I once "lost" a ball in the Zone. The Twilight Zone that is.

I made a nice clean left spiral loop and then the shot for the Hitchhiker at full speed - then the ball disappeared. Spend 15 minutes looking for it. Even checked the bottom of the cabinet. The ball was nowhere to be found.

Finally I lifted the battle field, only to find that the ball was wedged in underneath it. The ball must have gone airborne after leaving my upper right flipper.

Things... are not what they appear... in the Twilight Zone

Every time I play my pins I'm afraid that I'll break something

You won't break your glass playing pinball, the glass in tempered, so it's vulnerable to impact on the edges, but not on the face.

Once at a pin show I went to play a game(can't remember which one), the game wouldn't start cause of a missing ball, had a good look round and eventually saw the missing ball behind the rubber in the slingshot assembly, it was completely under the slingshot plastic. One in a million shot, lucky it didn't short anything!!!!

wowzers guys I can realate to that one! I just restored my cyclone machine with new coils, displays, LED BULBS!!, rubbers.....and wow. I put the FL-*****-29 flipper coils in and I can't even get a shot on the comet ramp! The ball hits the ramp so hard and hits the glass and goes into the ferris wheel, and when I hit the drop target for the spook house, the ball smacks the glass again. I think that it is cool, but, I have been wondering about that one as well. How hard does the ball have to hit the glass to break it.

I live in a big city, and my house is right in front of a public transit bus shelter, and that glass is like 1 inch thick!!!! YES its tempered glass as well....and kids STILL can break it, mostly with a bb gun probably, but geez, pinballs CAN still do that type of damage I would think. And its an F of a mess to clean up! (do I sound like I am complaining?) NO, I just HATE living in front of a bus stop cleaning up the garbage and cigarette butts and fighting with the city about it. I have put out a garbage bin, but HOW IS THAT YOUR PROBLEM.......ok.....sorry folks!

So, don't put kick ass coils for your flippers unless you want to break stuff in your pinball machine!!!

I think I'm going to take an old burned out flipper coil to work tomorrow and rewind it in this way.

Low - 80 % of normal winds
Normal - 100 % of normal winds
High - 120 % of normal winds

I will hook the various windings to a center off DPDT switch. That will make it so I can pick which setting I want. The posts here made me think of it and the fact nobody makes a "selectable" power flipper coil. The hold coil winding will remain wound as normal of course.

Go for it, looking forward to hear about the outcome.

Every time I play my Twilight Zone, and when the powerball comes onto the playfield, it always flys into the top right corner and falls behind the backboard and then drops down into my cabinet. Its such a pain. Then i've got to open the coin door and use my extendable arm grabber, to grab the powerball. One time I almost got the steel ball to go under there. Has anyone else done this?

Oftentimes, when I hit the Million target in my Corvette, the ball bounces all the way over and onto the right ramp's wireform which sets up the shot again. Gotta love the flow on this machine. lol

SeinfeldKramer, never had this happen on mine. How does the powerball get launched? on a target? Or does it jump from the ramp?

The only thing I've had happen on my TZ was a ball 'lost' under the mini playfield. Searched for an hour before I found it there!

Robin,

Sometimes it happens different ways. It usually happens from the ramps. Another time it was shot from the top left flipper all the way into the backboard whole.

I lost a steel ball on my TZ for several weeks. I had made a HitchHiker or Camera shot and the ball just disappeared under the upper playfield. I searched and searched for it to no avail, so I just stuck another ball in the machine and forgot about it.

The TZ was dismantled and packed up ready to go to a pinball show (the machine never got there for various reasons) but the ball still didn't turn up.

Weeks later another ball disappeared with the same shot under the upper playfield. After a lot of searching I eventually found both balls solidly wedged behind the Magna-Flip sign on top of the red bumper cap...

Hahaha! I've had a ball launched up (via airball) and wedged behind that same Magna-Flip sign, outlane-avoider! You are not alone in this.

My personal fave is airballs in my White Water. Sometimes I will get airballs launched so high that they actually lift up from the bottom playfield, up into the plastic ramp leading down from Bigfoot Bluff on the upper playfield. Its very awesome, but it does scare me a bit when it comes close to hitting my boulders.

I get some nasty airballs on my Black Knight from time to time. Most interesting are the ones that hit the post to the left of the mystery lamp, jump the right slingshot AND the right sidewall to get back into the shooter lane. I love when that happens during multiball.... it's like a free extra ball plus higher scoring shots!

I also get a lot of good shots up the mystery ramp that just keep going up and hit the glass pretty nicely.

Though I do worry when a ball gets stuck on top of a dropped drop target. Holy crap is that hitting the glass hard when the target pops back up.

-Hans

I was at a bar playing pinball a couple months ago. The guy that owned the machines showed up and wanted to do some minor work on them. He had the glass off leaned against the wall next to the machine. There is a pool table about 10 feet away and the guy playing pool racked up the balls and broke the rack with everything he had. The cue ball flew off the table and right into the middle of the playfield glass leaning against the wall. It made a huge crash but the glass didn't break. so if the glass can survive a pool ball crashing into it, i wouldn't worry about pinballs hitting the glass.

Brokedad ""I think I'm going to take an old burned out flipper coil to work tomorrow and rewind it in this way.

Low - 80 % of normal winds
Normal - 100 % of normal winds
High - 120 % of normal winds""

Pinball Magic's flipper strenth is adjustable from 1 to 15 in the menu.
Got it set at 10 and plenty of strength!

ha ha ha my friend Mads got an air ball on BBH and took out the Elk. There was nothing he could do so he just left it there on the middle of the playfield. Ever since, his new initials are ELK.

Hahaha! I'd kill to get a picture of that annoying & cheap toy blasted there on the playfeid.