I will say I was reading this thread when I first got mmpm

I had many pop fires I did the wire separation as much as I could from mpu ps area and it did seem to quite down.

Later I rebuilt the flippers and while I had it all apart I was going to try the solder tabs away from the coil stop as I hear it is better. Well upon putting back together immediately all kinds of crazyness including game resets. I could not believe it. But as soon as I flipped the coil back and put much shorter EOS wires on. Problem gone. The extra few inches of wire made a huge difference.

Need to re read entire post if you have.issue as lots of things tried.

And lots of people that never had a problem at all.

I'd love to find one of these phantom firing games for restro, and put the whole harness/coils into the dishwasher.

Maybe cut all the zipties and just leave it loosely ziped so it does not get tangled in the washing wands?

Dishwashing detergent contains fine sand, so it really cleans up harnesses and circuit boards.

I guess we are really on a roll now, everyone will fix their machines. On your EOS, you can put a 2-3 microFarad cap, it helps quite a bit.

Thanks so much for the summary. This is easily the most important post in this thread!

I'd love to let you resto my game.

I just started my Xenon, wire wrap "un weaving". Taking the tilt ball out did help.... For one game. However, after separating the wires, especially in the back box, the phantom pops and drops have subsided. Maybe one now every 4 games, I can live with that. When you think about it, the closer to the MPU board the more pronounced the effect of EMI will be.

I am still going to keep going down the bundle. however I have to do gymnastics to get into that part.

So your post is STILL helping!

I don't even have an offending Bally pin in service (yet) and I really appreciated this thread! All I did was read post 1 of Mof's AS-2518 club thread and click the link to here... and wow, investigative work at its finest. It's a great read, very educational esp. the external links link those to ground bounce.

Thank you Pinwiz, BJM and others in this thread for your fine contributions. (Couldn't believe My Bally's comment about the tilt ball!)

You can bet when I do the playfield swap for my (newly acquired) Flash Gordon I will perform the backbox harness split, rewire flipper buttons and add caps to the EOS' and flipper buttons. Just good common sense.

The community shown here is what makes this hobby so wonderful.

I'm glad I found this post! I have a fireball classic with random pop bumper and sling shot firing I also have a silverball mania with random pops. I thought the same as everyone else at first switches need adjusting but that's not the issue. Does this mean that switch diodes are not part of the problem. I'll try separating the wires before worrying about switch diodes.

First pound on the playfield next to the pops and see if you can activate them.

Second, see if putting paper between the switches keeps it from happening

Third, replace the switch capacitors, that is the problem 98% of the time.

They are .01 cents each, so buy a bunch - every Bally needs some.

http://www.taydaelectronics.com/capacitors/ceramic-disc-capacitors/10-x-0-047uf-50v-ceramic-disc-capacitor-pkg-of-10.html

Only after you have exhausted all of the above should you start separating the wires.

Thank you, that's exactly what I needed!

I found that I already had the switch caps on hand so luckily I didn't have to buy them just for this. Switch caps didn't help, pounding the playfield doesn't trigger them, blocking the contacts doesn't help.
I separated the wiring for each connector from the main bundle and zip tied them individually so its not a tangled mess. After that the random pops and slings went down a lot. Its far from perfect but much better now. It was really bad before now its tolerable.
I also had 3 different mpu's in the machine while working on and testing other things and that made no difference. 2 Bally -35,s, 1 altek MPU.
Would it make any difference if I added caps to the EOS and cabinet switches or shielded wires for the flipper buttons? Its seems like all this is a YMMV situation overall.

Thinking about it, its one pop and one sling both on the right hand side of the machine that are the issue. but after the separation of the wiring the left flipper seems to trigger it more now than the right. I thinking the actualy playfield wiring may be an issue also. I don't know how motivated I am to re wire the playfield on this game.

I was having this problem on an Embryon.
vid1900 posted a video on bad diodes in the switch matrix. The video shows that the bad diode does not have to be in the pop bumper but any where in the square or rectangle of the matrix. If you need more clarification search for my thread. There was a bad diode on the "saucer" switch. Replacing this diode solved the Phantom pops. I did not read the whole post so if this was brought up before disregard.

