I just took possession of a Transformers LE. I have played a friend's Transformers LE and found it quite easy to rock the ball all the way to the top on the Ironhide mini playfield. However, on my machine the Ironhide mini playfield seems to have a lot more friction rocking side-to-side and on standard solenoid power, the ball will not move up the playfield at all. When I increase the mini playfield solenoid power, it is slightly better but definitely not as good as my friend's machine.

I have pushed the backboard rearward to make sure there is no interference between the Ironhide figure and the backboard, but that makes little difference.

Any other ideas?

I took apart the entire Ironhide playfield and found something interesting.

There are two coils. Each drives a plunger with a link. A spring is installed between the coil and the blue link like a system 11 flipper spring. A white plastic washer is installed between the link and the spring, apparently to improve the spring seating on the blue link. However, this tends to add friction to the link. I removed this white washer and let the spring sit directly on the blue link.

Problem solved. The playfield moves freely and power boost is not needed.

For future reference, the coil, spring, plunger and link of the miniplayfield are the same as those for the slingshot.