we've noticed pinballs getting stuck inside the inlanes and outlanes of certain cabinets at our local arcade. usually the outlane ones eventually get knocked loose by the kickback pushing it out during a ball search (still drains though) but the inlane ones just stay stuck. is this something we can tell our arcade about and get repaired somehow?
Oh yeah! This is absolutely something you can report to the arcade to get fixed, and there’s a ton of reasons that this could happen. I can’t diagnose it without seeing it, but here are the three most likely causes.
1: The rubber ring on the post between the inlane and outlane is too big and it causes the balm to get wedged, thus getting stuck. This is a simple fix, you can just replace it with a smaller rubber ring.
2: The roll over switches in the lanes are bent out of shape and the ball is getting stuck on them. This can be fixed by bending the switch back into shape, or replacing it.
3: a playfield plastic has warped, and it partially blocking the lane. (This happened a lot on older games where the lights get hot enough to warp the plastic. The solution is to simply replace the plastic, but unfortunately replacements aren’t always cheap!
There are a ton of other things that it could be, but these are really common issues! Hope this helps!
