Sure - Pik Ball Stops

[8270king]

The ball stops that keep the balls from spinning on the belt keep breaking. The flex pint on all newer stops are very flimsy.

Will someone make a decent ball stop?

Jerry

[TheLegend]

Re: Sure - Pik Ball Stops

Originally posted by 82/70 king:
The ball stops that keep the balls from spinning on the belt keep breaking. The flex pint on all newer stops are very flimsy.

Will someone make a decent ball stop?

Jerry

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Never did like those things. Someone did put out a soft urethane version that was a little better than AMFs for breakage but I can't remember who made them.

[TheGMan143]

Re: Sure - Pik Ball Stops

King... we had the same problem with them... the little 'kink' where it's supposed to flex breaks on in a very short time.

We took a couple of them and 'modified' them... so far, none of the modded ones have broken in over 2 years.

We picked up some small chromed cabinet hinges from Lowe's (they were just a c-hair wider than the ball stop), drilled holes into the plastic stop, and riveted (or screwed) the hinge to it. we redrilled the holes on the other tab of the hinge to match the bolts on the top of the leather, and bolted 'em in. The hinge works just as good, and won't break from flexing.

If I ever get a breather from the day job, I'll get down there and get a pic of some of this stuff.

I wish someone would come out with a stop that has a metal tab in it's core, attached to a hinge like that... they'd last about forever.

[8270king]

Re: Sure - Pik Ball Stops

Great idea G...

JK

[TheLegend]

Re: Sure - Pik Ball Stops

I thought about doing something similar, except taking an old SurePik leather strap and cutting out strips to fit over the top. Since those leather belts would never break. [img]/content/btubb/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif[/img]

[TheGMan143]

Re: Sure - Pik Ball Stops

It works... we actually did that before using the hinges. We were playing around with different ways of attaching the 'broken' stops back on to the machine. We cut strips of pit carpet as wide as the ball stop, riveted it on, and then poked holes in it for the bolts.

We found that pit carpet strips could flex side to side a bit... it would fold up on itself and the rivets would pull through it if it was hit hard with a ball rolling back against it. Probably a small washer and a deeper rivet would solve that problem... but the hinges seemed to be a more 'permanent' solution, so we went with them.