Allentown, PA
My understanding is that the upkickers on LOTR are self learning. You may find when replacing batteries or swapping boards the game has to "relearn" how powerful of a shot it needs to make the wireforms. I would take the glass off and keep throwing the ball into the kickers until it has mastered the shots and make sure your batteries are good so the settings are not resetting.
If that doesn't help then it would make sense to clean the mechs. Take them apart and make sure the coil sleeves are clean and replace as required and the plungers and links have no gunk on them.
