That is exactly what my sails did that had an intermittent connection inside the wire for the sail solenoid. I also agree with Peter and pinworthy that your ship is not moving correctly. The back and forth movement should be more fluid and it seems to be missing some up and down movement as it rocks. Pull the mechanism and clean, lubricate the pivot points and check the track that the ship slides along. Replacement parts for the wear items in the ship is available at Pinball Life and Marcos.

Anyone need a key chain? I've got 4 - $7.50 each shipped.

Scott

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Stomach drop... this was what I was afraid of. I don't mind the taking apart and rebuilding as I'm going to be doing a full tear down, clean, and wax, but the idea that the ship isn't operating correctly and needs to be rebuilt with new parts hits me in the gut as the motor alone costs approx. $200. Does it appear to be a high cost problem or maybe just a clean and wire check/solder from your experience?

Also, does anyone have a video of how the ship should move? And, since it may have been taken apart before, and put back together, does anyone have any pics of when they did a tear down that they could put on a CD and send to me (mainly of the ship, but if you have the whole game, that'd be even better)? I'd gladly paypal shipping.

This is what the ship is supposed to do.

The ship is really pretty easy to remove. Make sure the sails are folded down and the ship is sunk, and the ship comes right out the bottom. You can manually turn the clutch to sink it if you need to. Make sure you get the speaker wire looking opto wires out of your way before you try to remove the ship. Unplug them from the board and get them out of the way.

I should have been more clear. The nylon ship track might be worn and could be replaced or worst case maybe the linkages are shot but I doubt it. I don't think you need much in the way of parts, it could be a simple tear down, clean and reassemble (what I meant by "rebuild"). I also doubt the motor is an issue.
The small solenoid for the sails comes with the wiring if you prefer not to try to solder it. On mine I had to fix the both sets of wires on the ship, the small sail latch solenoid both wires were barely making contact and one of the sail solenoid wires broke while I was working on the other wires ...there is a sharp turn in the harness and the clamp puts pressure on the harness.

Don't think it is the motor as yours is working, just not all the way or in the way it should work.
Shop motor and ship itself is easy to take out. Just unscrew the sails and the hull, get the whole motor and mechanism out. I would check that first, you will see where it is getting stuck. Don't fear the repair, just start it and get on, you will be amazed what you can do yourself. Just put all screws neatly together, and remember where to put them, if you are not sure, take a lot of pictures in the process. Good luck.

Just some raw material...not sure exactly what I'll do with it yet.

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BTW, the rum barrels are D&D miniatures from the "Rusty Dragon Inn" collection. They're perfect, only about an inch tall. I paid about $7 each for mine. Search "rusty dragon inn barrel" on eBay; there are several up right now.

Has anyone used a rotisserie with their POTC? I've got my playfield out (going to tear down, clean, repair, etc.) and with all the equipment in the back such as the spinner and vuk, I'm not sure how to attach it. Any help is appreciated.

Finally got it on there, required the removal of the spinner, main ramps, etc. Not too big of a deal.

Checking to to say hi and add myself to the club. I picked up a POTC last weekend. A friend put the POTC bug in my ear as it was off my radar, noting the theme, toys, nice art and different play from my other pins. I did some reading and video watching and liked what I saw. When I had a chance to pick up a POTC within driving distance of me I went for it.

I'm in the honeymoon period still but I am super impressed with this pin. I'd say it is notably underrated and flying under the radar. I found it much much better than I was expecting. The tortuga wheel looks weak on videos, but is tons of fun in actual game play. The ship has been described by many as one of the top two pf toys in pinball; I agree . It reminds me of LOTR in game play: slower, longer, more of a story telling approach, lots of unique features and sound effects. On top of that I find it has lots of shots, a nicely loaded pf with lots of toys and nice art, great toys too, impressive code depth, easy for beginners and satisfying for advanced players, a theme with wide appeal and quite well integrated. My POTC has a lot of LED upgrades and this makes even better imo, a big difference. Bright, clean, colorful. It looks like current machines and that it rolled off the current production floor. I have really enjoyed the newer production pins for code depth and POTC slots in here very well. All the multiball options including a 4 ball multiball is fun. It is also different from the other pins in my collections in that it has a reasonably achievable ball save feature that includes outlane losses. Other nice features include the powder coated cab rails, flipper button guards, etc. The game play really diversifies my collection and I highly recommend a diversity of game play in pin collections.

Great game and great fun. I look forward to reading more in this club thread.

Cool.

I also foresee interest in this title increasing with another POTC movie coming out next year.

