Hey all,

Just finished restoring my WhiteWater pinball and putting it back together but there's one problem that seems to constantly plague my game. The No Way Out kicker likes to fire extra times, usually just after popping a ball up. Sometimes it's one extra time, sometimes two extra times, sometimes multiple times.

The optos appear to work but there was one time one of them (I believe the center one) kept reading open. I haven't been able to reproduce that issue. This mech is confusing, it looks like a coil followed by a spring-loaded popper. It seems fine, but I have no way of knowing.

What do I do? Do I just replace all of the optos or get an entire new mech assembly or is there something else going on? It's impossible to test the optos while the solenoid is firing, which is usually when the problem happens.

I see. Does it fire from any of the optos triggering or just the opto pair nearest the popper?

Understood. As soon as I get access to the machine again I'll do a vibration test and check the opto pair closest to the popper.

Update: did some tests on the game. Banged around everywhere (including upper playfield) and I'm not getting any beeps or unusual behavior. All of the optos in there are working fine, at least for now.

Went back into attract mode and just kept feeding balls into No Way Out and letting it pop the balls up and waiting. Not a single extra kick now. Even let the solenoid test run for a bit and it's behaving.

Either this problem is really intermittent or I'm losing my mind. I bought a handful of optos anyway just so I have parts on hand. I'm still suspicious.

Update: just went ahead and replaced all 6 optos. They were all factory original and 30 years old so I decided to save myself a headache later. Haven't had a problem since!

Thanks, everyone!

I bought the optos from Marco Specialties. You can buy them with or without the plastic case, I saved some money and just used my old cases on the new opto boards. Easy access from underneath the playfield and some soldering later, she's good as new!