People usually just search the club thread for my posts.

Is sounds like someone in the past had replaced the MPF frame.

This causes the cam optos to be about 3/32" low.

Please read the club thread about the 5 opto board problems.

Im hoping that DumbAss will make up some good, working boards to have here in the USA.

Unless you are doing a full ground up restoration or working on a pristine game, the linear problem solving system (though good) is very tedious.

Hacked and rebuilt parts from the variety of vendors, plus weird route fixes and patches leads to troubleshooting nightmares.

Way too many variables to add to the equation.

Things are more dificult than they otherwise would be.

This is where experience and pinside shine!

DumbAss had it right as a mechanical problem if everything electronically tested out.

Pinside is an awesome reference for unhacking games.

Case in point:

I spent a week solving a thing flips opto on my TAF.

Everything worked yet nothing worked.

It ended up that the prior repair person had accidently soldered the Rx opto wires in reverse.

This causes the opto to work, but be very weak.

The opto pair would only register if they were physically touching.
They would fail if they were 1/8" apart.

Once the wires were correctly installed, it worked perfectly.

I found the solution on pinside!

So you are saying that there is a right way and a wrong way to wire an Opto (esp. the RX reciever side).

Theres only 2 wires, but theres and emitter and a receiver (collector) inside the plastic lens of the opto LED (C and E on the board).

There is a big side and a smaller side if you look into them under a light. So, yes they can be wired backwards and still work very weakly.

Properly wired the opto works powerfully and perfect.

If the wires are reversed the opto will be weak and only receive if the transmitter is literally touching lens to lens.

This was discussed in another thread with exactly the same problems I had. Homepin suggested turning the opto 180 degrees, but its much simpler to just reverse the wires.

The guy that had the problem was dealing with it for 18 months until a solution was found:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/tech-optos-works-when-close-but-not-from-far#post-6866079

Homepin thead on optos:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/how-to-determine-the-c-e-of-black-opto-receiver-leds#post-3538582

Yes, you can be 180 off if you wire backwards, that is why I posted my repair log with voltage measureaments at various points. @pinballreno confirms mechanically being off just a little will create this CW/CCW problem once the electrical portion is verified.

This was a great team effort and glad for all the input and how we can always refer to each other for assistance.