My drop targets on the battlefield would stick sometimes and the bracket for the motor had broken(but still worked fine) so I took the battlefield off

I thought there was some shrunken shriveled up plastic wrapped around the drop target posts but it was just a thick layer of aged lithium grease!,cleaned up well,drop target working good now

Installed the mantis upgrade bracket, really heavy duty as compared to the original but the radiused lip opposite the rack mount interferes with the gear sliding back and forth so had to be filled down,a pain! I have the brass gear"upgrade" but assume it would have the same issue with the nylon gear

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Damn cell phone double post

Triple post]

Yep the drop targets always seemed to collect the grit and gum up - noting quite like having clean and shiny drops (oh and that improve gameplay too )

What was different on the Mantis bracket? One end on both (red arrows) looks the same - did the Mantis not have the chamfer on the other end that you can see on the original in the last pic?

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Does Kerry know the piece needs modification to work?

The folded edge that I needed to file is the horizontal edge just below where your red arrow is,if you look at the original the slot where the gear travels is approx 1/8 wider.

The mantis piece was purchased by the prev owner ,,I will let mantis know

Oh yep now I see what you mean - thanks

I did not realize this is a new product but it is a quality part and looks to be way stronger and more durable than the original. on my machine with the brass gear the set screw protrudes maybe 1/32 from the shaft but even if this was flush it does not seem it would have enough clearance. , as far as I can tell from how the mechanism operates there is no functional benefit of having a super tight clearance there so the design may need a slight tweak

consumer pricing alert!

wanted a backup gear and rack for the battlefield, marco sells a kit( rack, gear, set screw, roll pin and allen wrench and the 3 screws to attach the rack) $89

buying essential items separate (rack $18, gear $8, set screw $.25 , roll pin $.25, ) $ 26.50

yea, Marco is notorious for this. I bought a whirlwind topper kit from them with motor, bracket, fan, etc. and it was like $240. I looked at their site a few days later and noticed you could buy each part seperatly for like $100. They refunded me the difference when I called.

Just joined the club. Still wrapped up, sitting in the garage. Going to give it a good cleaning, probably order some titans to put on. Any must have upgrades? Cliffys? Things I should look out for?

Congrats and welcome to the club.

Shadow is pretty good on the whole
- cosmetic: some people replace the translite and speaker panel for Aurich's version, colorDMD, LED'ing if not already done, backboard decal
- technical: check the drop target and extended wall mechs work well (the extended wall mech has a few parts that wear and can cause issues with the game detecting if the wall is up). The right exit switch on the left ramp is notorious for either hanging the ball or not activating as the ball can jump the switch - Sonic makes a magnetic reed switch to replace the microswitch.

Best to put some games on your machine and then see what needs to be done and what mods (if any) you want

Awesome, thanks for the tips. I put myself on the waitlist for Aurichs translite. I'll definitely LED it...

See if you can get a copy of my cityscape wall too. I don't have any left, but may consider a reprinting. There may be some extras floating around out there.

Added the dagger flipper topper offered my Mr_Tantrum to my Shadow. He did a great job!

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So probably a generic WPC question, but when I press on my coin door volume button, the dmd display is in French? I adjusted the settings to English, and my MPU dip switches are set to USA/Canada. I just installed the LX-6 (which displays as LH-6 on bootup). So questioning where to go here...

nice. I like this. Did you put them on all 3 flippers?

Are you sure the dip switches are set correctly?

Yup...pics

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Edit, ok solved it ...sort of...its a bug in the software... https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/my-shadow-is-speaking-french-during-volume-adjustment

I already had two on my front flippers. He does make some for all three. They are 3d as well, not flat like most flipper toppers.

Yup, that looks pretty right to me.

Interesting, I had to go have a look at mine as I'd never noticed it but I've got LG-4 and looks like the bug was introduced in v6 of the ROMs. Good to know if I ever update the ROM

My battlefield kicker has been acting weird. When moving left its fine all the time. Sometimes when it moves to the right it is very sluggish and slow. Any recommendations? I have cleaned the optos and they work fine in test mode. Also, it always moves left and right in test mode with no issues at all.

Which optos did you clean? In test mode the coin door switches to control the kicker, while when playing a game the flipper optos are used. Try cleaning the flipper optos if you haven't already.

Also check the screws at the end of the 2 shafts the kicker moves slideways on, as well as the kicker carriage (bracket) itself as sometimes the bracket will break causing the travel to the right to be sluggish or have the jitters (the 2 pics show the bracket and where it often breaks)

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So it works perfectly in test mode, but not when playing?

Do you have any less or pinstadiums? Try playing the game with the glass off and see if it works. There may be interference from glare/leds.

I had forgotten about this, but yes shadow battlefield optos have been known to have light interference. My first shadow did and it drove me nuts until I figured it out.

