I recently acquired a Bride of Pinbot and aside from it killing the capacitors on the flipper switches, its been a blast to play.

Not long after I set the Bride up and started playing it, the left flipper stuck in the up position. I saw that the capacitors on both flipper switches had burn marks and the cap on the left switch was actually broken.

I went ahead and put in two new switches (the old ones had clearly been in there a long time) and put new capacitors on them also. Now a few days later, the left flipper is stuck up again. And the capacitor on that left flipper switch has burn marks on it again. The right switch/capacitor looks and works fine.

This capacitor is a .1UF 500V disc. I know some capacitors are directional, but I didn't see any markings to indicate that these had to be oriented a certain way. Could I have just put this one on backwards to cause it to fail prematurely? Or could there be something else causing the cap to burn?

Thanks, I've got a couple more caps on the way to try. Thought I'd ask in case something else could be going out or if there was something else I could check. I've only had to deal with my TZ and IJ over the years, and even though the Bride is an early WPC game, it still has the older style flippers. So a little more for me to learn.

Well, either I'm extremely unlucky because I keep losing the caps on my left flipper switch or something else is wrong.
Again, just the left flipper button is losing its cap. The right button's cap was also replaced when I installed both new switches and its new cap is fine.

So what can be causing just the left side flipper button to be eating caps like chicklets?

Come on, someone must have had this problem before, right?

Additional info, the powerdriver board in this machine is a Rottendog powerdriver board. The game plays perfectly, for a few hours, then the cap on the left flipper button burns out and the flipper just gets stuck up until I put another cap on. The right side flipper button doesn't have this issue.

Thank you. I'll take a close look at the diodes on the left flipper.

I found a diode that had broken a wire on the flipper coil. Soldered it back in place and replaced the cap on the switch again. Fingers crossed.

Still going, the caps were going out within the first few hours of play so I think this problem is solved.