Gottlieb Surfer EM - spinner question/ help...

[JRK1971]

Hi guys,
been fine tuning the surfer now that i've got it running reliably (holding breath).

Got an issue with the spinner - the ball stop under it if it rolls slowly. It seems as though the spinner assembly is too heavy and the ball meets too much resistance

Im wondering if the assembly is correct - it seems to have a weight on the bottom of the rod that activates the switch. Plus there are no washers on the spinner shaft. If I compare to the spinner in the Stern Meteor, parts are quite different. Has my surfer spinner been butchered, or is original parts and they need replacement?  


Some photos below to help.

[Boots]

That's a strange setup, has somebody adapted a pop bumper switch?

[ddstoys]

No that looks right.  You might need to adjust the position of the weight you only just want the switch to close if it has to pull to far it will cause resistance when the top blade hits the bottom blade

[JRK1971]

Hi guys, tried adjusting the weight at bottom, no luck.

Ended up putting a larger post in - about 6mm higher (you can see the difference in the photos with orig post standing next to new ones). This give the spinner same height as the one in my Meteor.

Works fine now - you can see the height difference in the photos. Am I missing something here , the posts I removed look correct, but the ball always stopped at low speed under the spinner.

[Retropin]

Yes you can see that the top of the ball is at the same height as the axis of the spinner. The spinner should come to a rest with the larger part of the paddle at the bottom and ball should hit this. Spinner is set off centre so the image always rests right way up.

Looks to me that when the PF was restored, the wrong posts were put in or alternatively as in some of my games, several washers are on top f the post raising the spinner up slightly... these may not have been replaced.

Looks like you found the solution but it would be good if you can source some posts that match in colour. The ones you have appear to be modern remakes.
Ive got a ton of old posts and can post some out if you want.. just give me the height required.

[JRK1971]

Thanks guys, thought I'd solved it and patted my self on the back. Went to put the glass back on and the top of the spinner bracket hit the glass 
So back to the drawing board, put the original posts in, took the spinner from the Meteor and installed it & the machine played fine with it . Made no sense to me, so I ended up taking the crappy stickers off the spinner and sanded the paint nice n flat. Ball would roll through at snails pace 90% of the time.

Final solution was to apply playfield wax to the spinner and playfield and now 100% no issue.

Now I have to solve the missing picture on the spinner. Was thinking of trying to make a stencil and paint the spinner instead of a stencil. I'll post another question in a new post on that one.

Retropin -  thanks for the offer, I was going to take you up on it, but that damn glass got in the way

Here is a pic of the final setup - still need to get a couple of washers for the spinner to keep the rod in correct spot...