JJP - Slingshot Assembly Basics

Jersey Jack Pinball·video·32m 47s·analyzed·Mar 9, 2020

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.022

TL;DR

JJP technical tutorial on slingshot assembly repair, adjustment, and maintenance.

Summary

Jersey Jack Pinball provides a comprehensive technical guide on slingshot assembly maintenance and repair, covering mechanical components, electrical safety, switch adjustment techniques, common failure points, and proper cleaning procedures. The video emphasizes safety protocols when working on powered machines, detailed switch gap adjustment methodology, and preventive maintenance to keep slingshots functioning properly.

Key Claims

Slingshot coils on Wizard of Oz, Hobbit, and Pirates of the Caribbean operate at 70 volts, while Willy Wonka and Dialed In use 20 volt coils
high confidence · Jersey Jack Pinball technical instructor, speaking from product knowledge of JJP games
Jersey Jack pinball games use independent switches for slingshots (each with separate switch matrix square), unlike Williams games which use parallel wiring
high confidence · JJP technical instructor, explaining design differences in switch architecture
Proper slingshot switch gap should be small enough that slightest ball contact triggers the kick, but not so tight that vibration from other mechanisms causes false triggering
high confidence · JJP technical instructor providing adjustment best practices
The narrow end of the slingshot return spring must go on first when installing, or the spring will work its way onto the shoulders of the plunger link over time
high confidence · JJP technical instructor demonstrating spring orientation during assembly
Rubber rings are the most common failing component on slingshots, typically breaking at stress points where they contact the posts
high confidence · JJP technical instructor based on wear pattern analysis
Jersey Jack games have redundant diodes on coil assemblies (with diodes also present on the I/O board), but flipper coils always require diodes
high confidence · JJP technical instructor explaining coil diode design philosophy
Never use WD-40 or spray lubricants on pinball machines as they attract dirt and are highly flammable
high confidence · JJP technical instructor providing safety and maintenance best practices
Pinball machine assemblies are designed to run without lubrication and use nylon coil sleeves specifically to eliminate the need for lubricants
high confidence · JJP technical instructor explaining design philosophy for dry operation

Notable Quotes

“if you have the power on on the game and the coin door closed 70 volt coils throughout will be energized so both lugs of each 70 volt coil present a shock hazard”
JJP Technical Instructor @ ~2:45 — Critical safety warning about electrical hazards when working on powered machines
“if you touch a blade of the switch or one of these lugs on the back of the switch with a coil plug you're gonna create high voltage on the switch matrix and you're gonna blow a fuse and worse than that you're gonna blow an integrated circuit chip on your i/o board”
JJP Technical Instructor @ ~3:15 — Emphasizes catastrophic consequences of careless electrical work
“the key to keeping your slingshots working as they were designed lies in keeping a nice small gap on those two switches that control the coil”
JJP Technical Instructor @ ~9:30 — Core principle of slingshot maintenance and adjustment
“slingshot which abuse is a real thing in pinball believe me in the interests of trying to make these devices work better people will use all kinds of tools or maybe not even a tool at all to bend and kink and twist and just mangle these switches”
JJP Technical Instructor @ ~13:00 — Acknowledges common technician mistakes in switch manipulation
“you don't want to start going in clockwise immediately because that will destroy the threads that are already in the plastic or wood”
JJP Technical Instructor @ ~18:30 — Critical screw installation technique to preserve playfield integrity
“never use wd-40 or any other spray-on lubricants anywhere in a pinball machine they don't belong here those products attract dirt and they're highly flammable”
JJP Technical Instructor @ ~36:00 — Strong safety and maintenance warning
“virtually every assembly inside a pinball machine is designed to run without lubrication that's why every coil inside the game has a nylon coil sleeve inside for that plunger to ride in very smoothly it just needs to be clean it's designed to run dry”

Entities

Jersey Jack Pinballcompany Wizard of Ozgame The Hobbitgame Pirates of the Caribbeangame Willy Wonkagame Dialed Ingame Williamscompany

