Hey guys,

So was playing TAF tonight, and all of a sudden BOTH the upper right flipper and Thing's mini flipper became horribly weak. Things flipper is so weak it can't even make it across the PF. The upper right flipper is weak to the point that I cannot make Super Jackpot during multiball.

Normally I would just chalk this up to needing to change coil sleeves or check a switch, but for BOTH to start doing it right at the same time, that just seems weird?

Thoughts/suggestions before I go doing things "just to do them" ?

Not to argue with you, LTG, I know you know your stuff, it just seems weird that BOTH of them started this behavior at the exact same time...and they were working great earlier today...

Will definitely check what you mentioned. Is there not a single point of failure that both of these flippers go through?

Took a methodical/shotgun approach to this.

Lastnight, changed both fuses on the small board as they were VERY hard to get continuity with my DMM. I could get it, but I had to really hunt for it.

Took both my flipper board and extra flipper board to WeirPinball's. Had everything checked, and then put each board in his TAF one at a time. Game played fine.

Got home and applied a dab of solder to every male IDC pin on both boards to wipe out any cold solder joints. Then I took DeOxit and put a drop in every ribbon cable and IDC cable. Then I took sandpaper and cleaned all my male IDC pins to be safe. Hooked up both boards, and then I went to all 4 flippers and re-soldered the connections in case of cold solder joints/poor wire/solder connections. Fired it up, and so far, the game plays fine. I am leaving it in attract mode for 30 mins to see if anything is heating up and causing failure.

Will let everyone know how it plays in about another 15 mins.

So far, so good!

Damn. Bummer when I "mean well" and boo boo things like that.

Guess I'll place an order with GPR and get new pins on the way.

Live and learn...!

Thanks guys.

I had this problem re-surface tonight, and it came back with a vengeance. This time, a quick wobble of the connectors would not suffice. I took the board out, made sure the BR was good, and made sure all the female connectors were making good contact.

Then, on a whim, I pulled and re-seated J104 on the PDB, and sure as heck, that fixed the problem. Given that the PDB is a 2 year old RD, I re-crimped the female connectors with brand new molex connectors and matching pins.

So far, so good. Bookmark this one for "suddenly both upper flippers weak"

20190401_212151 (resized).jpg