I've got a small bubble on the center of the spinner in the middle of the playfield, probably about the size of half of a dime. Doesn't seem to effect any shots, but with the glass off, I can definitely push on it and it depresses and pops back up. It's not even noticeable while playing, just when onlooking from the side angle (and just a little annoying as a proud owner!).

Should I pop it with a needle or exacto?

Edit: this is bigger than a half-dime. About the size of the center circle. See pic (not sure why it posts upside down from my phone).

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Sadly I think I can tell you what that is. Had a friends machine do this also. The center spinner disk is mounted with a threaded single screw. (see manual) Unfortunately, IF it unthreads from the continuous spin rotate then reverse there is No way to fix (correctly) without getting a new spinner decal from JJP. (available on website). What I did to Temporarily fix it was make a surgical slit in the shape of an "X" to peal back the center, tighten screw, then push decal back into position. You can get by with that for awhile but I would just order a replacement decal as they are cheap. And Put Loc-Tite on the screw this time!! Good luck.

Ordered, thank you!

Got this issue today again. It seems it always during multiball. It is the switch 72 inner loop entry. Problem is that this is not a stuck switch, but opto. Can an opto get stuck? If it is dirty and is registering due to dirt, it should happen all the time during gameplay and not during MB only. Any ideas how to solve this issue? New opto necessary?

Small correction: it is not only during MB, because I remember that before the MB I got tons of gold, which should be due to the opto, which seems to indicate to the pin that I made a lot of inner loop rounds, what did not actually happen.

Could just be the opto pair is not in alignment. This opto pair has to cover a fair distance. Could be the opto itself. Could be a loose connection at the board. Ck and re-seat this connection at the opto board.

I think to get a good look at the opto pair, one is under the ship, right next to the VUK. The other is under the ship ramp, near the pops.

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The opto switch is made of two parts. One part is the emitter that sends the beam of light across the playfield. The other is the receiver that detects the beam of light from the emitter. The switch is designed to always be receiving the light and then register when the pinball blocks the light for a very short time when the ball rolls across the beam. If an opto switch is continually registering, these are some common reasons for it:
1) The light beam is not aimed properly so the receiver isn't receiving it.
2) The receiver is broken.
3) The emitter is broken.
4) The board the opto is connected to is broken.

Try looking at the emitter first to see if the opto light beam is working. You can see if the emitter light is working by using the camera on your mobile phone. Your eyes can't detect the glow of the emitter, but the phone camera screen will show it. With the machine on, point the camera at the emitter and look at it through your phone screen. If the light is working you should see it glowing in the camera view on your phone. If you use the phone camera to first look at a different opto emitter that you know is working then you will see what the glow looks like and you will know what to look for on the orbit opto that isn't working.

Thank you very much for your comments. I will try to check to check the optos with the mobile phone. However, it,is strange that the optos work during gameplay and the issue appears after 20-30 minutes. So it seems that it is not a question of working or not, but what the reason for the sudden change is.

Optos cannot get stuck per say. They can however be dirty and register intermittently or possibly slightly misaligned. id say take a q-tip with some alcohol and clean both sides of opto and test.

Went to cut and peel back the sticker to review the screw but decided to poke it first with a really sharp dental tool right in the middle and the air came out and it’s totally flat now. I have another sticker set coming, but I think I fixed it. I’m assuming if the screw had backed out I would be able to feel a bump through the sticker when flat.

So action button just completely stopped working. Taking it off and the switch doesn't work, I'm very new to repairing pinballs, do I need to replace it?

Tests - Switches - Matrixed - does it work there ? Hear it click ? Next I'd check with a meter, if it works, then broken wire from switch to the I/O board.

LTG : )

My action button, and I think many others, gets jammed. I suspect it's because the switch is mounted to the chassis at an angle compared to the button, which puts sideways pressure on the button causing it to bind. I temporarily fixed this by bending the switch spring up to give more upward force. Might be worth checking out.

When you test them in switches - Matrix, it doesn't work there. So what's next?

It's also not the issue listed in the post below (I had that before but fixed it).

Use a multimeter to check continuity of the closed switch and the wiring itself? Maybe swap the switch with a known working one to eliminate one variable.

I'm sorry, I made a mistake. It's Tests - Switches - Dedicated.

LTG : )

I can’t seem to locate this screw with a crushed rubber washer. Would somebody be able to send a picture, as I’m having this problem and hopefully it’s easy to fix. Thanks!

Here's a post from LTG in the club forum that shows it:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/jjp-pirates-of-the-caribbean-official-owners-and-fan-club/page/23#post-4699036

Seems like you want to be careful to not overdo it and crack the ramp though.

Or snap the screw off in the post like I did

Ugh, that doesn't sound good. Hope it wasn't to difficult to fix.

I was a newb to working on pins back then. It wasn't a big deal, just had to replace the post with a new one.

Help please! Game has been working perfectly fine until I tried to turn it on this morning. Red lights and fan come on, but doesn’t boot up all the way. Tried the two fixes (using flat head screwdriver- short 6 & 8 pins with power on, then short CMOS pins with power off). No luck.

Initially, when booting it up, got an “error: invalid environment block” message. Then after trying the two fixes, just get an intermittent message of code. Any ideas?

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I'd do a full reinstall of the firmware.

Thanks so much, a full reinstall of the firmware worked. Appreciate it!!

Well that’s not good news, but thanks for the heads up.

Looks like the rubber grommet is already gone and it’s down as tight as possible. Wondering if my black pearl is too low?

