it, how should I go about it? Put washers underneath the bracket? I have the playfield leveled at 6.5, if I shim it ill likely lose some height and the levelers are cranked up as high as they can go.

Advice?

No, they're not bent, not compared to my pinbot anyways.

Yes, I tried to adjust the shooter bracket downwards but it won't go any further down. Either the assembly the playfield hooks on to is settled down, or the bracket itself might be toast?

The table might be too steep, it's possible. I know that on the left ramp sometimes the ball will chug down the ramp so fast that it backspins into the outlane. However, I prefer a difficult table and when I initially set up the table I used an inclinometer and had it set at 6.5 or so. I will re-test the incline.

Re-leveled at 6 degrees. No dice

Yep. New shooter rod, sleeve and spring.

Spring is the red one from Marco.

Anyways, made progress on this today, swapped out the shooter assembly from my pinbot. Wouldn't you know it, my shooter rod is slightly shorter on Taxi! I ordered the rod from Bay Area amusements instead of Marco so ended up getting one that's 7 and 3/4, Marco is listed at 7 and 7/8th.

Anyways, longer shooter rod works better, but still isn't optimal unless I shim the playfield a quarter inch or so. However with the playfield shimmed the lockdown bar can't close (has a lip that hits the arms that hold the playfield onto the lockdown mechanism. With the shimmed playfield the spinout rolls over to 1k or 5k with a full plunge.

I tried shimming the shooter assembly, didn't change the shooter rod angle significantly enough. Nt only that but theres not a ton of room to put washers in there. Pretty frustrated, now I know how ops feel.

I wonder, do the shooter rod assemblies themselves go bad? Can they warp or bias such that they need to be replaced?

No I mean the metal bracket that the shooter rod sits in, the entire assembly.

This: http://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/21-6645-1

I tried the shooter lane without the taxi plastic or this spinout ramp cover and the behavior was the same.

I assume you mean center of the ball. It's about 1/4 of an inch above and to the right of the center of the ball.