I put a game on location and it maybe only has a little under 2500 plays and the EOS on the right side are completely eaten away. the right flipper is "machine gunning" due to poor contact now.
is there something else I can do to extend the life of the EOS.
has anyone else done this before? I know adding a cap will help, but it will add to the voltage drop which will impede performance if I don't size it right.
You can certainly add a 2.2 uf @ 250 volt axial capacitor (same as the Williams ones) to the end of stroke switches on classic Bally/Stern machines. It will suppress the sparking and add tons of life to the switch. It does not affect the flipper strength at all. Wire it across (parallel) the switch terminals just like Williams did.
That will take care of your flipper assembly EOS switches. If you also want to save your flipper button (cabinet) switches from sparking you need capacitors installed on them too. However, you don't need the huge ones like EOS switches use. Use .1 uf @ 500 volt ceramic disc capacitors wired across the flipper button switches. This will extend the life of those switches considerably.
If your flipper is rat-tat-tatting (or as you said machine gunning), then you have a bad flipper coil. One of the fine wires of the "holding" section of coil is broken, either inside the coil or else at the coil terminals.
Quoted from KenLayton:You can certainly add a 2.2 uf @ 250 volt axial capacitor (same as the Williams ones) to the end of stroke switches on classic Bally/Stern machines. It will suppress the sparking and add tons of life to the switch. It does not affect the flipper strength at all. Wire it across (parallel) the switch terminals just like Williams did.
That will take care of your flipper assembly EOS switches. If you also want to save your flipper button (cabinet) switches from sparking you need capacitors installed on them too. However, you don't need the huge ones like EOS switches use. Use .1 uf @ 500 volt ceramic disc capacitors wired across the flipper button switches. This will extend the life of those switches considerably.
If your flipper is rat-tat-tatting (or as you said machine gunning), then you have a bad flipper coil. One of the fine wires of the "holding" section of coil is broken, either inside the coil or else at the coil terminals.
Thanks for the reply,
Vaguely remember it doing that when I rebuilt the flippers. Was a little while ago though, after I adjusted the EOS it stopped happening.... maybe it wasn't rat-tailing exactly, but had some odd behavior. I'm mainly used to working on games that are 90's and up so it's odd until you see it over and over again.
The switches were pretty bad looking, so I replaced those. Like you said that wasn't the issue, I wound up replacing the coil.
now it's no longer "rat tailing", but only using hold power.
the old coil tested out. Pretty sure I fried the power transistor and the diode(s) on the coil 
.
Getting tired of going back to my house to get parts, so I'm just gonna pull it temporarily, till I get it working again...
Had some sockets that needed to be replace anyway, and some small capacitors that need to be installed 
thanks again.
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Olympia, WA