I'm still going through re reading this whole post again. Lots of things covered all helpful.
I may as well replace switch diodes while I'm at it since there isn't a ton of switches on fireball classic.
Separating the wiring definitely made a big difference and was not as time consuming as replacing switch caps and diodes. I would estimate 50% better so its far from perfect.
It has switched from the right to the left flipper primarily now which seems odd but its still better.

can you please link your thread on this? sounds like good information.
-mog

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/embryon-switch-issue

I picked up an Embryon shortly after the Fireball Classic and it has a phantom pop maybe once per game. I can live with it as it is.

Fireball Classic is every couple flips either the right sling or the middle/right pop goes off sometime both seemingly at the same time. Its not always using the flipper buttons thats activating them. The ball will hit the pop then the sling goes on its own. The ball trough kicker also makes the pop bumper go off sometimes.
I also noticed today that occasionally I hear a rollover switch sound when either the pop or sling phantoms.

I'm slowly replacing all the switch caps and diodes so far its not helping aside from fixing the self test switch issues I had early on.
I took the solenoid diver board out of Embryon and put it in Fireball and it was exactly the same, no change.
So i have eliminated the MPU and solenoid driver board.

I'm trying to use logic to solve this but there are too many things going on.

Its driving me batty so I spent this morning separating the playfield wiring. Pulling the coil wires one by one and re grouping them. So far i've got the left side separate but not the right.
It looks like a mess right now, because it is, but i'm going to go back and tidy it all up later.
I played 2 games (10 balls) and the right sling did not ghost pop once that I noticed. It was popping so frequently that 2 games not popping is amazing.
However the middle pop bumper is still ghosting frequently maybe slightly less but hard to tell.
Still more work to be done but its looking slightly promising.

IMG_3542[1].JPG

IMG_3543[1].JPG

When you separated the lines, did you spray/blow/wash off all the coil stop dust?

I always just put the whole harness into the dishwasher, coils and all.

diswasher.jpg

I'm not THAT motivated to run the whole harness in the dishwasher. I can see the benefit. All I really did was cut all the ties and un thread the tangled mess of coil wiring one wire at a time. It surprises me to see HOW woven the wires are though out the playfield. I think I will take air compressor to it before I button it all up though. I'm wondering if there is any benefit to running the coils in the ultrasonic cleaner?

Do that outside the garage, and downwind from your garden.

If you blow the inserts out at the same time, be careful not to lose any in the grass - the air compressor will quickly identify any loose ones.

Probably not, but if you do, take the labels off first. The labels actually stay in place in the dishwasher, lol.

Its raining right now so I think ill blow things out another day...
I fixed up the wiring a bit more. Lot of wires got shortened and tidied a bit more. I'm going to see if I can get some standoffs like stern uses to keep the coil wiring raised.
Played a few more game. Big difference. Sling shot is not ghosting, if it is at all i'm not noticing it. Now the top AND middle pop bumper are ghosting but its way less frequent now.

I took the ball out of the tilt rack and that didn't help.
I actually separated the flipper button wiring in the cabinet like others have done and that made no difference.

Extra wire:
IMG_3544.JPG

Dishwasher detergent has sand particles in it, so it kind of scrubs and sandblasts everything.

Switch brackets that you **thought** were corroded, often come out like new.

Bally coil wrappers generally come out looking like brand new, but some of the aftermarket coil wrappers fade and have to be replaced.

The first rinse water that comes up into the garbage disposal looks like black oil from all that conductive coil stop dust.

Wow... what a crazy photo! Amazing this actually works though surely some things would need to be removed first? Especially if doing it on an EM w/stepper mechs and such.

I would not put a motor with bearings (like the disc spinner from Fireball), nor anything with gears covered in grease (because you don't want silicone grease infiltrating your dishwasher), or any closed "box" type switches.

But 99% of pinball stuff on the harness goes great in the dishwasher.

Coils, leaf switches, lamp sockets, connectors....all good.

I even put entire circuit boards in the dishwasher (after removing any relays or transformers that might fill with water).

