Bought a High Speed recently and am now in the process of getting everything working correctly. This is the first machine I have bought and I am definitely not very knowledgeable (yet) so any help would be appreciated.

The problem I'm running into here is that the left half of the backbox GI lights are not turning on. The left side works fine, and the playfield GI lights work as well.

Picture!

I have done a few things, including reading a ton of repair lists but haven't found a culprit yet. I checked the connector on the power supply; it does not look burnt. I tried wiggling the connector and was able to get both the playfield and right side backbox lights to turn on and off, but nothing from the left side. I also tried replacing some of the bulbs but no dice.

Any suggestions are appreciated!

So first off I realized I forgot to mention this earlier but it might be a major issue. Instead of using a molex connector like all of the schematics and pictures, my power wire from the transformer has some hacks going on. Here is a picture of what is going on. The wires from both the transformer and P/S are stripped and wrapped together and then covered with a plastic plug. Not cool. Fiddling with the wires resulted in the same thing as earlier. By separating them I could get the GI to turn off, but making sure they had contact had no effect on the left side of the GI.

Then I started with LTG's advice and checked the AC voltage. From the transformer I was getting 5.4v to the relay. I then tested connector to the GI by placing one lead into a header on one side of the connector and the other lead into the corresponding header on the other side. I'm not sure if I was doing this right. I got this method here: http://pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Williams_WPC#General_Illumination_Problems

Is that the right way to test that?

I then started checking voltages on the backbox lights themselves. Any light that was on was giving a reading of 4.8v, and the lights that were off were 0v

Next I removed the P/S like Grumpy suggested.

Here is a picture of the solder joints. http://imgur.com/7H6IkvQ

I don't know what is going on here. I don't see any cracks but these are clearly way more blobby than other areas on the board.

I can take more/better pictures if needed.

Any advice on what to do next?