I had to clean the shafts and replace the bronze bushings when this happened to me. Never grease those shafts . It will destroy the bushings.

I think I need to do that now, I’m dealing with an old grease issue.

Do you recall where you got the bushings?

Can some tell me how their battlefield sits at the rear?...not sure if someone replaced the standoffs with longer ones and is causing it to sit too high

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not at home but the standoffs and angle at the back board looks about right , what issue are you having that makes you think it sits too high?

The angle at the back, I thought it was straight when I removed it prior to the playfield swap...I checked the size of the standoffs, they're correct...so I guess that's correct then...

https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/20-9610

Yep mine sits back much like yours - it does seem a little odd but maybe they went with slightly longer standoffs at the front to reduce the angle of the mini-PF??

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Thanks for confirming, yeah that is weird, I'm guessing they got it close and tweaked it with the standoff height till it was what they wanted ...

And I thought my battlefield was screwed up too.
Good to know it’s mounted correctly.

Put a few games on my shadow. Seems to play pretty well, pretty clean. Couple of issues.

1. The battlefield vuk ramp seems to be misaligned. So the ball sometimes gets knocked out. Is that adjustable?

2. The yellow drop target that blocks the vuk is always down. I can get it to go up and down in the test menu, but never goes up in game play. How is it supposed to function?

Fun game though.

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1. This is a common issue, some people have used washers under one side where the wireform is attached to the PF
2. Do you have a credit dot or any errors when you go into the service menu? More than likely the game thinks there is a issue with the drop target so is disabling it - this is also a common issue and most likely it's associated with the microswitch that detects whether the target is up or down.

In the below pic the tab (circled in red) on the back of the plastic drop target is what is supposed to activate the switch, however in this pic the switch actuator arm has got caught below the metal tab that lifts the drop target, this is wrong and could possibly be what is happening on your game.

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The below pic shows where the switch arm should be

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So now that I finally have my game back together, I'm having one issue with the battlefield drop targets. When I boot the game up, the coil fires and the targets reset as they should. When the ball enters the VUK, the coil kicks several times even though the targets are already up. Upon the ball entering the playfield, the ball will hit the targets multiple times before dropping (as it should ), once dropped and the ball falls off the playfield, there is no reset, even at the end of the game. the coil tests good in the solenoid test and resets no problem. The opto switches also show as working correctly in switch edge test, and turn off when the target is dropped. I was planning on putting in a new connector on the MPU board where the switch wires come in to rule out a intermittant broken wire. I also repinned the connector at the bottom of the battlefield opto board. I see this problem going back quite a bit, but can't seem to get a definitive answer as to what the cause may be.

Sound like you're checking the right things. Sounds like 2 issues to me

The coil activating multiple times is typically a drop target switch issue, also that the target doesn't get put back up is also indicating there's a switch issue. But I would have expected you'd notice it in the switch test - maybe worth cleaning the optos, checking all the connectors and checking no issues with the 12v power going to the opto board

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The drop targets also have a tendency to get gummed up, which will stop the target dropping when hit? If you have already stripped them down and cleaned the assembly, then maybe it been reassembled incorrectly causing the extra friction?? You should be able to drop the target with a small tap on the front of the target.

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Yeah they're clean and functioning smoothly when tapped. I think I'll try and jump into switch test at the moment its not functioning and see what the switch test is actually "seeing" at that moment. Definitely with you on the switch issue, just odd when I check them they're all showing good?...

Does the kicker recenter after the ball falls off the playfield?

..actually no...it seems to stay off to the left a bit...what does the software actually use to center it? As the optos for that are out range of where the kicker sits when centered?

if it resets to more or less the center is probably ok, I was thinking if the machine was not sensing the ball being off the playfield might have something to do with your drop target issue.

I would assume the system must have some calibration of how many revolutions it takes to travel between triggering the sensors and then travels to half that

One of mine did this years ago. It was a bad opto underneath the battlefield. Either wire has popped off or the opto is bad. Easy fix either way.

I'll check those optos, I assume they're on the 10 opto board , dont have my manual in front of me, I do recall going through the battlefield rest with no issues though, I assume they're tested during that test

https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/A-14534

This is the opto board that was bad under the upper playfield

So this seems to be an intermittent issue, I played a game today and it worked for a bit, then started cycling the coil again. When I went into test, got the switch/coil error, but all switches were working. At the beginning of the game, I checked the optos on the battlefield, and they were not working but then worked when I tapped them. I'll pull the board tomorrow and check the solder joints and put that new connector on at the mpu board too.

Reflow solder on the optos first if you tapped on it and it worked. That is probably your bad joint. Lots of vibration there.

Shout out to pinballjj for the led diverter
idea, cheap and easy with a really cool impact!

Also added the 2nd LED flipper button as well today.

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Joining the club tomorrow. Looking forward to it.