Embryon
Bally, 1981
Fireball Classic
Bally, 1985You're currently viewing posts by Pinsider aobrien5.
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So, this thread is great, but it's way too in-depth for most people trying to solve or reduce the problem. What kind of summary could you give on the ways to help this problem from simple to in-depth? If this is happening to me once ever 5-25 flips (always only the left flipper!), what simple-ish things should I do to reduce that problem?
Is the first step to clip the cap off the pop bumper switch?
My problem is with my Bally Mystic. It's always the left flipper and left pop bumper. The timing of flips makes sense. I am in the situation where the activation of the pop does score (and effect other playfield settings, which is why this is more annoying). I've blocked off the switch to make sure it wasn't just an adjustment problem.
What size caps should I put on the flipper/eos switches?
Quoted from MrBally:Try this; Remove the ball from the roll tilt track. That's it. Period. Nothing else to do.
Now that's the kind of simple solution that I'm looking for! I have my doubts with all the other info in here, but I'd be stupid not to try the suggestion from Mr. Bally.
Actually, it did help! That's the only thing I did, and the frequency of phantom pops was reduced significantly. It definitely still happens but I'd say it was at least a 75% reduction.
I also discovered when removing it, that when the ball touched the upper track, the right pop fired every time. Perhaps that's another problem that I have in my wiring, or it's introducing that interference to the other part of the matrix?
Quoted from MrBally:One other thing which is also Tilt circuit related; remove the plumb bob Tilt wire and top hanger. Using a wire brush on a grinder or drill motor or Dremel tool make the wire hanger at the top loop and the hanger as clean as the day they were new and replace. This assumes that there is no copper braid (solder wick) attached to the Tilt bob wire form and the hanger itself.
That will be my next project. Thanks!
My bally mystic has the same problem, so it's definitely not just embryon.
Where did you get the ferrites? I'll have to try that too.
Also, how hard would it be to separate just the pop bumper signal wires? Wouldn't that be all that's really needed?
Thanks
Quoted from Beemus:I would encourage anyone to start simple. I spent 15-20 minutes cutting zip ties and installing new and my notoriously bad random popping skateball is golden.
Cut zip ties so u can pull j2-3 mpu wires out of the wiring loom. Re zip them so they're isolated from the main loom where the power wires are also found. Stop when u can't go no further to right flipper without disconnecting wires and when u get to back of playfield.
I realize I'm late to the convo and the hard, grunt work was done by others and I'm very thankful to those folks. The fix can be done in baby steps and the first step may just be the ticket. If anyone is hesitant to start this fix... It's quite simple.
Thanks again folks
I appreciate this, but can you go over your simple fix again. You lost me a bit. Start at the MPU plug and segregate the flipper coil wires. I get that, but then you say to stop at two places, at right flipper and back of playfield?
Quoted from BJM-Maxx:In summary there are a lot of things that can be done but I would go down this list in order until good results are obtained:
Thanks so much for the summary. This is easily the most important post in this thread!
Quoted from vid1900:I'd love to find one of these phantom firing games for restro
I'd love to let you resto my game. 
Quoted from mof:can you please link your thread on this? sounds like good information.
-mog
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/embryon-switch-issue
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.
Quoted from Quench: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.
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.
Quoted from Mageek: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?
Quoted from phillyfan64:I decided to take one more shot at this. I added ceramic caps to the cabinet flipper switches. It actually worked! What was at least 4 or 5 random pops per game is now maybe 1 random pop every 4 or 5 games. Putting caps on the EOS switches, separating wires, none of that did anything in my case. Maybe every machine is different but flipper caps really made a difference for me. Thanks for all the suggestions.
What size cap did you put on them? Pic for wiring?
Quoted from Bryan_Kelly:I've got an EBD that had the lower pop bumper phantom firing when the flippers were activated. It would happen maybe 5 times during a game. I tried the caps on the flipper button switches and it made no difference.
I then separated the switch signal wires from J2 and J3 on the MPU from the other wires in the harness. I started in the head and went as far as the speaker, for the cabinet switches, and as far as where the harness hits the bottom of the playfield, for the playfield switches. Took maybe 30 minutes and was pretty simple to do.
No more phantom pop bumper firing!
Yes, worked great! Much simpler than expected. Was hoping it would help with my slingshots too, but alas, it did not.
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Highland, IN