pins idle at pinwheel?

[xaivior]

we have quite a few machines where the pins will idle at the piwheel (where the plows bolt on) is there any way to adjust this to make the gap smaller?

[TheGMan143]

Re: pins idle at pinwheel?

Pins rolling, idling, or stalling at the plows on a '70 is a fairly common occurrence... and some machines seem to have more of a problem with it than others do, Some of the usual causes include bent or cracked plows, a worn carpet (or possibly cracked bounceplate brackets, and sometimes just because they do (?). There's not much in the way of adjustment (by the book) to change the relation of the wheel/plows/carpet, but some 'mechs have come up with some pretty creative mods of their own...

There's been a lot of methods tried to push those 'rollers' into the wheel... and they've all met with limited success. Some will swear by them, others will swear at them, but here they are:

AMF carpets had 'bumps' molded into them to jog the pins enough that they would be pushed into the wheel.

Some mechanics cover their plows with neoprene (non-marking) rubber, pieces of low-pile commercial carpeting, or even cut-out pieces of old pit carpet in an attempt to make enough resistance on the pin where it would stop rolling and move toward the wheel (which also has the added benefit of quieting down pin impact against the plows, and may help to prevent them from cracking).

There were extended guide plates sold that supposedly got rid of the 'soft' area between the bounceplate and back roller, where (theoretically) the weight of the pin would indent the carpet slightly, causing it to roll there instead of moving toward the wheel.

I have also heard of mechanics modifying their plows by extending the mounting holes/brackets at the sideplates, and angling the mountings at the middle of the pit, which increases the angle of the plows in relation to the carpet, which is supposed to help funnel pins towad the wheel better.

Some worked better than others... and most of them may work in one house, but not in others. You may want to try one or two of them on one of your problem machines to see if it helps, but basically if you have 70's, it's something you may have to live with. You can reduce the ocurrence, but not really eliminate it.

[ModelTech]

Re: pins idle at pinwheel?

Gman,

You're "on it", as usual! [img]/content/btubb/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif[/img]

One thing, though. Ours are BRAND NEW, and sometimes DO have that problem. One solution is to put 21 pins in the machine (cuts the cycle time down). Seems there's always one "roller" in there at any given time in one of the machines. Not always, but it does happen.

I was going to post that question awhile back, but my "front roller" question was more important at the time...(thanks to Louie, Kat, and Pulse Tech! [img]/content/btubb/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif[/img] , I appreciate it!)

Doug

[TheGMan143]

Re: pins idle at pinwheel?

Originally posted by StucKInThePit:
One solution is to put 21 pins in the machine (cuts the cycle time down). Seems there's always one "roller" in there at any given time.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">One warning about that.. if that 21st pin makes it into the bin, you may wind up with a nice pinjam. If your bin as a high enough chute and enough clearance it's usually ok... on ours, if an extra pin gets in there, it usually either catch the distributor and stalls it, or it rolls off and falls through the bin on to the table.

[poplarpetey]

Re: pins idle at pinwheel?

If the pins are sitting between the rear roller and the apron and not falling into the pinwheel, then try replacing the rubbers in the bearing retainers for the rear roller. They may be worn causing the rear roller to be forward farther than it should which causes the pin to sit on the edge of the apron in the gap between it and the rear roller.

Pete

[ModelTech]

Re: pins idle at pinwheel?

Good one Pete! [img]/content/btubb/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif[/img]

That's one for the book! (furiously jotting down notes, for future reference)

And...

[img]/content/btubb/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/frown.gif[/img]

My front roller topic fell flat...(Man, that thud was LOUD)

Guess there's no answer to that...

Oh well!

Oh, and "G",

If there are 21 pins in the machine, the MOST you should ever have in the bin is 20. The 21st pin would be a single-pin spare, still on the deck.

If you have all 21 in the machine (The Via's have very tall pockets), then there's an empty lane, and I have found through experience, that bowlers don't like that very much :p !

How fast are your 8270's strike to rack? 8.5 seconds is what the AMF factory says, but ours are whole second faster! I wonder how they did that?

Doug

[Rep]

Re: pins idle at pinwheel?

I never really noticed, I should today. One side of the house has fast sweep and table gearboxes. And we got expanders thru the whole house. I bet those faster gearboxes give ya a quick strike cycle

[TheGMan143]

Re: pins idle at pinwheel?

That's why we can't use 21 pins... the 'empty lane' problem...

We run 'shadow' practice before each league... the machines are started with empty decks, placing all the pins in the bin. Hence, the 21'st pin won't work at our place. We really don't have much in the way of problems with rollers, so it's not that big of a deal.

[Coors]

Re: pins idle at pinwheel?

Originally posted by StucKInThePit:

How fast are your 8270's strike to rack? 8.5 seconds is what the AMF factory says, but ours are whole second faster! I wonder how they did that?

Doug

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">as soon as the chassis gets score info, it immediately will bypass the time delay and start sweep run through. the faster the pin read, the quicker the chassis will react.

when accuscore XL was installed at an old house, score read was like .5 seconds after sweep hit guard. only prob is late fallin pins/misscores. on the bumpers, kids ball would trigger cycle, sweep would drop, score would read, sweep would reverse up before ball hit the pins.

its cool to watch the sweep only sit for a split sec instead of the full 3 secs. but only we (mechanics) ever notice/appreciate.

[Rep]

Re: pins idle at pinwheel?

I saw a house in the area like that. Was definately sweet to see. Sometimes there it was like there was no delay at all, like the sweep didn't stop at guard. Just came down, strike light came on and it ran right thru. Where I work the time delay is always there even tho we have expanders. As for the 21 pins, we still use instructomat for practice too so it's a no no for us. We do run 21 pins during moonlight and every now and again we still get pin piles up front from the extra pin. Not too big a problem with idling pins for us so 20 in a machine is fine