When I first read this I thought it said "Bill Gates Issue." I thought maybe it was an article about Bill liking pinball

So the gate is opening both ways? It is only supposed to open towards the left. Did the end of the wire break?

It should not bounce back thru as it is a one-way gate. The gate may be broken or for some reason the gate is somehow staying open too long allowing the ball to go back thru after bouncing off the sling rubber.
WAG: Make sure the gate wire is not rubbing on the inlane plastic, one of the posts, or the flat metal ribbon bracket and slowing down the wire gate travel.

My friend is having the same issue with the ball bouncing back out after it is released from the idol. I don't have an IJ, but I suggested he check the 'levelness' of his game - he came back that it is horizontally level to .1 degrees, and he has his playfield pitch between 6.5 and 7 degrees as the manual suggests.

He shot a super cool slow mo video of his situation. I took the video off his webpage and loaded on mine; you can see it at http://mfpinball.org/pinside/ij/ij.mp4 . Dellamarmalade, is this like yours is doing?

Maybe the visual will help someone clue us in on what to do. Per the suggestion that the gate is staying open too long, it may be hard to see in slow mo, but it looks to me like the ball never actually fully exits the gate before it is sent back out. Again, I don't own one, so I cannot suggest what else does/doesn't look right.

I'll let my friend know I posted to Pinside, that way he can hop on and provide some first hand knowledge of what else he is seeing/not seeing.

Thanks in advance!

Would it help if you took the rubber off the post or put the slingshot rubber on the other side of the post?

Hi, I'm the guy who recorded that IJ video. It certainly doesn't happen every time but, when it does, it can really kill a game, especially in the second+ multiball where there's no ball save.

I have played around with looping the slingshot rubber around the inside of that star post and it did seem to help the bounceback quite a bit. However, I think the bounce-out still happened once or twice and I also didn't want a lot of ball-on-star-post contact, as that will eventually break the plastic.

I think I read somewhere that, if you can shim the gate with washers, so that it sits higher, it might "close" before the ball has a chance to bounce back. I haven't played around with that, since this is my very first machine and I don't have a library of parts yet. Ideally, though, it would never bounce off that metal bracket and into the rubber in the first place. Most of the IJs I've played have had really smooth delivery from the idol to the right flipper.

Pictures tell a thousand words. The ball is getting dropped onto the post supporting the gate, then bouncing into the rubber. It should go thru the gate before it hits the inlane guide. First, is your machine set to 6.5 degree pitch? The ball may be moving too slow to jump the gap or if it is too steep, then gravity is pulling it down.

If it is correct, then the curved metal ball guide which comes off the idol and feeds the inlane likely needs to be adjusted so it feeds the ball higher. Remove the plastic above it, with a pair of pliers, slightly bend the metal so the curve is a little more tight. You might have to remove the ramp to do this best.

I've got exactly the same problem as in the video..
Did you guys manage to fix this and if so; what did you do?

I was able to eventually fix it. It's probably dependent on the slope of the playfield and the angle/position of the ramp feeding out of the idol. For me, I loosened all of the bolts holding that ramp and re-positioned it a number of times. There's not a lot of play there, but there is some. After much trial and error, I was able to get the ramp to feed to the right flipper almost 100% of the time, very smoothly, very few hiccups.

In its final position, the ramp appears to be sending the ball on a more upward trajectory than in my video in post #6, where it was hitting the metal at the bottom of the gate. I'm not sure if a photo helps, but I'm attaching one anyway.

IJ_(resized).jpg