The ball grabber unit (a/k/a “balligator”) on my Nip-It recently began retracting sluggishly. The grabber arm assembly itself extends and retracts fairly well when pushed by itself, but when the pivot arm assembly is pushed to extend the grabber arm, it retracts sluggishly. The torsion and extension springs (items 19 and 20 in the diagram) are in place, but I found this other mystery spring attached by a bracket screw underneath just sticking out. That spring is not listed or shown in the Bally parts manual diagram.

Does anyone know if this spring is supposed to be there and, if so, where the open end is supposed to go? I was just taking photos before disassembling the unit to clean it up when I found the mystery spring, and I’m wondering if it is the cause of the retraction issue.
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Thanks, I didn’t think it looked original, and the parts manual didn’t show it. The plunger in this special solenoid seems to be sluggish, so I think I need to clean that up, which is why I was going to partially disassemble the unit to get to it. I’ll probably also clean up the ride shaft rods and re-lube those.

Update: I disassembled the ball grabber unit and strengthened a piece of spring metal that pushes the cam and stud assembly (number 22 in the diagram) back down into position when the unit resets. That spring metal wasn’t doing much and was impossible to strengthen without removing the cam and stud assembly. That assembly has a pin that sticks out and was probably what the mystery spring was attached to, to “make it work.” Once the mystery spring came free, the cam and stud assembly was out of position, obstructing the grabber from resetting. I also strengthened the torsion spring. I took the opportunity to clean and lube parts of the unit, and now it works well as originally designed.