Signals

?
product_concern: Slingshot switches frequently go out of adjustment due to repeated ball impact, requiring periodic switch gap adjustment to maintain sensitivity
high · The ball smashing into the rubber ring over and over again is going to cause those switches to get out of alignment... they'll need to be adjusted again from time to time
?
product_concern: Rubber rings are the most common failing component on slingshots, breaking at stress points from wear and tear
high · the rubber ring around the assembly here is by far the most common to fail... sling shot rubbers are going to break from time to time that's all there is to it
?
design_philosophy: JJP designs machines with dry-running assemblies using nylon sleeves and independent switch architecture to minimize maintenance requirements
high · virtually every assembly inside a pinball machine is designed to run without lubrication... each switch has its own square in the switch matrix
?
operational_signal: Critical guidance on slingshot adjustment techniques, including proper switch blade alignment, gap calibration, and screw installation procedures
high · you want to get it tweaked enough towards really leaning forward... go counterclockwise with your screw before you start going clockwise
?
product_concern: Working on powered machines with live coils presents severe electrical shock risks and can cause catastrophic I/O board damage if tools inadvertently bridge circuits
high · 70 volt coils throughout will be energized... you're gonna blow an integrated circuit chip on your i/o board and take out your switch matrix

Topics

Slingshot assembly mechanics and componentsprimaryElectrical safety and shock hazardsprimarySwitch gap adjustment and calibrationprimaryMaintenance and troubleshooting proceduresprimaryCommon failure modes and wear patternsprimaryCoil design and diode wiringsecondaryCleaning and lubrication practicessecondaryManufacturer design differences (JJP vs Williams)secondary

Sentiment

neutral(0)— Technical educational content delivered in a professional, instructional tone. No emotional language or opinions expressed. Balanced presentation of best practices, warnings, and troubleshooting guidance.

