Drop Targets not Dropping

[Steve2010]

I have a few Bally machines (Skateball and Hotdoggin') which have hooded drop targets.  Both games have 3 individual banks, and both have one of the 3 banks (which happens to be a 3 target bank) in the mid-playfied facing straight towards the flippers.

I notice on hitting these, sometimes the target does not drop at all, but the ball simply bounces straight back as if it hit a wall, with the target still standing.  Removing the glass and trying it with my fingers, or manually bouncing the ball against the target, shows no issue at all.  Also, the springs to pull them down are fine.

They drop about half time I hit them in gameplay, and it seems the harder they are hit, the more likely they stay standing.  I noticed if I put the ball right against the target, it just fits almost perfectly under the hooded part of the target - see image below



I then began to wonder if this is a case of the ball hitting the target, pushing it back (to the point where it should drop), but does not drop due to a combination of the ball temporarily holding it up (ie. the ball "supporting" the hooded part of the target), then due to the force of the target being struck, both the target and ball being rebounded back to the position the target was before it was hit.  Hope that all makes sense.

When I hit the targets (during normal game play), it appears like the target does not even move back at all, but it may be a case of the target going back and rebounding forward so quickly it does not get the chance to drop at all.

I have no other explanation why the targets do not drop sometimes.  I notice that if the ball "clips" the outside of one of the 3 drop targets in the mid-field bank (and the ball does not rebound back), the target always falls.  Again, visual inspection shows no issue at all.

The other target banks (wih hooded targets) never have any issues.

Anyone else have this experience, or can shed some light on this?  Thanks.

[Pintoxicated]

Yep, I have the same problem exactly with one of my Superman drop targets.  Hit it with a glancing blow and it drops but a strong full frontal hit leaves it standing more often that not.

[ddstoys]

Try moving the entire bank forward giving it more room before it hits the rubbers.

    If the ball hits hard and fast it hits the rubber and bounces back before it has time to drop...

[48]

Perhaps the springs are getting weak in their old age?
Try replacing one and see what happens.

[Strangeways]

Repro drop targets are made of a different plastic composition. Originals were more rigid. Repro have more flex and absorb contact.

There's a few things you can try ;

As Daniel advises - Move the assembly a little more forward - this will improve the frequency of the target dropping.

What I do is really simple - Stretch the rubber behind the targets, or go to a lower size - so it stretches more and the target won't bounce off the rubber. My Paragon had this exact problem. I fixed it by stretching the rubber (which makes the rubber thinner) behind the targets and leaving the slack on the other side of the posts. There's a school of thought that rubbers produced today are slightly thicker than factory. I don't beleive this completely, but I have seen some rubbers that are definitely thicker.

[Greg]

a suggestion only - what if you put a 5/16 or 3/16 rubber ring on each of those  finn posts

[MartyJ]

I had a similar issue on a machine I had worked on for a customer.  By hand everything seemed to check out OK, however a finger does not make a good representation of a balls motion.

I'm not sure if it was an old operator trick or not, but I found it was the angle of the actual target to the playfield which stopped the ball correctly dropping the target some or most of the time.

To fix it on the machine I was working on, I simply bent the front brackets of the actual drop target assembly back a touch, so all 4 brackets were exactly at 90deg so the drop target was at 90deg to the playfield (if this makes sense)...

See attached pic - red line is your targets now, green is the angle they should be at?  Basically the bottom of the target is touching the playfield, whereby there should be a small gap.

[Steve2010]

Thanks guys for your suggestions  .... I will let you know if I have any success.  Alot of what has been suggested makes sense, will need to take a closer look.