Balls under cushion!!!

[Kingram]

This is in reference to Pin Monkey's 70' cushion.
When the resin reactive balls came out, we started having balls under cushion on all 40 of our (30's) machines. It didn't occur on strikes, just spare shooting. The ball would come under the cushion like an egg shooting out a chickens @ss. We changed bounce plates, jacked up the rear of B.P., changed brackets, vibration dampners, cushions until we nearly went nuts. Nothing worked, as they kept comming under. Finally we lowered the cushion. First, we made this shock to move the bottom of the cushion about 1 @ 1/2" forward.



Next we reversed the blocks in the boxes to lower the cushion. This box would go on the B.D.S of a L.H. (even number) machine; O.B.D.S in an odd machine.



This stopped our problem but the weight of the cushion soon wore the small bit of rubber at the bottom of the box. The box edge started to cut through the weldment shaft an inch from the end. So we drilled a 3/8" hole in the bottom of the box and block and inserted a front roller bolt with locknut to support the weight. This bolt also wore the weldment but not as bad as the other.





If your truck blue book price rises or falls in porpotion to the amount of gas in tank, you could be a red neck. LOL

[Kat]

Re: Balls under cushion!!!

Another thing you could do is shim the cusion plank forward by adding shims between the plank and the tube weldment.

[Kingram]

Re: Balls under cushion!!!

Kat,
We had the 1" spacer on the B.D.S of the cushion.

[Dutch]

Re: Balls under cushion!!!

I've flipped the upper shock bracket (000-029-624) over if I needed to move the cushion forward. It's much easier than shimming the plank but can cause false cycles on some machines.

[*70*PinMonkey]

Re: Balls under cushion!!!

Good ideas guys. Id like the cushion to extend a little lower and still be rigid, while just barely letting pins go under. Adding a shock on the other side might help too. I dont think the designers of the '70 knew that one day, people would shoot at ten pins at 25 mph, miss, and hit the pinwheel. I like the way the rake and cushion on a Brunswick lower and raise each other. Good concept. Horrible, ugly shaker board though. Im still working on patenting a tractor beam to stall a ball's flight nanoseconds before impacting the cushion, where i will then destroy it and replicate it again up front. On a related note, seriously, how much ass does Conan the Barbarian kick? Lots. Lots.

[cobow]

Re: Balls under cushion!!!

to move my cushions foward, i welded a plate on the rear of the cushion block, and then drilled all three mounting holes 1" back.

cobow [img]/content/btubb/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif[/img]

[Clutch Plate]

Re: Balls under cushion!!!

I use AMF cushion weldments and the original setup on cushion (ie wood plank, foam, rubber, facing and urethane rivets) I also have OEM style bounce plates and have never had a ball come under cushion.

[AMFDOCTOR]

Re: Balls under cushion!!!

One of the things that I do to move the cushion forward is to take the cushion box and rework it. What I do is to relocate the top and bottom screw holes 1" back from the original ones. I then mount the box without the cushion to the kickback, using the nuts that are in the kickback. Once mounted I then drill another hole in the kickback for the rear screw. You'll have to reach over the top of the kickback to hold on to the nut when you tighten the entire thing up. I also use two spacers made out of a piece of old bounce plate between the weldment and the board. For the most part it works fine, but lately on several lanes I've been getting a pin in the door and the ball is behind it against the cushion. Both the regular LBS and LBC cannot push the pin around the ball. This call is getting to be a real pain. Everything in the pit is tight and solid. Rudder speed has no effect on it because it happens on both regular and slow drives. One other note is that all of my carpets are running 8800 gold puleys (faster). One of the machines that is doing this has a squeeky carpet and I'm going to pull it tomorrow and see if that may do it. Most of the carpets that are in the machines are the JCP Longwood ones about 3yrs old. One other little thing, I have what looks like an old green Gates original carpet. It's been in there since I started here some 6yrs, and who knows how long befoe that.

AMF DOCTOR
The doctor makes house calls.

[Clutch Plate]

Re: Balls under cushion!!!

Also remember even if you are running OEM style bounce plates it is recomended to still install angle iron on rear bounce plate.

Also, make sure the angles(000-022-878)are not bent down or broken.

[Kingram]

Re: Balls under cushion!!!

RESIN REACTIVE balls were the key words in this post. No other balls; plastic, urethane or the old rubber balls were going under the cushion. As we learned in later years, after installing our 90's, the 30 has a little over an inch wider space between the bottom of the cushion and carpet than the 90.

Dropping our cushions was the only solution we had. Later, as we had weldments to break or had to rebuild our cushions, we reversed this fix and went back to the normal install with no problems.

My reasoning is that the first RR balls (trash; which is constantly blowing around on our city streets) has now turned into (garbage; which is daily being collected and taken to the dump) so we don't constantly have to view our shortcomings for buying into this new age technology(?).