Transcript

youtube_auto_sub · $0.000

[Music] hello again pinball fans but filled with Jersey Jack pinball the next installment in the basics of common playfield assembly series is the slingshot there are three of them on this Wizard of Oz play field two of them down low near the main flippers and one way up high just below the Oz lanes lots of information to share here so let's get busy as I've done with videos before start with a demonstration device that I put together of a slingshot with the plastic piece that covers the top here removed so you can see everything clearly it's fully wired into my Wizard of Oz pinball machine so that it activates whenever I pushed switches and closed the switch fully functional the slingshot has quite a few parts to it and has post mounted to the playfield surface and the triangular configuration with a rubber ring around them making up the slingshot itself above it's got switches that mount underneath the playfield but actually come up through the play field and make contact with a rubber ring so that when the ball makes contact with a swing it closes a switch and causes the kicker to kick the kicker has its own bracket underneath that mounts here and a spring to return the kicker to the at rest position once this thing kicks so it pushes it the kicker back all that's mounted of course in conjunction with a bracket holding the coil underneath that actually pulls a plunger in when triggered by the switches again a word of caution if you're working on the play field above or below and you have the power on on the game and the coin door closed 70 volt coils throughout will be energized so both lugs of each 70 volt coil present a shock hazard touch one of those with your hand or metallic tool in your hand and you're gonna feel it additionally if you're working with metallic tools up underneath the play field when it's powered up you have to be very careful not to make connections in between devices accidentally and it's very easy to do if you're putting screws in for instance into this bracket here or you're adjusting underneath with a metal switch adjuster and you touch a blade of the switch or one of these lugs on the back of the switch with a coil plug you're gonna create high voltage on the switch matrix and you're gonna blow a fuse and worse than that you're gonna blow an integrated circuit chip on your i/o board and take out your switch matrix that's a very very bad thing so as a general rule trying to do all of your work up underneath the play field with your tools and your hands and things up into the wiring and around the lugs with the power off be careful when you're working around the switches that trigger these devices if you touch the switch here and trigger the device the kicker doesn't care if your hand gets in the way it's gonna kick just the same and it's not going to feel good same thing under the play field if you managed to trigger the switch here and that thing kicks you can get pitched really bad than anything and remember on some of our games the slingshot coils are controlled by 70 volts and on some games they're controlled by 20 volts namely Wizard of Oz hobbit and Pirates of the Caribbean have 70 volt slingshot coils whereas Willy Wonka and dialed in both have 20 volt so when you have a 20 volt slingshot coil they're going to be active whether the coin door is closed or not if you're in some kind of a testing for gameplay configuration you touch a switch they're gonna kick the only real mechanical adjustments required to keep the slingshot working properly deal with the two switches that actually trigger the coil New Jersey Jack pinball we refer to these as the low and the high switches these two switches are independent in Jersey Jack pinball games that means each switch has its own square in the switch matrix it turns green when the switch is closed and stays dark blue when the switch is open so either switch can trigger the slingshot coil and each switch can develop its own issues get out of adjustment it's stuck open closed etc and the test report of course can direct you to the switch that needs attention more quickly because these two switches are independent in other games Williams games for instance there are two switches used in each of their slingshots but they're wired in parallel so they actually function as a single switch so I'm gonna zoom in really tight here on that low switch so you can see it in great detail now you can see that just the slightest pressure on this rubber ring causes those two contacts to close you can see the back blade they're being pushed back just a little bit I've got the high voltage disabled so the thing doesn't kick while I'm trying to show this obviously but you can see what makes the switch trigger the coil there is just a ball bumping into this and causing those two switch contacts to come together here are two typical slingshots switches so you can kind of see what they look like when they're brand-new one of these is a rear mount the other is a front mount the long blade on each of these switches is the front of the switch so this one's mounted rear this one mounted from the front you need both types of these switches because sometimes the playfield gets very crowded underneath where these switches mount around the slingshot so sometimes it requires you to use a front mount sometimes it requires you to use a rear mount by far the most common used slingshots which is the front mount so this is the one that's gonna look like most of the ones in arcane control slingshots but either switch can also be used as a ten-point switch in a game up against a rubber ring to trigger other devices or just give points on the balls bumping around and the pop uppers and things like that so 10 point switch and swing shots which are the same thing if we look a little closer at one of these switches you actually see the contacts on it so that's what this flash shaped piece is on there that's a switch contact and there's an opposite slash on the other side of the switch so that when these two come together they create kind of like a sharpening a knife kind of action and they clean one another so when they return the switch activates it's actually helping keep itself clean also very cool slingshots like flippers and pop bumpers are a really important part of any pinball play feel the flipper takes care of knocking the ball up the playfield gravity takes care of bringing it back down a lot of the side side motion that you see in a pinball machine is there because the slingshots are doing their thing a