TECH- FT shooter coil problem?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.pinball (More info?)

Hi there,
Recently the shooter on my FT has progressivly gotten weaker, so much
that the ball barely cleared the long cast diverter and ended up SDTM.
So I took the shooter apart and noticed that the coil sleeve needed to
be replaced. I tried to replace the coil sleeve but after trying two
new sleeves both of which wouldn't fit back into the coil. I decided
that the coil must have warped causing the shooter rod to stick. I had
a new yellow shooter coil so I decided to replace it. I soldered the
new coil in and reassembled the shooter and thought I had my problem
solved. Well as soon as I turned on the machine it began to reset as
soon as it tried to fire the shooter coil. I assumed that I had wired
the coil backwards and noted the position of the diode to the power
wire. When I checked it against the original coil I was surprised to
see that the old coil didn't have a diode. So I cut the diode out of
the new coil an the game worked perfectly. So I guess my question is
why doesn't FT use the diode on the shooter coil? Or does it, and my
game has been hacked so that it can't use a coil with a diode. The
only coils with a diode seem to be the flippers. What is the function
of the diode on the coils?

The second part of my question is the shooter performance. It is now
shooting the ball with a high velocity. The ball is now landing on the
right flipper instead of the left. Is this the correct position for
the ball to wind up after launching the ball from the shooter? Is my
new coil to strong for this game? I replaced the coil with the same
coil that was in the machine before.

Thanks in advance for all of your insight,

Al..

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.pinball (More info?)

The coil still uses a diode, it is just not located
directly on the coil. It is elsewhere in the game. This
was done to help stop the 'fracturing' of them in service.

Not sure where the ball is supposed to "land" on FT, but
earlier pins sometimes had a map indicating where a ball
should go after landing in a kickout hole for example. Maybe
you can get a concensus here from other FT owners. (I no longer
have one, and don't recall.)

Fred
TX
CARGPB#8
=====================================

poncelongboarder wrote:
> Hi there,
> Recently the shooter on my FT has progressivly gotten weaker, so much
> that the ball barely cleared the long cast diverter and ended up SDTM.
> So I took the shooter apart and noticed that the coil sleeve needed to
> be replaced. I tried to replace the coil sleeve but after trying two
> new sleeves both of which wouldn't fit back into the coil. I decided
> that the coil must have warped causing the shooter rod to stick. I had
> a new yellow shooter coil so I decided to replace it. I soldered the
> new coil in and reassembled the shooter and thought I had my problem
> solved. Well as soon as I turned on the machine it began to reset as
> soon as it tried to fire the shooter coil. I assumed that I had wired
> the coil backwards and noted the position of the diode to the power
> wire. When I checked it against the original coil I was surprised to
> see that the old coil didn't have a diode. So I cut the diode out of
> the new coil an the game worked perfectly. So I guess my question is
> why doesn't FT use the diode on the shooter coil? Or does it, and my
> game has been hacked so that it can't use a coil with a diode. The
> only coils with a diode seem to be the flippers. What is the function
> of the diode on the coils?
>
> The second part of my question is the shooter performance. It is now
> shooting the ball with a high velocity. The ball is now landing on the
> right flipper instead of the left. Is this the correct position for
> the ball to wind up after launching the ball from the shooter? Is my
> new coil to strong for this game? I replaced the coil with the same
> coil that was in the machine before.