Flippers are one of the most important part of any pinball machine – if the flippers aren’t strong and snappy, no one will enjoy playing the game. Over the years, Williams improved the design of the flippers. While I’m rebuilding them on this older design – relatively speaking of course,  Williams was making pinballs decades before Space Shuttle – I figured why not take advantage of those enhancements?

The first upgrade I did was swapping out the original series-wound coils for parallel-wound ones. This allows for the addition of a capacitor to the flipper circuit, which prevents sparking and keeps the EOS switch working better longer.

Secondly, I swapped out the flipper return springs for the newer external-style ones. These don’t bind up like the old-style ones and should be more reliable and durable.

Finally, I rotated the coils 180 degrees to keep the lugs away from the coil stop. Unfortunately the wires were too short on one of the flippers and I had to run a couple small extensions, but it was well worth it to keep the lugs away from the coil stop, which is subject to extreme vibration.

The end result is a combination of System 11 and WPC flipper technology on my System 9 game!