slingshot will kick the ball back and forth from one sling to the other and rock at the ball around the play field and it also adds that danger of going out the side so the key to keeping your slingshots working as they were designed lies in keeping a nice small gap on those two switches that control the coil you want the gap between those two switches blades to be very small so that it doesn't take much of a hit of a ball to close the gap and trigger the coil and kick the ball around however you don't want them so close that common vibration from other assemblies like your flippers and pop bumpers and things like that vertical up kickers cause the blades to mistakenly contact and kick the kicker when there's no ball around it the best way to check the gap and the function of the switches is to actually look straight down on them so get somewhere alongside your game where you can take the plastic off and look straight down on to the two switches that are controlling the slingshot as with most things you work with them long enough and you start to find a few tricks that seem to make them work better the best trick that I've come up with over the years with slingshots involves the long blades that make contact with the rubber ring here what I want them to do is follow the rubber ring when the kicker kicks I want there to be a positive pressure there pressing on the back of that ring and they want to follow it when it kicks I'll show you this from underneath the play field a little bit so you can see it more see how both of those blades follow and they come across there so what happens when this snaps back then there's less vibration on these two long blades if the blades are not bent so they follow that rubber ring out then they just stand there when the kicker kicks and pulls a rubber ring away they just stand there and the rubber ring returns and smacks into them then they vibrate and if they vibrate enough and the gap is tight enough between them and the these shorter blades of the switch then you get false triggering another thing you want to check is to make sure that the long blades of the to sling switches are perfectly parallel to this rubber ring as it stretched across these two posts here and you want to make sure that each one of them the nice flat blade is laying flat against the back of this rubber ring as you can see here slingshots which abuse is a real thing in pinball believe me in the interests of trying to make these devices work better people will use all kinds of tools or maybe not even a tool at all to bend and kink and twist and just mangle these switches to where they can hardly do their job anymore so you find some switches like that you'll want to try to return them to how they looked brand new take a pair of pliers and make them as just as straight as you can make sure that they line up with one another in this way so that they can make good contact and return them to this state and then start making an adjustment from there but get them nice and straight and flat first so please be kind to your slingshot switches and only use a switch adjustment to it when you're making adjustments to them what you're gonna do is get next to the base where the switches blades comes out of the stack here and that's where you're gonna make your adjustments you're gonna grab the blades way down low here you don't want to bend them out on the end you want to keep all the blades nice and straight you're just gonna make bends down here where they attach to or come out of the switch stack that's where adjustments will be made once you've removed your sling switch from underneath the playfield it'll look something like this so the sling switch has a long blade a short blade and a stiffener blade back behind the short blade so think of from above the balls hitting like this closing that switch and sometimes with great velocity as it gets kicked around the playfield if this stiffener blade were not here it would be real easy for this long blade in the ball to push against this short blade and Bend it backward backward backward and it would make your sling that much less sensitive every single time it got hit so the stiffener blade holds the the short blade in place and allows it to take a lot more punishment from being hit from the ball so the first thing I want to do with my sling switch so I want to get it the where the long blade lies back up against the back of that rubber ring like I was showing you earlier so what I'll need to do to get that to happen is make a bend in this long blade and Bend it outwards so that it wants to make contact with that rubber ring the way I'll do that is I just slide my adjustment tool down I don't want to go all the way down to where the blade comes out of the switch stack but just a hair above that and then put a little tweak in it like so I want to get it tweaked enough towards really leaning forward but you know not quite making contact with the bracket itself here and also when this goes up through the playfield the playfield is gonna push it back a little bit too so it won't short against that bracket but you know leaving a tiny little gap there's a good idea when I go to adjust the shorter blade now I'm gonna have to adjust it at the same time as I do the stiffener blade so I'm gonna put my adjustment tool on both of these blades at once i'ma slide all the way down to where they come right out of the switch stack now I'm gonna put a tweak on them I'm gonna bend them back a little bit like so and when I pull my adjustment tool off you notice that the blades separate so the stiffener blade now is not doing this job it's not holding this one in place what I'm gonna do to make it a little bit stronger make it a little easier to adjust as I'm gonna go down about a quarter of an inch here and I'm gonna put a tweak in this so that this stiffener blade has a D to it now see how it kind of has that angle in it I just put that in there now I'm gonna stand both of these back up so I'm gonna have to put my adjustment tool around both blades and I want to stand these both back up pretty much straight up and down so what that does for me allows me to make adjustments now to the sensitivity of my swing switch by just moving the stiffener blade see how I'm just moving the stiffener blade and the other blades following because there's good solid pressure against these two now when I adjust my switch later on it'll be a lot easier to push it and pull it back just by making a bend in the bottom of this stiffener blade and the other blade will follow and I'll give