Longish post - hoping to help some others:
PART 1: Building repairs
I'm trying to save a "beater set" of buildings so my best set can be my backup so ... I decided to use Toyotaboys wonderful braces (engineering marvel) and then add some pieces of PETG that I have leftover from constructing playfield protectors. First, the Toyotaboy braces are just unbelieveable. They really work well and the right side of my building set has the clear section broken clean off - the braces make it so strong, you would never know! The crack, however will not be ignored by the ball and was getting stuck so ... on to the PETG
I needed the PETG on top because the buildings I am using have some warping/cracking that was causing the ball to settle at the crack or in the dip of a warp.
The PETG sit right on top of the entire flat clear section of the original ramp - right in the fencing area. It sits over the metal braces and over the screws that hold them on after you install the Toyotaboy brace underneath. In other words, the ball has nothing to hit at all underneath on it's way to the lock hole.
The left PETG is held down by a hole I put in it using one of the existing building mounts and acorn nuts. The right one I used a couple of small dots of E6000 removal adhesive and then blue taped it until dry.
Both work well and I can play without worry of destroying a good set of buildings. I've included my templates as they may be useful to someone. There are some measurements on the templates to ensure that when you print they are to scale
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PART 2: Ladder height adjustment
I noticed that on this Fire (I've owned 2) it was more difficult to get the ball into the center building than my other. I took a close look at the spot where the top of the "ladder" nearly meets the metal intake area and noticed it was lower than the metal by about 3/16th or so. It was banging up the metal edge and doing super bad things to the balls that were, in turn, conspiring to do damage to my nearly new CPR silver play field!
I pulled the entire mech apart and can offer some observations.
First, the metal assembly (the chute) that accepts the ball can be adjusted slight downward by loosening 4 screws (2 each side). I then tilted it downward and used some blue Loctite on the screws - that "tilt" gained me maybe just under 1/16th inch.
Next and probably the biggest issue was the switch adjustment. I looked everywhere and could not find general instructions (on Pinside or anywhere for that matter) on how to adjust the ladder height - so here it what I did and found.
See in the picture the before pic shows the blade of the switch not quite at the tip of the rotating cam. I simply bent the switch "back toward me" thus allowing the cam to rotate even more BEFORE it closed the switch and effectively stopped the motor. You will notice that the cam rotates in one direction and you can move it by hand to then feel/hear when that switch closes. Mine was closing just a tiny bit too soon. Once you know which switch is telling the game to do what, it gets easier to diagnose and correct it. The ramp now raises about 1/32nd of an inch above the metal feed/chute and works like a champ!
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PART 3: A clean bell
Simple before and after pics of bell after using my drill with a TC buffer pad and some Brasso. I'm pretty sure that this bell had some sort of coating on it to protect the (once shiny) finish. It was a pain to polish it and it should have been easy.
PETG PICS
IMG_1173 (resized).JPG
IMG_1174 (resized).JPG
IMG_1175 (resized).JPG
Fire_PETG_templates (resized).jpg
LADDER ADJUST PICS
IMG_1122_LI (resized).jpg
IMG_1181_LI (resized).jpg
IMG_1179_LI (resized).jpg
BELL PICS
IMG_1177 (resized).JPG
IMG_1178 (resized).JPG
JUST A PIC
IMG_1182 (resized).JPG
Lenoir City, TN
