Had the lower playfield/coincoor GI section go out on me a few days back. Found typical burned connector at J115. Redid the board pins and the J115 connector (as I've done on my TAF, WW and T2), replaced Fuse 106.

Everything works for about 3-4 minutes and then F106 (lower left of the 5) blows again. I can play for an hour with no other impacts whatsoever. I've now gone through 3 fuses and even removed the board and reflowed solder to all the pins on the new header just to make sure I had a nice strong connection to the 11 traces -- thinking it was drawing extra current due to a poor solder joint.

I'm stumped. If there was a short you'd think the fuse would blow instantly, nor do I see anything obvious. The lower playfield GI with a new fuse does not appear brighter than the other as if to suggest it's drawing a ton of extra current, but obviously it's coming from somewhere to blow the 5A 250V SB.

Anything I can measure, check?

I'm really digging the lockdown bar idea since I hadn't touched it until I had to source the GI burned connector issue to begin with. It is bare metal and it's possible it's touching the coin door lamps. I'll wrap it in tape and see what happens. None of the bulb sockets should have seen any change. Very frustrating indeed. I need a 100 pack of 5A 250V SB fuses at this point

Bingo! It was definitely the lock down bar lever. You learn something every day. It looks like the previous owner had electrical taped it too, but didn't complete the entire length of the handle. The right coin door light bracket had been bent down just enough to make contact with the lock down bar handle.

Good thing too because that was my last 5A fuse and I didn't feel like running down to Radio Shack to get jipped on some.