Lets talk about the right gate assembly and its function. It has been recorded by a few owners that this gate can get hung up. Pretty much right out of the box last week the gate exhibited issues of not being able to open fast enough on well placed shots up the Donny orbit shot. I took apart the assembly twice now to see if I could figure it out.
As others have mentioned, there can be a clearance issue of the spring's position within the hole causing it to drag on the edge of the hole. This was also the case in mine. At first I bent the arm on the gate assembly itself to alter the position of the spring within the hole. That seemed to help but I could still feel drag on the spring. It was not suspended cleanly in the hole.
To finally solve the issue I ended up doing 2 things.
1. Shorten the spring by about 1/8" and create a new loop on the cut end so the spring didn't have so much play.
2. By using the screw closest to the subway under the playfield as the pivot-point, I rotated the assembly about 1/4" clockwise and tapped a new screw hole for the 2nd of the two mounting points. This allows for the gate assembly to float at the dead-center of the hole in the playfield.
In doing so the drag issue has been 100% resolved however sometimes during games the gate doesn't open but I think I have finally understood the intent of that gate and the logic behind it.
If the intent was for the Donny shot to always orbit then that gate wouldn't even be necessary so why is it there? Perhaps this is common knowledge of the ruleset but I thought I would write it down for anyone who might be struggling with this same issue.
The gate only lifts - thereby allowing the ball to orbit - while you are qualifying (lighting the DONNY lights) Donny Character. Once you have qualified Donny and prior to starting Character multiball, and still hit the Donny shot, the gate does not open and drops the ball into the pop bumpers. Also, the gate will open during other modes where you have to hit the orbits but otherwise, the game wont let you orbit from the left side.