precise gap and that's a lot easier to bend this one more consistently than it is that short springy blade the next step is to reinstall your sling switches underneath the playfield a really important tip you should keep in mind any time you screw something into the playfield top or bottom or into any piece of plastic like a ramp or anything like that is to make sure you go counterclockwise with your screw before you start going clockwise you want to line up with the threads that are already in the wood or the plastic I'm going to zoom in tight on this screw down here in the corner of the screen to show you exactly what I'm talking about it's pretty easy to see with this acrylic playfield if you will so when I back this screw out you're gonna see in the clear plastic there you see the threads of the screw when I reinsert this screw I don't just want to start going in clockwise immediately because that will destroy the threads that are already in the plastic or wood so what I want to do is go counterclockwise a little here that bump that tells me my screw threads are lined up with the threads that have been cut already in the wood or the plastic and I can go forward from there and it should turn very easily I'm gonna do that again for you go backwards but the screw will do will come up and it'll snap back down into the threads and once the threads are aligned I can go clockwise and tighten that screw and that will be just as tight as it ever was the first time and from now on if I don't do this every single time I put a screw in the playfield I may get away with it a couple of times it'll tighten down but after 2 or 3 times of doing this all it destroyed the holes in the playfield they'll turn to sawdust and I'll have to use glue and dowel or glue and toothpicks and things like that to help make some more wood in the hole to get things to tighten down properly again and we need everything to be extremely tight and in pinball you don't want any loose things underneath the playfield no loose brackets and no loose switches no loose anything everything needs to be very tight so this is a very important tip keep in mind once we have the sling switches attached underneath the playfield again from above now with the power off we can make slight adjustments to the back stiffener blades there and they will pull the switch contacts closer to the rubber ring side contact we can even use a flat blade screwdriver to make the adjustment because now all we're doing is pushing this forward so carefully push the stiffener blade forward just a little bit to get the precise gap that you want between the two blades these are gapped pretty well right here and when adjusted properly the slightest bump on the rubber should cause that thing to kick but only once I say once because you don't want the sling to trigger multiple times for just a single switch closure I've got the switches on this sling on the left side here way too tightly to kind of demonstrate what I'm talking about here see that thing's kicking multiple times when it's only hit once by the ball and that's a very bad thing and if those switches are gapped improperly and the blades are really loose they can vibrate back and forth and kick 5 6 8 10 times every time my single switch is closed a quick fix for a slingshot that's kicking multiple times for one hit of the ball or machine-gunning as we call it would be to grab them and put a little bit of a slack in the rubber ring that goes around the slingshot so you kind of tug it here and you create a little less tension you tug it at the opposite corner and you make this looser so that when the kicker returns to it's at rest position it's not quite as tight and pulling these blades back quite as far remember that's a temporary fix at best but sometimes it's very handy when you've got a party going on one of them starts kicking like that you can do this little trick real quick and it'll get you at least through your party before you do a real adjustment of the switches later so I've readjusted the switches on the Left swing here and get them properly again there's a reason why these slingshots are set up the way they are and the way that they are a well-adjusted set of slings works really well kicking the ball side to side on the play field it shouldn't take much of a hit from a rolling ball to do well they make in just the slightest bump they should trigger it shouldn't take a slam from the wall to cause them to trigger the slightest little roll and that's it all the action that happens because of that for working properly get your ball targets on the other side over there that we normally are hard to hit lots of side-to-side action that's what's things are made for and that's why they need to be working properly it keeps your game fun so what can go wrong with a slingshot I'm really glad you asked that question well first of all the slingshot is a very violent mechanism of course a lot of kicking going on happening quite often during a game so you're gonna need to make sure from time to time that all the screws the mounting screws for all of these parts of the slingshot are good and tight and that they stay that way so there's two on each of the switches there's three for the kicker in the center and there's four for the bracket that holds the coil in place other things you'll need to check from time to time to make sure they don't come loose these two nylon lock nuts back here that hold the coil and it's bracket in place if those get loose and the coil becomes loose it can cause a lot of slop in the slingshot action the other thing is this little hairpin clip on the end of the kicker mount here that allows this to rotate about the shaft the kicker itself if that little hairpin clip falls off of there this can come loose and cause the slingshot to not work properly also and here's what that little hairpin clip looks like it falls off of your assembly you notice one of these in the bottom of your cabinet somewhere most likely it came off of one of your slingshot assemblies and if you happen to notice your slingshot assembly it doesn't have a hairpin clip on it good luck finding that in the bottom of your cabinet if slingshots witches appear in your test report that means the you've got a problem with the wiring here most likely or the gap has gotten so wide that the switch can't close anymore and the game is asking you to check on it and make sure that it is actually functioning so the first thing I would check is to make sure all of these wires are firmly attached to your switches so I every green