Dirty Harry

The reassembly of the playfield went well until I came to the point where the left diverter was about to be put back. Before I took the playfield apart I noticed that the diverter pinched the ball if it came through with a little slower speed and it wasn’t released until the ball search kicked in.

I thought it should be an easy fix, the shaft had probably come lose and it was just a question about releasing the lock screw and move the diverter arm back a bit. But I was wrong, the diverter arm isn’t round where it is locked at the underside, so there is no way to adjust it. When looking closer to the assembly I realized that there isn’t any end stop for the plunger in the released position, so what’s stopping the plunger from falling out of the coil sleeve?

 

The stop is where the actuator arm meets the bottom of the slot in the plunger. The bottom of the slot had been quite worn after 20 years of gameplay and that allowed the diverter to open up a bit to much. There are also some wear at the actuator arm. You can see it as a little notch where the arm met the plunger in the picture above.

 

There is quite a difference in the distance of the bottom of the slot to the E-clip at the plunger. The solution was to tap out the roll pin and turn the plunger half a turn and tap it back again.

 It’s not 100%, I’d like to have had diverter back a little bit more. The little bit extra it is open now is probably due to the notch in the actuator arm. But it will probably take another 20 years until it is so worn that it starts to pinch the balls again. There was also another problem with the diverter. The rivets holding the diverter arm to the shaft was a bit lose causing the diverter arm to point down a little. This caused the diverter arm to sometimes catch in the opening in the ramp once it was opened and then it didn’t close when the coil released it. Fastening the rivets cured the problem.