Symptom: It would shoot two balls into the shooter lane.

At first look, the playfield switch in front of the plunger was badly bent and not reliably sensing a ball.  I assumed this is why it was loading the shooter lane with two balls.  As I tried to straighten out the switch wire, it broke.  I repaired the switch with some piano wire (I guess it’s steel wire) that I obtained from McGuckin’s Hardware store, and epoxied the wire on to the switch lever.

As I investigated further, I discovered the reason the switch wire was bent was because the one-half of the fork was broken off the auto launch kicker (500-6091-00).  When ever the auto launch mechanism shot the ball, it would jam the ball sideways.

Broken Auto-Launch Kicker

I found the broken piece down in the bottom of the cabinet. The owner took it to a nearby muffler shop and they welded it back together.  With the switch replaced, and the arm welded back on, I fired up the machine to find it still deposited two balls into the shooter lane.  The playfield switch was functioning correctly.  After another 15 minutes, I realized there were 6 balls loaded into the machine, when there should only be 5 balls.  It never is what you think.   The other stuff needed repairing even though it wasn’t the original problem.

Replaced many bulbs.

Location: Superior, Colorado