wire every white wire tug on them make sure that they are firmly attached and well soldered also the diode themselves each of these diodes are attached in their points and they haven't broken off or come loose from their solder points the coils themselves can have connection issues if the wires running to them happen to break free from their solder points with the power off or the coin door open you can give a slight tug on each of the wires make sure they're firmly attached and soldered to the lugs on the coil connection points also are these little red wires back here they actually are the wire that run around in the spool on the coil if that breaks loose from the lug here this wire is hanging loose on either side the coil will not work either no matter whether these are soldered properly or not there'll be a break back behind it so check those little white red wires give them a little tug make sure that they're well attached to the lugs a quick word on coil diodes on Jersey Jack pinball games the diode that you see on this coil here is actually kind of a redundant diode there is a diode on the i/o board that protects the circuitry on the i/o board from the collapse of the magnetic field when the coil is de-energized any diode on a coil then is a redundant diode it does no harm in being there but it does make the coil itself kind of polarized so the banded side of the diode has to be connected to the power side of the wiring and the trigger goes to the non bandit side of the diode the best way to differentiate the power wire from the trigger wire at a coil is by looking at the wire color itself the solid colored wire no stripe on it is always your power wire this wire with a stripe on it is your trigger wire if you connect these backwards and you put the power wire on the non bandit side of the diode you're going to blow a fuse as soon as the game power so most of the coils in Jersey Jack pinball games do not require a diode but again it doesn't hurt to have a redundant one there flipper coils are the exception you always need to have diodes on the flipper coils and they need to be connected properly there'll be a separate video on jig AP coils down the road and I'll talk more about diodes and wiring and all that stuff at that point you'll need to check your sling switches from time to time and make sure that they're gapped properly of course the gameplay will tell you that they're working properly or not also if they're getting a lot of side-to-side action they're good if you're not you're seeing the ball hit the rubber and not cause any triggering then you need to go in to make some adjustments the ball smashing into the rubber ring over and over again is going to cause those switches to get out of alignment no matter how good a job that stiffeners doing back behind there they cannot absorb over and over over hundreds of games this impact from the ball so it's going to get bent backward a little bit and your switch gaps gonna open up a little bit and they'll need to be adjusted again from time to time when it comes to where components on the slingshot the rubber ring around the assembly here is by far the most common to fail so the kicker kicks and it creates a really strong stretch on this rubber right in the center where it hits the ball makes contact with the posts here and up post here and tends to rub and make these get very thin and start to give way right at the corners but one of those three points is gonna break here here or here and that's just a matter of gameplay and wear and tear slingshot rubbers are going to break from time to time that's all there is to it a quick tip on the replacement of a rubber ring on the slingshot as you stretch it and get it around all three of the posts inevitably one of these sides is going to be a little tighter than other so trying to even the tension on this by kind of stretching around the corners and tugging on these and pulling and centering so that there's an equal tension found on all three sides of the triangle he noticed the one-year sling so it just seems to be working only intermittently gets triggered over and over but it really doesn't register those triggers as much take a close look at slash shaped contacts on each of the blades make sure one of them has not fallen off I've seen that happen many times when it does the sling switch itself gets really really unreliable so here's the kicker crank the crank mounting bracket and the plunger and link assembly for a slingshot as we saw earlier there's the hairpin clip that holds the crank to the crank mounting bracket which mounts up underneath the playfield and then on the opposite side there's another hairpin clip with a washer under it that's holding the plunger and link assembly to the crank itself I have seen her pink lips fall off of either side of this and cause the sling to quit working properly I've also seen this link break many many times and you have to buy a new plunger and link assembly and just take the hairpin and washer off of there and put it under and snap it back on I have seen the spring break on these this is the spring that returns this plunger pushes the plunger back out of the coil and returns the kicker to it's at rest position right so when your kicker does not return to a that rest position and it's kind of up against the rubber and staying there that's going to keep the switches from being able to activate the swing properly and it's gonna make them insensitive and not kick as well so you want this spring to work so that the kicker gets pushed all the way back and has a full run at the the sling each time when it is triggered if you look closely at this spring you notice that one end of it actually is a little narrower than the other end so it does matter which way this spring goes when you put it between the coil and the crank so the narrow end goes up under the shaft like this and you can see now that the narrow end is not going to be big enough to ever work its way up around the shoulders on this nylon link if you put it in the opposite way accidentally over time as this gets kicked these things will work their way up onto the shoulders of that and the spring will start to stick so always put the narrow end on first when you go to put this on a plunger and then feed all this into the coil when it comes to the coil and bracket portion of the slingshot the only thing you really need to keep an eye on for wear is the coil sleeve inside the coil note that the coil can mount in any of three different configurations with the lugs up with the lugs this way