Interesting factoids. POTC is one of the top ten grossing movie franchises ever. Impressive. It slots in close to Bond, but with only 4 movies compared to >25 movies, for example. POTC has two films over $1 billion which is particularly impressive. There is definite huge cultural appeal. Even the Disney world ride ties in nicely.

I got the super skill shot a few days ago, totally by accident. At 10M it's definitely worth going for if ball save is on.
I promise to do one of my MindMaps for this game over spring break.

I loved that ride as a kid, tied for favorite with Peter Pan (love the cities getting smaller and smaller as you "fly"). I'm not ashamed to admit I'd like to ride it again, kids or not.

I just pulled it off a moment ago by accident. Never knew it was there. Ball two is waiting to be plunged so i could look up the rules.

I've yet to see a legitimate super duper skill shot (through the left treasure orbit then across the playfield and through the right treasure orbit), in real life or on video.

Edit: Double post.

Total fluke when it happened to me, and I doubt I'll ever repeat it. In my case I flipped both times - and making the right side turnaround was 100% luck. I'm about 1 in 10 on the normal skill shot.

Now I have a mission in life - repeat that shot with video running.

Well the super duper shot happened to me twice since I own the machine. First time I was scared about the noise it made, thought something was wrong, later to realize that was the shot.

Has anyone changed out flipper coils or anything to make their flippers stronger? My right flipper seems a little weak AMD the tortuga shot regular doesn't make it. Or do I just suck and it had to be a clean shot?

Nope, mine is ok, although sometimes when you just not hit it correct, you just do not make the shot but that is the charm of it. Thing is that that will almost always end in a SdtM drain. So there is a risk with the shot. A clean shot always makes it there, some for the jack the money shot. If you do not hit that correct, it lies still on top, small bump to get it going.

Check your EOS switch on your flipper assembly. When I first bought my Baywatch, I had a weak flipper as well (it uses the same coil as POTC). Everything "looked" fine so I thought it was a bad coil. I kept playing it, but got frustrated and I adjusted it anyways to make sure it was perfect. Made them very strong. I've since rebuilt the entire machine, including the flipper assembly, and now it feels like brand new. Coils very rarely get "old" and go bad. They are wire windings. And if they do, it's because of something like an EOS switch or transistor burning them up, so they usually aren't the problem in the first place. All that said to essentially say, check your EOS switch.

Right. Adjust your normally-closed EOS switch so it opens at the *very end* of the flipper travel. If it opens too early, you lose power.

My friend sent me that pinball news link. Lots of info there. Pages and pages describing coding and shots which showed me how deep the game was. Thx for the info on the super skill shot. I'll look it up.

It was my favorite ride when I took my kids . They loved it too.

A flipper rebuild kit is not very expensive and has all the parts you need to make your flippers like new. Only takes about an hour to rebuild flippers once you've done it a few times.

I was surprised to learn that you don't actually get the Jack the Monkey insert lit unless you start the mode AND hit him again in that incredibly short timeout - something like 10 seconds? Is there any way to change this in the settings? Or is this why everyone hates the monkey?

It has always been one of the easiest shots of the game for me.....it must be in a muscle memory spot from another game

Agreed I use Jack to get the ball from left to right flipper. But during the hurry up it gets hard like any hurry up pressure.

Tortuga shot is hard and must be clean. I have once in a blue moon backhanded it but really rare. And a missed shot does not usually go SDTM for me.

Its kind of funny that people consider POTC a sleeper. It was not liked at first but soon after became a bit hit and held its value. But I guess people who own them love them and keep them. So when they are not changing hands they go off radar. I consider it my second favorite Stern only to LOTR.

So strange that it's the exact opposite for me...I can hit Tortuga pretty reliably, but I get rejects from Jack all the time. I need to take a closer look at it.

I don't see anything in the manual to change that setting. For me it is like the Warp Ramp on ST ... I'm either "on" and hit it every time I want or I'm "off" and I can't hit two times in a row to save my life.

I wasn't active in the hobby when POTC was released so my observations are only from the last 1.5 years. I'm no fan of the top 100 ratings here and seeing POTC only one place different from fish tales solidifies that. I find POTC to be waaay better than fish tales. Not that fish tales is bad, I even own a fish tales too and like it. I also find POTC isn't discussed much on the forum which keeps it under the radar; a lot less posts in this club thread than many other machine club threads. No shared alternate sound code files either, unlike many other pins. Hopefully that will change.

