Fish Tales - Caster’s Club ball popper problem

[VeeMonroe]

We’ve had an intermittent fault with our Fish Tales whereby the Caster’s Club would register a ball when there wasn’t anything there.

Having had a look under the playfield, we discovered someone had used a piece of twisted wire to hold the Ball Popper Cap and the Coil Tubing together. The Ball Popper Cap was loose and we assume this caused it to make ’false’ electrical connections and register balls that weren’t there. We detached the twisted wire and - to cut a long story short - purchased a 3/32” x 1/2” dowel pin from Accu.co.uk (https://www.accu.co.uk/).

We’ve just tried fitting the dowel pin and it fits through the popper cap, but not through the coil tubing. We’ve put a needle through the hole in the coil tubing (part 03-7067) to make sure that it isn’t blocked, and it isn’t.

We’ve been trying to do this in situ because the Ball Popper Assembly is attached to the bottom of the playfield by either a rusted-in screw or a nail that we’ve been unable to remove.

Lots of photos attached, but does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[David_Vi]

Just buy a new popper cap and pin. I think you can get the pins?
You can always just cut the old popper to bits to get the pin out.... But I'd say just buy new

You can remove the sleeve and coil part by removing the screws labeled as 9. You can then take the coil out, remove the armature and spring.

Buy a new armature with popper if necessary

 

[David_Vi]

565-0029-01 VUK Kit

pinparts.co.uk

 

[VeeMonroe]

Thanks for replying so promptly

We managed to get the solenoid assembly detached eventually and, after a lot of hammering, cross fingers, we’ve got the dowel pin in

Now we just need to test the machine…