I had a similar problem. Don't remember the exact fuse and I'm away from home so I can't check, but it sounds familiar. After disconnecting different connectors, we (Stern support and I) narrowed it down to the one connector that controlled the flashers. I removed the individual flashers on this branch and found that one of the flasher 'nubs' had melted and shorted to its barrel. On my machine, it was the bulb underneath the Vengeance ship.

flasher short.jpg

Unfortunately, after fixing the bulb, it remained on constantly (FET shorted on). Stern was great, however - sent new board, new flasher bulb, and a bunch of replacement fuses. I just removed the bulb until the replacements arrived so I could continue playing.

Good luck.

So when you put in a new f8 and power on the game, does a coil lock on or a flasher lock on? Something like this often happens before the fuse blows.

You should also disconnect the connectors on the board to the coils that don't work. Replace the fuse and power up with them removed. Does the fuse still blow? If so, problem is in the board. If fuse doesn't still blow like this, I would test each pin on the disconnected connector with the DMM and see if one is shorted to ground.

I just checked and I believe my fuse issue was F10. When I was diagnosing the problem, I grabbed a few fuses and called Stern support. Just like markmon suggested, they walked me through what connectors were fed from that fuse and we disconnected them and added them in one by one until the fuse blew. We then checked the resistance for each pin on that connector to find which one was shorted. Pulled out the bulbs to see if it was a wiring or bulb problem and saw the shorted socket connection.

If you're ok with reading the wiring diagrams, you can trace this out on your own - otherwise, Stern support was patient in walking me through it.