Any Jurassic Park owners have any tips on the dialing the center spinner shot? Mine travels around cleanly to the upper right flipper like 10% of the time. I tried some slo-mo video to determine the cause and really didn’t have much luck. It seems like the ball travels along the outer guide, but then bonks the inner guide just enough as it exits to set the whole thing off in the wrong direction. Here’s a video of it making it around, but just barely, and on a clean shot.
I tried to find solutions on Pinside but my god that place is a mess.
Maybe try and adjust the guide that sends it to the back wall so it doesn’t throw it so sharply into that back guide. Make it so it throws the ball more into the orbit to it gradually makes contact with the back guide and doesn’t just bounce off and rattle around like it currently is.
You know what, my center shot guide looks more “curved in” towards the orbit than yours. Maybe? Hard to tell.
Not to say mine first dunk off that back guide, but it happens further down the orbit than yours.
Is it supposed to be a clean go-around every time? I’m using this rattly-ness as strategy: if I need the pops or pop lane (CHAOS adds or light light escape) and the ball is on the right flipper I’ll deliberately shoot the spinner and hope for a rattle and dribble into the pops. From left flipper it seems a tossup between shooting directly at the amber target or shooting the spinner and getting a dribble.
I’d loosen the screws that hold it down and see if it can be adjusted at all then if that doesn’t help maybe a slight bend inward with rubber pliers like you said.
Mine seems to go around more often than not… usually when I need pops the most LOL
FWIW the gate at the end of the spinner lane jammed up early and I’ve not bothered to fix it. We get occasional dribbles back down but doesn’t happen as much as you’d expect, and the ball never hangs up anymore.
This is on my list to fix on mine. After taking slow motion video, I was surprised to find that it’s the right-side ball guide in the lane or the one-way gate bracket causing the issue. Take a close look: https://youtu.be/hRCBeKAZIH4
Hmm - I have a few slo-mos where mine does hit that inner/right-side as well, but my video above looks like it doesn’t hit it at all, yet still rattles. We’ll have to see. I’m gonna tinker when I get a chance.
I wonder if actually pushing the left side rail out might work, too. Might be that it’s too far inward and causing the ball to lose the path. Sending Karl’s ball into the right rail, and mine to start a chain of bonks kicked off by the rail turning too hard inward.
Don’t have one to try it on but I wonder how a slippery coat of wax would affect the shot. Anybody waxing? Waxing only near the spinner and/ or above the spinner, or the entire playfield would likely change things.
Also, obviously not factory, but strategically placed patches of mylar on side rails would definitely change the shot. Mylar would have to be replaced fairly often, but the rails are farther up the playfield, so may not have to be replaced too often.
That shot just seems inherently rattely to me. Mine and every machine I’ve played rattle more often than not. Even in Karl’s slow-mo videos the culprit doesn’t seem to be consistent. It’s almost like you need to hug the left rail from entry to keep it from hitting that first curve at an angle. Or maybe not! I’m not sure.
On a related note, I was able to tweak that one-way to gate work perfectly. Never lets a ball hang OR roll back down the lane. Zero of either across hundreds of plays. Hard to explain without detailed photos which are hard to take, but it involves bending the “stop lever” of the gate and trimming a smidge off the nearby plastic to allow the newly bent stop lever to fully travel.