It is a pleasure to work with spotlessly clean harnesses that don't turn your hands black, the color coded wires vibrant - and don't conduct any stray electricity possibly causing random firing.

I might try the dishwasher method, when the wife is not around though. So go ahead and use regular powder dishwasher soap. Do I use the dry cycle, or let it air dry for a while, I imagine the could take a while to really dry out.

I cut the old zip ties and put a few loose new ones so that the harness keeps its shape. I don't want the harness tight and holding dirt in the bundles.

I zip tie leaf switch stacks, so they don't come apart.

I remove paper inspection tags, closed switches, cube relays and any tape. I leave Bally coil wrappers.

Use powder soap, fill both dispenser cups. Run "FULL CYCLE" or on some machines the big clean is called "POTS AND PANS".

Make sure you know how long those big cycles run, you want to make sure you are done before the wife gets home. Check the little filter basket when you are done, if your wife finds any screws, you really will be done.

WOW great advice right there.
Here's my plan for my sorcerer harness:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/sorcerer-project#post-2608333
-mof

You won't even have to oven bake, the harness will come out dry from the dishwasher.

Did some more work on Fireball Classic today. Finally found the source of my phantom rollover switch. I followed the wires and found it is daisy chained to a standup target and found a capacitor that I missed when I was replacing them all. Replacing the cap on the standup target fixed the phantom rollover.
I'm learning a lot from the info in this post. Like the switch matrix video vid posted. And double check my work...
Still have phantom pops but it is at least tolerable now. I'll keep poking at it.

I rarely visit Pinside as I am based in the UK. But may I thank the guys on here for investigating this so thoroughly.

I have this phantom pop bumper issue on my Paragon. I get one pop bumper giving phantom firings. Always the same popper. No score is registered, no sound is produced. It seemed to happen every 30 seconds or so and is almost certainly triggered by the flippers. I think it may also be triggered by other solenoids firing on occasion too, but I can't be sure.

I also got phoney tilts that seemed to be triggered by solenoids firing ! Replacing the switch capacitor on the tilt bob helped reduce the frequency of the phoney tilts, but did not eliminate them

I then swapped out the original MPU and Solenoid boards and inserted new Altek units. This reduced the incidence of phoney pop bumper firings and eliminated the phoney tilts.

I then cleaned the flipper and eos switches with with very fine abrasive sheets and then isopropyl alcohol. This seemed to reduce the frequency of phoney pop bumper firings even further.

I will now work down the rather helpful summary of actions given by BJM-Maxx above !

The swap of my MPU board on my Xenon did the same thing. I am going put new diodes on all of my switches at some point as well. I really don't have the time to tear the entire game down and re-wire it. It is working so well on all fronts, except for the once in a while phantom pop..... On an unrelated note, I did just put a new high score up.... 2.4 Million is nothing to sneeze at....

Ok guys. Sorry to resurrect this thread again but check this out. I just discovered that I can get my pop bumper to fire just by touching the apron and lock down bar at the same time. Not just touching, but when I flex the apron - as if you were going to lift the playfield. Check this out.

What the hell is going on here?

Edit: and it only does it when the ball is in the outhole! And it's not the switch. If I close the switch without the ball, it doesn't do it. If the switch is open and the ball is in the hole, it does it.

Seems to me your outhole switch is missing the insulation paper between the upper switch leaf and the wireform.
When your ball enters the outhole it's shorting the outhole switch to the apron via the wireform, and then when you physically touch the apron to ground you're activating phantom switches on the same row of the switch matrix - one being the left pop bumper.

So.. for test, try putting a piece of paper between the outhole wireform and where it touches the outhole switch so that they're isolated.

Wow, you're good. I have all the insulators but the wire form was in between leaf/insulator.

IMAG1985 (resized).jpg

I took the pic before I found the problem, but you can see the gap between the leaf and insulator where the wire form was stuck.

Thanks BJM-Maxx ! I'm about to order some caps for my EOS, flipper buttons, bumpers and targets switches for my EBD.

You mention 2-3 µF caps to the EOS switches, I just want to make sure because I can't find them on Tayda: http://www.taydaelectronics.com/capacitors/ceramic-disc-capacitors/test-group-2.html

2 µF would be 2000nF or 2000000pF, is it correct ?

