LW3 weak flipper

Mr Do

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It seems my right flipper may be weak. How does one tell? Hitting the ball off the right flipper and aiming for the ramp is near impossible. But occurs rarely.

Also, when the ball ejects from the outhole onto ball ramp, it holds down the switch in front of the ball punger. Should that remain down?

After shooting the ball into the playfield, and losing the ball that round, it takes about 10 seconds or more for the next ball in play to eject to the front of the ball shooter. It this correct? And sometimes it shoots by itself???
 
It seems my right flipper may be weak. How does one tell? Hitting the ball off the right flipper and aiming for the ramp is near impossible. But occurs rarely.

On LW3 you should be able to shoot the ramp easily from the right flipper. You should be able for it to make the ramp from a hold and then flip. The left flipper is weaker by design (so it does not break the drop targets) and is a more difficult shot to make the ramp, but it is possible.
If you feel like the flippers are weak, a rebuild kit like this one:
http://www.pinballlife.com/index.php?p=product&id=248&parent=173
will bring them back to life, as long as the flipper coils are OK. A good place to read about doing this is here:
http://www.pinrepair.com/de/index.htm


Also, when the ball ejects from the outhole onto ball ramp, it holds down the switch in front of the ball punger. Should that remain down?

I am assuming that you are talking about the ball going into the shooter lane? There is a switch in front of the plunger(gun) that should be held down by the ball when it is in the shooter lane.

After shooting the ball into the playfield, and losing the ball that round, it takes about 10 seconds or more for the next ball in play to eject to the front of the ball shooter. It this correct? And sometimes it shoots by itself???

Sometimes it will take a little while for all of the DMD animations to complete, I don't remember how long that takes, it really depends on bonus points, and how the machine is set up.
Yes sometimes it will shoot by itself. If you do not hit enough points right after the ball enters the playfield, then the machine will do a ball save, and the DMD animation should say "Freeze" and shoot out another ball for you.

in the IPDB entry:
http://ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=1433
There are two rulesheets listed that will explain a lot of the features of the game.
http://www.ipdb.org/rulesheets/1433/lethalwe.htm
http://www.ipdb.org/rulesheets/1433/lw3ryan.htm

Hope that this answers most of your questions.

Mike
 
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on my lw3 i can make the ramp shot with the right flipper with ease. i can make that shot with the left flipper on occation so it sounds like a rebuild is in your future. let me know how it goes as i have yet to do this myself and i will need to at some point.
 
weak flipper

I would have to agree with the above comments. The flippers on that game are extremely strong and loud! If you are having any issues I would go to pin repair and read up on the data east games. The repair guide in there has a huge section dedicated to just the flippers and should have everything in there that you need.
 
Set your multi-meter to ohms, and compare the resistance of the weak flipper with the resistance of the stronger flipper. That might confirm it for you.
 
Set your multi-meter to ohms, and compare the resistance of the weak flipper with the resistance of the stronger flipper. That might confirm it for you.

LW3 uses different flipper coils for the left and right flippers, they will give you different readings.
 
File the plunger head if there is any "mushrooming" to it and the stop as well. Stick a new coil sleeve in there if you have one. Make sure there is vertical play in the flipper when tightening the flipper shaft. This should fix most problems and if it is something else these things can't hurt and are cheap things to try first.
 
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