Baywatch: All together now!

I want to start this post out by reviewing some of the things I am not strong enough for in pinball:
lifting a 4-player EM head on to a machine.
Lifting most heads on to a machine without the crushing fear of it being one hiccup away from smashing.
Putting the small rubbers on those damn Sega posts. Owie my fingers.
Loosening that ONE. DAMN. BOLT. (note: using rubberized gardening gloves did the trick)
Putting cold superbands on to flipper bats!
Removing a non-EM playfield from a machine.
Being the person on the bottom in getting a machine chasis up my stairs.

So many more scenarios to discover!
A million thanks to all of those who have lent their muscle over the last 2 years.

All that said, take a look!

Ahhh all working!

OK a few pitafalls:

I thought I had mucked up this part.  

Testing the game, the ball was flying off in a weird way.  Turns out the bottom screw wasn't fastening the ramp right enough.

Then, turns out the T-Nut in the playfield had raised!

After much fussing, the isuse was that I had not tightened the upper  (right) bolt properly, and that there was too much pressure being applied to the lower (left) nut, and that was drawing the t-nut from the PF.

All fixed!

The guard tower needs to get tweaked as well.   I have to set it slightly lower so that the playfield glass doesn't rub against it at all.

In initial tests the ball was not behaving well on launch.  At the post in the center, the ball had not been clasping the ramp in to the highest position, meaning the ball would slam down in to the posts.

In the photo it is fixed in to the uppermost position.

Having everything fixed makes a huge difference!  The top gate now opens perfectly.  I did not replace the coil, just cleaned the caked on soot.  Guess that was all that was needed, because it now works perfectly.

The gate on the right also works great, meaning the 3 different skill shots are now GO and shots 2 and 3 are super challenging!

The new functionality also adds a lot to the game.  The above shot means that on some Tidal Wave shots, the right gate opens then sends the ball back over the orbit right-to-left, instead of just returning it to the right flipper.

This light orbit rollover will open the upper gate, meaning a full and proper orbit shot can occur!

I have yet to explore the game in depth, but with those 2 gates properly working, the game has become even better!

Now, just a moment while we bask in the beauty of proper GI:

oh and let's just take a before and after example:

ick

cleaned and reinstalled!