Might not be on both pivot points under it.

LTG : )

I think there have been two possible stuck ball spots at the top of that ramp. One is when balls get stuck on the one way gate and won't roll off to the side to come down the wireform. The other is when a ball gets stuck in the small gap between the ramp and the ship. Which spot is your ball sticking in?

If I remember right I think the screw solution is for balls getting stuck on the one way gate to tilt the ramp a bit so they roll off the gate. I don't know if that will work for balls getting stuck in the gap between the ship and the ramp. Balls get stuck there on mine occasionally and I just use the flipper on the Pearl to back hand them down the ramp. I'm pretty sure I have the Pearl as far forward to the ramp as I can get it.

The latter, stuck in the gap. I can get it down with the flippers easily except with cotton given the limited movement of the black pearl.

Hoping someone may be able to help me with an issue I just encountered. I switched the game on for the first time in a few weeks and got an error - I think it was something along the lines of Black Pearl access ramp switch stuck open or similar. I didn't pay much attention, thinking I'd just play a quick game in the hope that it was just a switch I hadn't activated in a little while.

I started the game and everything was going fine until I started a few multiballs and stacked in arrr frenzy. Suddenly the machine went crazy, constantly awarding me arrr frenzy points as if I was ripping a spinner at speed - and it didn't stop for the whole of the mode. I went from around 150,000 to just over 24,500,000 in less than a minute. As I clearly couldn't attribute that to skill I drained the ball and entered the service menu to end the game so I didn't end up with an undeserved GC score, but when I went to look at the switch tests nothing unusual was showing up.

I restarted the machine hoping I'd get the original error back so I could investigate properly, but nothing showed up - when there's clearly a problem somewhere. I'm annoyed I didn't take a photo of the switch error, but I figured it would either clear or still remain after the game. Can anyone point me in the right direction here?

Someone had an issue awhile back and I recall one of the ways to go about diagnosing it was to view the switch history in the menu. That logs each shot, so you should be able to see which switch was registering when it shouldn't.

That was me. The hint to the switch history worked pretty well. When the error occurs, immediately drain the ball and view the switch history. You can identify the bad switch by the huge number it was hit. In my case it was an opto.

Thanks, really appreciate it. I'll try to recreate the issue and then check the switch history. I think the original error mentioned an opto too - I just wish I'd paid more attention. Did you end up replacing the opto or was it a faulty connection?

I de installed the opto, cleaned it and put it back again. Seemed to be some dirt, which caused the ongoing counting. No issue after that.

Sounds promising, thanks again!

Question for you guys: are you able to get your end of game Player pictures to come up with the decorations? I’ve double checked that the options are set correctly, but still no decorations on the pictures. Am I missing something?

I thought for a long time that something must be wrong. But they finally started showing up, probably on about a third of my high scores now. The first one that came up for me, I closed one eye and made a pirate face. Now does that actually have anything to do with it? I have no idea.

Well that’s weird!

They don't seem to pop up on mine very often.

Ok, I managed to work out what was going on last night thanks to EaglePin and @zora, and thought I’d post here just in case anyone else has a similar problem in the future.

I started a game and all was fine until I started a couple of multiballs together, at which point my score started increasing rapidly again. As suggested I quickly went into the service menu to have a look at the switch history, which made the problem pretty obvious:

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Out of curiosity I restarted the game which caused the error to return on startup:

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Checked the manual and worked out this was the opto pair at the top of the Black Pearl access ramp - had a look and the transmitter on the left had come away from the ramp and was hanging by its wires. Obvious from a side angle but invisible from the player position. Clicked it back in and everything is working perfectly again.

This right here is what makes the JJP service menu far and away better than anything else out there. Glad you got it figured out!

Congratulation. Happy to help. I am very thankful to the help I get from the forum here. I am not very skilled from a technical perspective, but like to share what I know. So enjoy the game again.

Thinking of taking off my map cliffy as it is causing too many rejects.

Is the 3M sticky stuff easy to get off? Or do I run the risk of taking up art work, considering the playfield is sh1t as the clearcoat on this playfield is so soft....

Or should I just put in a larger hole deflector?

Is your map deflector installed properly? It should be pushed as far back as possible, and the metal L bracket should be on top (not underneath) so there's not a lean. When I made these changes the map hole started sinking beautifully with Cliffy on two machines.

I have also 60% of the shots rejected at the map hole. Was thinking to remove it as well. But was thinking it could also be the metal on top.

It is already a hard shot for me. The loop is flowing amazing. Does your flipper hit the map easily? Maybe have a pic of the map hole with Cliffie?

After putting it all back together I had terrible map rejects, noticed the deflector was not adjusted properly so took black pearl out again and sat the deflector back more.

That made it better but around 50% are being rejected. I will cjeck the L bracket.

I am having an audio issue where there is an odd high pitch tone coming through the speakers. It's fine for the first 5-20 minutes after power on, and then the dreaded tone shows up. Quiet at first, but getting progressively louder, until it can be heard in the next room. It's the same at any volume setting, in attract mode or in gameplay. Only rebooting the game seems to make it go away for a bit. Disconnecting the audio jack in the backbox does too, but of course, no game sounds either doing that. There is a ground loop isolator installed, but bypassing it does nothing. I bought a higher grade isolator and that didn't fix the problem either. Any ideas?

Did you try unplugging the 3.5 jack at the front of the cabinet? As I recall some had issues that went away after unplugging that.