made my own A-14609 ONE-WAY GATE for BOP

beerorkid

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This part is no longer available, not even from Steve Young. I had to improvise. This is my test run, and holy crap it works perfectly.

I owned my BOP for 10 years before I played another in the wild and saw the one way gate from the pop bumpers. I lived with instant drains for ten fricking years before I knew the darn game came with a one way gate to keep that from happening. After searching I knew I had to just make one.

I found some stainless and worked it as best I could. It turned out pretty good actually. I used some super thick piano wire to make the wire, but it some how totally worked. They sell the wire, so I am going to pick that up. I have new posts on the way. Just need to tweak my little frame a bit I bet.

The test wireform works so well it is just strange as hell. It does its job so well I had insane mindfarts when I played with it first. I was ready to put a bit of english on the machine to catch a straight down the middle shot when the gate stopped it. Just wow. The game is almost fair now. It drained so hard on all who played it. Having that bit fixed makes it a whole new game. When it is not there it is just cruel.

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This is temp right now. The drywall screw is held in by the post rubber. I have new posts coming because the current one has a broken screw in it and my drilling a new hole in the post did not work well.

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One of my favorites, and it's extremely popular with visitors to my home.

Good job on the fix. That's a total game changer.
 
I got the piano wire thing from Steve Young at pinball resource. I messed with the thickest of the 3 for this. Bending it was a huge pain. I used a channel lock to hold onto the wire while I used the ground as a fulcrum to bend the wire.

I am still bewildered how I hit it right to be honest. It just worked.
 
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I've used the piano wire for some TFTC and F-14 gates - works very well. VERY strong, and difficult to bend into shape, but once you get it where you want it, it works very well.

As long as you know how the original is supposed to work, this stuff is great for any gates not readily available.

You can also use a metal coat hanger for the larger metal guide rails (IE used for the lanes feeding back to the flippers on older pins for example) - they look slightly different and aren't chromed, but for hidden areas where the rail has broken, they're perfect, and better than nothing!
 
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