You are correct, Systeme Internationale prefixes are:

nano is (10E-9) so 1,000 nano = 1 micro (10E-6)
pico is (10E-12) so 1,000,000 pico = 1 micro

The caps I used are the same ones used on Williams System 11 machines. Large disc capacitors.

Ok thanks, I think I've found a 2.2uf 250VDC yellow axial capacitor from mouser:

http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Cornell-Dubilier-CDE/150225K250PF/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMukHu%252bjC5l7YYhWqnwLCm0AOK9YTbfEMYs%3d

We'll see how it goes

Digging up this old thread but my Mata Hari does this several times a game. It's annoying. Usually it's the right flipper that causes the left top bumper to randomly fire. It will score 100 points when this happens. Occasionally the right bumper will fire but that's rare. I was going to cut off the caps but I put them on there because of missed pop bumper scoring. It sounds like cutting them off won't help anyway. Game has all Alltek boards. May try the caps on the EOS switches. Those switches are new but they do spark quite a bit. Does polarity matter with the EOS caps mentioned above?

Cutting the .05 microFarad switch caps won't help unless they are ancient, and in that case it fixes other wired behaviour mostly. If the EOS caps are ceramics they have no polarity.

I've only owned the game about 4 or 5 months. There were no caps anywhere under the playfield when I got it. I added ceramic caps to the bumpers because they were missing points if they were hit too hard. I think they are .047 uf. I don't know if this caused my random fire issue. I doubt it but I didn't notice it before the caps were added. The game came with new EOS switches already installed but there are no caps on them. I never worried about this too much because I didn't think the random fires were actually scoring but now I see that it is scoring. It seems like it's getting worse.

The basis for the issue is mostly aging of the machine and is due to the incredibly poor electromagnetic compatibility design in the way Bally put machines together with signal lines alongside power lines. My post of things to do to fix the issue is missing the ultimate step, clean the harnesses of all the conductive crud everything slowly gets coated in over time. Definitely unravel the harnesses from the end of the playfield up into the back box, it only takes a few minutes and really helps. So here is my updated list.

Un-weave the playfield harness up into the back box (Easy).
- Add 2-3 microFarad caps to the EOS switches (Easy)
- Add .1 microfarad caps to the flipper buttons (Easy)
- Run new flipper wiring from the back box to the flipper buttons, separated from the cabinet power and coin door harnesses. (Medium)
- Run new flipper power lines on the playfield outside of the original harnesses (Medium)
- Run new power lines to all the playfield coils (Hard)
- (New) Open many tie wraps on playfield and use compressed air (outside) to blow out as much conductive crud as possible.

Or....

(New) Run playfield harness through the dishwasher and reassemble machine (Super Hard)

Thanks BJM-Maxx. I will certainly try the first few things on the list and see if it helps.

On my EBD If I touch the tilt ball mechanism and the frame it will cause the right thumper bumper to fire 100% of the time. If I touch the bottom part of the plumb bob tilt and the frame it will tilt every time. I have changed all of the switch caps and diodes on this machine and do get less phantom pops than before but I still get an occasional one. I have completely rebuilt this machine including all harnesses put through the dish washer. My question is does anyone else get the two symptoms I described above?

It was suggested previously to remove the roll tilt ball. Does it still happen after that?

You touching it adds a lot of capacitance, weird things happen as you touch various switches all over the playfield. Stuff like that is pretty normal, nothing you can do.

Ya I figured as much thanks, it's my only one from that era and the only one with such quirks.

The ball has been removed

BJM-MAXX, can you please take a picture to show how you attached capacitors to your end EOS switches? These caps are huge. Did I get the wrong ones? I'm not sure how to even attach them. Thanks.

IMG_1911 (resized).JPG

I am pretty sure you have the wrong component- capacitors are really weird- in the US the label "mf" of "mfd" is a micro farad- the picture above is something far larger than 3 mfd- the ceramic disc caps most often suggested are quite small... smaller than a smashed pea!

Lets wait to see what BJM-Maxx says as they know this like the back of their hand and I am not an EE, maybe this is something else and I am confused!!!