with the lugs that way so basically when then reinstalling it just put it back the way you found it with the lugs pointing in the same direction as they were to begin with take pictures beforehand those always help last thing I want to talk about is cleaning so every so often you're gonna notice that your slingshots get a little sluggish that the mechanisms themselves seem to not want to move freely and that they seem like they're kind of gunked-up binding almost even that's a good indicator that it's time to pull things apart and clean them up a little bit this sluggish behavior is not an indicator that you need to add some lubricant underneath the playfield remember never use wd-40 or any other spray-on lubricants anywhere in a pinball machine they don't belong here those products attract dirt and they're highly flammable big-time fire has it underneath your play field do not use them virtually every assembly inside a pinball machine is designed to run without lubrication that's why every coil inside the game has a nylon coil sleeve inside for that plunger to ride in very smoothly it just needs to be clean it's designed to run dry so let's get back to cleaning first of all you want to take your coil and bracket assembly here apart so you'll use your yellow handle driver for that and you take these two nuts off on the back here take the coil retaining bracket off and then you can get the coil off and take the coil sleeve out clean it real good I like to use Mean Green on those to get those good and clean as I said earlier the sleeve switch is designed to kind of clean itself every time it's activated but every once while you get a lot of black dust buildup around these you'll see that the switches themselves look kind of grubby you can clean the blades off just wipe them down and then put a business card in between the two contacts push them together hold them with your hand and then just rub back and forth a few times if you want to clean the contacts up a little bit that's all it takes the next thing we're gonna start taking apart is the crank here and the crank mounting bracket and a plunger and Linkous so I'm gonna take this loose from my play field the first thing I'm going to need to remove to pull this apart is this hairpin clip right here so I'm going to use a pair of bent nose needle nose pliers to get a hold of that if I use normal needle nose pliers and I'm pulling on this there's a good chance that when it comes loose my pliers are going to lose control at the end of that and it's going to go flying off somewhere very hard to find so if I put it in the bend of these pliers here I can get a really good grip on that and when I pull it loose I've still got a good grip and I can set that thing safely aside somewhere now I can pull the crank mounting bracket out of the crank arm here and I'm gonna take a scotch brite pad and I'm gonna clean this off really good this is going to be very gunked-up as will the inside of here and I'm going to use a scotch brite pad stick up in there and scrunch it around and use some mean green and clean this up really good so that it's nice and clean on both of those parts next I'm going to remove the hair pin clip here that holding the plunger and link assembly onto the crank so if your eyelid is kind of facing the wrong way you can just kind of spin that around to where it's easy to get to use my same pair of pliers again get a good grip on that pull it off set it off the side safely somewhere there's a washer on top of here that needs to come off and then the plunger and link assembly will come off with me and green in my scotch brite pad I'm gonna clean the end of this crank here I'm gonna clean inside the link opening and I'm gonna clean this plunger particularly well the top portion of the slingshot kicker that sticks up through the playfield is this nice pretty white color on a brand new piece however over time it can get a little grungy looking especially if you're using black slingshot rubbers so you can clean it up and make it look new again again with the scotch brite pad and your Mean Green just spray a little on there and scrub a little bit and you can return it to like new warning scotch brite pads are very abrasive they will scratch metal parts and they'll take some of the shine off of this and leave scratch marks if you use them all over these brackets and stuff so when you go to clean things like that chefs and in areas they're gonna get all grungy try and keep from getting your scotch brite pad on these areas that are nice and shiny and you just use a paper towel for those areas and use that mean green on them it'll get the gunk off of them reassembling everything I've started with putting the plunger and link assembly on the end of the crank bracket with the washer and put the hair pin and clip on top of that next I'm going to put the kicker crank back onto the crank mounting bracket when I said earlier that virtually every assembly in the pinball machine was designed to run without lubrication you knew there would be exceptions right well you can probably count on one hand how many exceptions there are to that rule and these are places where metal piece is making constant contact with another metal piece with nothing in between them and moving like when I mount the metal kicker crank here onto the metal shaft of this crank mounting bracket I'm going to need to add a little bit of lubrication there because that's metal on metal what I'm going to use as a lubricant is three in one oil so as I put this back together I'm going to add a single drop of three in one oil right here onto the shaft now I'm gonna insert this in here now I'm gonna move it around a little bit and I'm gonna wipe any excess oil off of either side of it and I'm gonna clip my hairpin back on there to hold it back together and that lubrication will help this thing work a lot better that does not mean that every time this pivot point feels a little bit sluggish I break out my three in one oil and just add a little more oil to this point right here no you do this only when you clean the item you pull it completely apart you get the gunk off of it and then when it's dry you add a little bit of lubricant to help it work better when you put it back together don't just keep adding oil over and over again that's not good well that's pretty much every sling I can think of to tell you about these assemblies oh that's bad get your slings working tip-top shape and go attack that Grand Champion score challenge someone to a game of pinball we'll talk to you again soon [Music]