Quoted from Markharris2000:Just curious if anyone has had problems with their Jeep spinning freely during the first 20-25 games? This is basically a new machine and the jeep spun fine for the first few games, but now sticks up. I am going to dig into this over the weekend, but it seems pretty straight-forward. Page 62 in the manual shows me they have the jeep sitting on a steel post that runs through a nylon flipper bushing. Not much to it. I have picked-up some of the recommended 100% silicone spray, and will disassemble the mechanism, then hand apply a hint of the silicone to the post before I re-assemble. I am kind of baffled what could cause the jeep to stick up and away from the kinetic ball post, but will likely answer my own question after I get into it.
Just thought I'd see if anyone has walked this same path before...
Update:
So I decided to remove the Jeep and take a look at why it was not spinning freely. I noticed the whole assembly was pretty tight to the playfield and had NO vertical movement at all. Even by hand the jeep didn't spin very freely. I expected it to have the same kind of vertical clearance as any flipper bats since they are actually using the same flipper bushing for the Jeep.
I get my Hex wrenches out to remove the end stop, and after finding that the hex set screw is a 3/32, I put my wrench and and start to twist, and twist, and literally damaged the wrench trying to get the set screw to turn. Nope. Not having it. Run down to Home Depot and get a 3/32 hex bit, put it into my 1/4 torque wrench adapter, and again try to remove it. It's very hard, and then I hear the pop, and the screw is freely turning.
So I pull the jeep and shaft, look at the sandwich of washer and thrust bushings, and realize they all appear to be fine. The nylon flipper bushing also seems fine. So I guess it really was just be too tight against the playfield. Simply fix, right? Nope. Some over-achiever at the factory must have put the hex screw on SO tight, he/she actually created a deep crater in the flat side of the shaft, and any small movement (i.e. credit card thickness) was not possible, because the set screw wanted to slide back into the crater.
So I had two choices: 1) make the vertical space bigger so that the set screw did not line up with the old crater, or 2) file the shaft flat side to remove the crater. I choose door number 2, and in about 5 minutes, I had the flat side of the shaft flat and rid of any sign of the crater.
Now I could adjust the shaft into the nylon bushing at the standard "credit card thickness" that folks use for flipper bats, and re-assemble the whole thing. A hint of B'laster 100% silicone applied by hand to post and thrust bearing, and it all seems good... for now!
Fremont, CA
