Had this issue on my game as well (Martian). Solution was to simply remove the washer that was in there and that fixed the issue. I did not have to remove the green plastic.

So what do you think is the reason why the coils keep burning up on some games but not others? Should I prepare by buying a few spare sets?

Thanks for sharing. Hope these are the last of your problems. Good to see spooky and your distro are responsive.

Playfield brackets looked fine, and no adjustment visible to intentionally lower the field or raise it where it connects at the lockdown bar receiver short of replacing the S hooks. Both hooks seem pretty identical to each other; it doesn't seem like a one-off tolerance fail on the hooks. That said, I'd prefer if I could lower that front end by maybe another quarter inh. As to the glass channels - they seem 100% normal too.

That particular habitrail also appears to have no flexibility to lower it at all. While it looks free floating in the back, there's a post under the scoop; and and the martian, there's nothing raised at all (it's all stacked together pretty firmly).

We trimmed the minimum needed to not scrape the glass going in and out, particulary since anti reflect glass scrapes easy. As to the green protector at Marvin, it might be tempting to try and get a replacement that's thinner. Some protection would be better than none.

Spooky will send you replacements for free if you have those issues.

I know, but I am not a big fan of machine down time

My guess is your just going to burn another coil up unless the warden board is replaced first. Had this happen on my Scooby and they sent both to replace.

I set my left hole eject value to 13, ball ejects to right flipper and dead bounces where you can trap it on left pretty consistently.

I went through a warden board or two or three or four with Scooby (still my favorite pin and looking forward to new code). Wondering if it’s the same warden board and if it you take the one from Scooby and swap it with LT?

Not interchangeable. They are unique to each game.

For those still waiting on shipping or building dates. I just got notified that number 70 has been built and should be shipped out today hopefully.

According to Morgan, my #73 will be done tomorrow, June 11.

Anyway to get Hazel the Witch mode into my Halloween pinball machine?

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We just would prefer quality control and no issues as some have experienced. I’ll wait longer for mine to have less issues down the road. I’m 213.

Sounds like Spooky is on top of things though. I don’t pretend to know what a warden board is or why it causes coils to fail but it sounds like this has only been happening on a few machines. Tough to build something as complicated as a pinball machine and then not have issues pop up. We should just be happy Spooky can replace parts quickly. I know there was a time not long ago when you’d wait months if not years for stern replacement boards…

Very true. They all care and even tho it’s a business, they do treat us as family and investors in their company

I'm in the waitlist for CE

What do you mean?

#112 invoiced and paid

#78 shipping tomorrow!!!

#77 ships to me tomorrow.

What do you mean?

I think he means that there is a place out there called “The Waitlist for CE” and he is standing inside of it.

Yeah. Waiting for a CE looney pin… aren’t most of us in this?

I believe the preposition you were looking for was “on”. You are on the waitlist for a CE.

Also, I think there is confusion around the term “waitlist”. I think some would just say “I put down my deposit for a CE”. You are both probably saying the same thing, though.

I like to be in groups, i guess others would rather be on them.

Pulling my hair out a bit trying to get the vault eject to consistently feed around the orbit to the right. I've tried bending the scoop hood as suggested, loosened the scoop from underneath and tried shifting the angle a bit (not much play there, but tried), have messed with the power, changed the game slant up and down. Best I can do is maybe 50/50, and most of the shots that do make it to the right upper flipper are anemic - it barely makes it around, slows down and feels crummy. I'm a perfectionist, I'm stubborn, and it's making me nuts.

If you get a consistent smooth feed to around the orbit from the vault, I'd really, really appreciate ya pulling the ramp (only takes a sec) and taking some shots of that scoop so I can try and figure what's dif on mine. Under the playfield too.

What I really think may be the main issue is inconsistent position of the ball in the scoop itself when the plunger fires. Here's a video of "worst case scenario" :

It's that rattle and bounce into the lane that kills the feed, but it's very inconsistent. If you look down in the scoop itself you'll see the ball rattling around before the plunger fires - meaning it probably hits the ball differently each time, making the trajectory inconsistent outta the scoop. The scoop design itself looks like it may have been built with that in mind actually - never seen one like it anyway, kinda interesting:

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There's a hole floating over the eject plunger, with a wishbone-shaped leaf micro switch to trigger it. I'm thinking they put the hole there to try and settle/center the ball for consistency? No idea why they'd build it that way otherwise (would love to hear the story there for my own interest regardless). Seems like adding a delay after trigger before firing the coil might give the ball more time to center and improve consistency regardless?

Anyone with suggestions to get this feed consistent, please shout. I've dialed in everything but that (and I had decided to just ignore it until I discovered the secret skill shot :p)

Oh, and if you need motivation to remove the two screws to take the ramp off, you prolly want to put some mylar on the edge here for posterity, mine was getting pretty chewed up (I suspect there will be some there in future builds, gave AJ a heads up when I noticed):
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From your video you need that kickout going a few degrees left so it doesn’t bounce off the right wall so hard if at all.

