Hi All,

I just finally got my Fish Tales from Italy and it's playing great overall. There are a few inconsistencies that I'm running into that I don't believe should be a big problem to fix (needs new rubbers, small bracket on left flipper is broken, balls are coming out of the reel inconsistently after lock sometimes popping a second ball into play when multiball is not activated), but this particular thread is about a weird issue at the beginning of each ball.

I notice that almost all of the time, before the ball loads into the shooter lane, the plunger is firing. Sometimes this happens again after the ball is loaded, which starts the ball in play immediately (not during autocast after a ball save). Why would starting a new ball produce this behavior? The mechanical issues I am facing are things that I know where to start looking, but I don't know where to start with this issue. Any ideas?

Thanks!

So I looked briefly last night after work, but didn't find anything wrong with the switch. From what I can tell, it's firing properly without issue. Maybe I'm doing this test incorrectly, but everything seemed right for me.

What exactly should I be looking for here? There is no battery damage on the board, and even if the switch did activate randomly at the beginning of a new ball, it shouldn't fire until I've hit the caster button, which is also working just fine. I apologize for my ignorance, but I'm not seeing what may cause the plunger to fire even if that shooter lane switch was making contact early.

Side note: while I was doing this, I DID happen across a broken tip to the EOS switch on my left flipper, which means that the flipper mech was not making contact. Glad that I caught that before it caused any real issues.

Gotcha. I will give that a shot tonight. Thanks for the insight!

I'll check into that Farmboss, thanks! The only issue with that theory is that most of the time, it fires the plunger, then ejects the ball into the shooter lane at which time it waits for you to push the plunger button. It only occasionally fires a second time (after the ball is in the shooter lane). If there is an autoplunge option, I'd think that it would recognize that the ball is still in the shooter lane after it ejects and plunge again, but this may be an option to persue.

Right, that I am aware of. In this case, though, it doesn't give the ball save animation or say "Don't move". It just plunges, ejects the ball, then occasionally plunges again after the ball is in the shooter lane. It also keeps the ball save on until after you've plunged the ball and it is in play, so it doesn't seem to think that there is a drain as though a ball was already in play.

I will update this thread when I get home and can look at it in a bit more depth.