Rudy's jaw motor keeps running briefly after jaw is closed

This one isn't really a problem, but it could be. When Rudy's jaw closes, the motor keeps running for a few seconds, making a grinding noise. On a normal Funhouse, there's a stop on the jaw gear sector that keeps the motor from turning any further, when the jaw is fully open or fully closed. One of those stops is broken off, so the drive gear runs off the end of the teeth on the gear sector, and rattles on the last tooth as the jaw springs try to keep things engaged. The possible problem is that if the drive gear doesn't catch the first tooth when the jaw tries to open, it might not open.

Here's the motor/gear/sector assembly. To get this on your workbench, you have to unbolt this assembly from the playfield, and then unhook the jaw link from the gear sector. There's a key on the sector (lower right corner of this photo) that has to line up with a keyway hole in the jaw link, and then the two slip apart. Remove three screws that hold the side plate on, and everything slides off.

New parts are great! The part probably could have been glued together, maybe reinforced with a bit of brass rod after drilling holes in each plastic part, but for $2.60 I just bought a new gear sector and popped it on. As long as things were apart, I wiped down all the pieces to get the flipper dust off. Turns out flipper dust is magnetic, so there was a neat pattern in the dust on the outside shell of the motor. As always, don't oil these parts (or any pinball parts!) because the oil will collect any floating dust, and turn into a sticky abrasive mess that'll wear things out quickly.

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