Okay. I did previously disconnect the 2 pin molex inbetween the board and the motor and did not get voltage if I recall correctly. I'll try that again tonight and make sure. Thanks for your correction.

Just to confirm, however, you do agree that I am getting power TO the board, yes?

yes, it appears that you are getting the 12v (although it is a little high), but yes.

when you are testing the voltage going to the motor make sure you use the wires coming from pins 1 and 2 (do not use the cabinet ground). also, make sure you are in the device test for the motor and it is running.

Will check tonight after work. Man, I would LOVE to get this diagnosed. My hope is bad board which would be an easy fix.

Here is me hooked up to the 2 pin power connector coming from the board after I plugged the board back up. Tried both in coil test mode and in ship test. Looks like no power (multimeter reading same as with leads in air essentially).

So, am I correct in thinking I need a new motor relay board?

E0C5C910-DD59-43CD-82BF-D25402AF2B0F (resized).jpeg

Yes.

Should the Black Pearl home position be level, or should it tilt to the left like mine does? Mine only tilts right at the very end of its movement.

EDIT: I watched some videos and it looks like that's normal. I'll have to adjust my ramp though, because my ball keeps getting stuck under the left flipper.

Yes, the next step I would take is to contact the distributor your purchased the game from and have them order a new board or contact jjp yourself and order a replacement board.

Thank you!

Does anyone else have an issue with the inserts not being lighted up after startup? Usually I can restart and they will be fine. Sometimes I’ll raise the pf and ensure all blue Ethernet (or whatever kind) cables attaching the led boards are snug. The length of one of the cables is about an inch shorter than it should be. Getting annoying, and I’m sure the extra unnecessary power cycles aren’t good for longevity. Apologies if this issue has been previously addressed.

Check the micro usb cable that goes from the computer to the bag board (if the playfield is up in the air, the board will be towards the bottom of the playfield). this is the connection that controls the lighting. from there it will split to the various boards via the ethernet cable.

Is it getting stuck between the ramp and the playfield - like the gap is too big?

Exactly. I'm guessing I need to adjust the pearl?

Yeah sounds like the pearl needs to shift down towards the ramp. Some people use a spacer between the pearl and the hex nut holding it on in the back. I actually found my pearl mounting pins to be bent. I bent them back straight and that solved it for me - no spacer. Particularly the pin bracket mounted to the backboard of the playfield for me was bent upwards causing my pearl not to be able to shift all the way forward.

There's a screw below the spot light just to the right of the Pearl that when tightened should lower the ramp down towards the right. That should result in the ball not getting stuck in that spot.

Dang. Motor relay board out of stock. I put up a wanted ad. I’m willing to pay $40 shipped if someone has an extra.

Usually just $18 at JJP. The board is used on other JJP pins and will be in stock at some point. I just don’t want to wait for who knows how long.

Did you ask if you could send your board in for repair?

While not a huge offer, if you were interested in shipping me the board I could put it in my machine to verify it is 100% the issue or not. If you got it shipped on Monday my guess is I could confirm it by Wednesday and have it back next day. Not sure I can fix it but I could certainly test it for you. Just let me know if your interested.

I really would like to see a mod that converts the spinning disc assembly into a direct drive, rather than that noisy gear that is prone to break. I have the silencer kit on mine, but it still isn’t that quiet and the gear already broke once. Why didn’t they just mount a vertical motor with the disc on top in the first place? No gear, no noise, less to break.

I would love to see someone make a belt drive conversion for the spinning disc. It would be super quiet then!

Anyone figure out how to quiet down the CE topper yet? That thing is way louder than the spinning disk!

Turn the speed down is about it.

LTG : )

Yeah its the motor and not clanking of any mechs. It resonates through the head as well like a big speaker box so to speak. Seems like there is a decent amount of resistance from the mechanisms the motor is driving. I should see if everything is lined up properly.

I've got the speed as low as I'm comfortable with that doesn't strain the motor. Made a bit of a different but not much.

I set the motor speed to zero to quiet it down. Someone said removing the spring in the mech helps a lot with noise, if you want to try that.

I was thinking of belt drive. It's on my list to take a look at, I am also annoyed by the sound even with the dampening kit. It made a difference but it's still an annoying sound.

On another note, I came here to post that my game just rebooted. Anyone else have that happen? It was sitting in attract mode (been on for a day or so) and I heard an electrical noise through the speakers (sort of a little pop or what you hear when you reboot a computer). All of the playfield light were stuck on a yellow color and the screen went black. Then it came back on and went through the boot sequence. Weird.

I had a reboot last week during a game. Screen and playfield went black/lights out and the pin booted after a while. No idea what caused that.

Keep an eye on it. I had this with increasing consistency until the game was unplayable. In my case it was the PC ATX power supply and replacing it fixed it 100%.

Good question. I did not think of that. I'll call Jim at JJP and ask.

That is a great idea also. I'll contact JJP first and find out if they will fix/verify. If they will not, I'll PM you and get your shipping info.

Thank you VERY much for the offer!

I had no idea about that, lol. Sounds about right, nothing seemed off about the reboot, didn't look like a typical PC crash and no errors came up. I'll keep an eye out but the description you gave made sense (I don't usually leave games on more than 1/2 a day so this was odd for me).

BTW if it was a maintainance reboot you’ll see it in the event logs.

AH ... never even looked at those. Ok!

HAH... reminds me of (NSFW language)

This was a first for me. Started a chapter during multiball and a second ball got perfectly jammed between the post and a target. I had to take the glass off to get it out.

7A5E33EE-BBE1-48F8-985A-B01DCF9C5DB0 (resized).jpeg

This could also be a power fluctuation from your home energy supplier. We have a pretty sorry power grid where we live, so years ago I installed a "line conditioner" for my pinballs. Steady, flat, power.

Ok, need y’all’s opinion.

Looks like the ball is being pushed a bit left on launch. I can’t tell for sure from the video, but is the ball resting partly on the tip of the plunger instead of only resting on the auto launch forks? It should be resting only on the forks so they give it a straight push at launch. Mine was resting a bit on the plunger and I added a couple washers to back the plunger off a bit. That way the ball wasn’t favoring one side of the forks as it rested.

If your ball is resting only on the forks then maybe slightly bend the forks a bit to get a straight push?

Looks similar to my video posted 10 months ago... root cause identified.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/jjpirates-of-the-caribbean-troubleshooting-tips-issues/page/21#post-4991721

I noticed that as well but thought the ball rested on the plunger. I will check this out first. Since watching MarZ_78 video I can clearly see that his ball is resting on the forks. Thanks for the help and will report back soon!

I'm fairly sure it was the maintenance reboot but I'll keep an eye out.

So is there a definitive solution to the screws coming out of the fork mechanism and losing the little sliders and spacers? I definitely have that problem and am wondering if loctite is the answer or if something else needs to happen. I searched but only got fragments.

Thanks in advance.