Quoted from DanQverymuch:I can say for certain that the issue with the connector pins was NOT the only problem. I did the connectorectomy, subsequently played for hours, and thought all was good...
THIS! Those motor leads are like the wires inside headphone cords, with rubbery insulation and whisper thin conductors, designed to survive repeated movement, but not stretching. These deliberately flimsy wires certainly aren't designed to take this kind of abuse!
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I had been skeptical about the problem being from general wiring bundles being squashed by overtightened zip ties. Some smooshed plastic didn't worry me much, particularly if the bundle in question was not even related to the ramp motor.
However, the squishy insulation on this motor's leads is another matter entirely! That zip tie is so tight, it is actually stretching the wires inside lengthwise, and those tiny wire strands wound up being stretched to, well, the breaking point. I doubt removing the zip tie would have mattered once the damage was done. Once the wire has been tortured so that only a couple strands were still keeping the connection, they are going to eventually fail like a bad GI connector, dropping voltage, heating up and finally going open.
So, yep, my Node 10 has gone poof! At first I was confused when I realized the ramp was not raising, as the game was not complaining about Node 10 and still doesn't. It would seem that Stern had already made the code change I was saying earlier that they should, to at least make it playable without Node 10, but still - not even a tech alert? Does anyone on the latest code with a bad Node 10 still have the game complain about it?
So here we are. If Stern is only going to fix the ones that blow up, maybe everyone should just keep on playing until theirs does. But if they decide to avoid having to replace all those boards on top of all those motors, by replacing motors before the boards blow, they may come out further ahead.
It would be nice to know which tack they are going to take, since owners could voluntarily disable the ramp and prop it up in the meantime and save all those boards, if they knew a new motor would be forthcoming anyway. Quite a dilemma for now.
Hard to imagine that no games failed right away at the factory from this! Major facepalm if they did and the issue was glossed over.
At least the game still plays at 99% with the ramp propped up!
It's even a little easier this way, no dead end sending balls right back at you down the middle, and more top flipper shot setups. Although a downside is when a ball gets caught on the lip, since ball search can't free it obviously, so you have to risk tilting or pull the glass if it's not during a multiball. I might just have to disable that plumb bob for now...Nope, mine was July 1.
What’s a tilt bob…