As for shots, I find POTC fairly straight forward, which I really like. My TWDLE has made me a much better pinball player and it comes through in all my game play. Still, there are on days and off days.

DAMN, I just got the super-duper skillshot again, and no camera rolling.

Joined the club last weekend when I traded mbob for my TSPP. I was afraid it wasn't going to be deep enough after simpsons but I'm loving it so far! Had a killer game and got to the four winds and then my game tilted when my manual slid off the coinbox! ARRRRRGGHHHH!20160312_094926_(resized).jpg

So much more to do than Fish Tales.

I'm not a big fan for TWD. Love the show and we had a pro at The Sanctum for a while. Magnets releasing balls SDTM are a pain. But also the shots that put the ball into the pops to dribble out SDTM just sucked the fun out. While pirates has multiple paths to return ball from upper playfield alone. Being able to short-plunge the ball to feed the right flipper is key. Just fun.

I've never seen it even close. Does it go across from one flip? If it didn't is there time to shoot the right treasure and collect?

You've had it for a week and getting to 4-Winds? I've bought it from a friend who bought it new. His son didn't like it so he gave me a great deal with something like 76 plays on it. So what, close to 10 years now? And I think my GC is 285M. Glad I don't play against you in my league.

That was my 5th game after I set her up. I figured I was on easy setting, I checked the adjustments and I was on 3 ball setting with 5 extra ball limit. I see in the installs menu you can install game difficulty but where do I verify the difficulty already set? All the feature adjustment are factory set which is medium difficulty.

Under the portal Adjustments -> Game there should be many setting with Easy-Medium-Hard settings.

The big one is the outlane posts. I think the Left has 2 positions and the right 2. Make sure to open them up.

TWD seems to have a reputation outside of ownership for STDM drains (more so the pro); it's unfortunate because that is not the case when the machine is set up well. Route machines are often the reports of such behavior, though that is not surprising since they are much more susceptible to set-up shortcomings than huo. The TWD club thread addressed these issues a long time ago and there lots of tips and advice to address it. Though from time to time some new owners still come into the thread, vociferously post about the stdm issues, then get the advice and address it. I don't get any STDMs from the magnets (I can't remember the last one) and only rarely from the pops. Frankly, I need to relevel the machine, it has been forever and it needs to be nudged alot. If you get a chance to play a well setup huo TWD give it a try. Gameroomblog just called TWD the 2015 pinball machine of the year. http://gameroomblog.com/features/2015-pinball-machine-of-the-year

Murphy's law.

I'd be interested in how you find it compares to TSPP as you get into POTC deeper. I've read posts that find similarities between the two, TSPP has more exposure and gets some more polarizing comments from it being even deeper and even more of a stop and go type of play. What pitch are you set at. You could always pitch it to play faster if you are killing it. I'm doing quite well at POTC myself, but it is pitched to play slower and I'm pretty sure it is set to easy on variety of settings. I haven't adjusted anything since I picked it up from the PO, just playing and enjoying it. When I want more challenge I'll change it.

Been sick and busy, but still finding at least a bit of time every day to play POTC

OK,I just played a few games for the sole purpose of shooting the shot. I'm not very good and the couple of times I get the skill it did not reach across high enough. But after the skill ended I would also just practice the shot and sure enough one made it across.

Now that I have seen the shot possible on my game I am actually afraid I will start playing differently and be trying to make this happen. I usually don't go for the skill.

I'm not sure about the first time, but the second time it was 1 flip, across the playfield and into the top of the right side. I think it's very dependent on playfield angle.

Under the "game" portal all the feature adjustments are set to Med but my outlane posts can still be opened up. the left post is in the middle spot and the right post is in the closer of the 2. The playfield level bubble is touching the top line in the level.

So far I'm loving POTC. My 2 knocks on the Simpsons were the playfield layout and bart's callouts. The humor was good but in the heat of gamplay with everything running the callouts annoyed me. POTC layout is another fantastic job by Dennis. I'd have loved real actors voices but they did a pretty good job considering. With all the ways to score points on TSPP it felt overwhelming and scattered, POTC seems a more structured journey like LOTR. mbob upgraded the speaker kit and added the led ocd booard. When this game gets rocking what a light show!

Lots of talk about the shot. No proof.

POTC feels more like IM to me than LOTR (I have both). Huge scores rely on setting up stacks. No modes to slog through. Just lights those jackpots, get the timed lock ready, destroy a ship and start a Tortuga-Kraken jackpot fest with double or triple scoring. Shoot the chest to relight jackpots occasionally.