Agreed, but there's really no play in the mech (I tried loosing it underneath and shifting, maybe a mm play there). Tried twisting the scoop hood a bit to see if I could change the trajectory a little, mighta helped a bit but still inconsistent. Sometimes it's fine and goes around as intended, but I think the main issue is the ball isn't settling enough prior to the solenoid firing, so it hits in a different spot each time and thus the initial trajectory changes a bit.

Maybe I should take a look at that ring/hole for the ball in the scoop, see if that's a little cockeyed...

For the Bond Scuba Kick we developed our own VUK bracket to feed our new wireform. I’m getting an LT later this year. Happy to pull out the bracket and see if a redesign would fix it. Ball flow has been the main focus of mods for me. If there’s a way to fix it, then it’s worth doing.

maybe you can adjust the switch so the ball is a little more settled before the switch is triggered?

That's a standard VUK design - nothing special about it.

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Some older designs like to use a cup or dish in a much larger hole that supports the ball.. and the dish is spring mounted to trigger the switch or opto when the ball settles there. I think that is more common where the ball isn't shot into it directly. But it's much more common in modern games to just have a microswitch and a plunger with a concave tip like this.

I too find this upkick unreliable, but we don't have nearly the failures you do, ours is more that it doesn't seem to get all the way around. In my limited experimenting, I found the behavior like yours to be when the power was turned up... it didn't get any better cranking the power up and got worse. I had more success with the slope and level of the game instead of trying to boost coil power. The game really does want to be shallow.. like 6.2-6.4 like spooky says.

Strange that I've never noticed that style before, but then I can't say I recall having many issues with vuks to be tinkering with them. At any rate, it dawned on me while driving that maybe the mech itself is cockeyed/leaning - that could encourage it to shoot to the right instead of left into the lane. Tonight I might try a couple washers under the left side mounting screw, see if tilting the whole thing left a bit cleans it up.

I once had an issue with a VUK on my Ripley’s. I ruined a scoop mech and bent the heck out of another one before I realized that the cliffy was the issue. What was happening was the ball was just brushing the part of the cliffy that bent down into the scoop on the front end and was deflecting the ball. Given how your playfield is nicked up, could the whole bracket just be out of alignment with the hole enough for the ball to just be barely brushing the hole wall on the way out? When I trimmed the bent part of my cliffy off in Ripley’s, my problem was instantly solved. Can’t tell you how many months I beat my head against the wall with that before I realized it.

As usual truck freight has fucked up, I might see #77 next week sometime now.

Have you tried opening up the hood or adjusting it down to see if that makes a difference? I've had to tweak a few of my games that way to smooth out the exit.

Anyone that has a game can you advise if the gear you have in the far back for roadrunner locks has a screw holding the gear in place?
Also did your coin box have a clip to hold it in?
I guess QA missed it on mine and it fell off In shipping.
Just curious before I email/call support since I know everyone is off today in the office.

#67 delivered!
No time to set up until tomorrow evening.
Will post pics then.
Can’t wait.

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Update, tweaking that switch to trigger lower - meaning the ball is more settled - made the biggest difference of anything. Between that, tweaking the hood angle some more, and putting the power at 24 I've got it like 95%, which seems acceptable.

Makes sense, as I took a bunch of slow mo today and the eject angle was REALLY inconsistent initially - that switch was on a hair trigger giving little time to settle. Sometimes it bangs right, sometimes hard left. After tweaking the switch, adjusting the hood helped a LOT more...I'm guessing my switch was just set way more sensitive than those having less issues with it.

Not sure how much trouble it would be to code, but adding a software delay on trigger would actually be really useful here I think. That would allow you to compensate for however the switch was set...it's pretty tricky getting that leaf just right too.

Neither my husband or I could figure out why it was that much higher. We spent quite a bit of time trying to figure it out before resorting to the dremel for the one plastic and just removing the green plastic under Marvin. There was nothing obvious to either of us or anything we could figure out to lower the ramp, habit rail, or the Marvin spaceship mech. So far other than that issue *knock on wood* we have not had any other issues and it did get played a fair bit when we had our monthly pinball event in out home.

Happy Fathers Day!
Spooky crew showing love with all amazing autographs
CE#67 in the house!
Added custom chainsaw to TAZ!
Game is a huge hit with the family.
Working great out the box.

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I love that chainsaw! Where do I get one?

5 kids?! Nice work Michigan bro!

Is the chainsaw 1/12 scale?

Yes, 1 /12th
Look for it on eBay.

I see from the tracking that 77 has a "scheduled delivery" 8am-12pm tomorrow at my place....which is news to me since Friday they couldn't deliver because they had to schedule an appointment and then they never scheduled the appointment, they never called me, never discussed anything at all....but this truck line is a pile of douchenozzles and they do this crap all the time (we deal with truck freight including these asshats every day of the week)....

so I assume they're going to no call no show, or show up at my actual house with no liftgate or with a 53ft truck, or both....as opposed to anything that was setup and I assume that there will be a fork hole through the entire box lol. We will see tomorrow...nevermind that I have to be gone all AM so there is that too LOL. Good times are always had with truck freight lol

Talking to a buddy of mine about his labyrinth that is FINALLY showing up months behind schedule....it's lost, for like 10 days now, LOST, as in NOBODY CAN FIND IT...so I guess I should be thankful. LOL

This makes me sad.