Excellent sleuthing!

My Node 10 journey seems to support your hypothesis. The original board went up in smoke after about 300 plays. Stern Support sends out a replacement, and that one made it approx 200 plays before failing. I tell them how the clock occasionally stops working until the next machine boot. They thought a bad clock motor might be the culprit, so they send out a Node 10 board AND a replacement clock motor with the 4-pin 0.100" connector already attached (the one that fits the header on the Node 10 board).

That was right around the time when the leading "root cause" theory was the gorilla with the zip-tie gun, and my ramp motor was definitely a victim of said gorilla... the insulation was mashed on the black and red wires so badly, it nearly severed them. Rather than counting the games until the third board went up in flames, I decide to order an OEM motor from the manufacturer (Lin Engineering) with the "flying leads" option, crimp my own pins onto it, and run it straight to the Node 10 board to ensure that it remained untouched by the zip-tie gorilla.

Replacement clock motor arrived with black zip-ties instead of the former white, but they were much more loose... I could even slide them across the wires to inspect the insulation beneath. Just to be safe, I removed them and substituted a few short pieces of heat shrink tubing in lieu of the zip-ties. When the new ramp motor arrived from Lin Engineering, I did the same thing. Both motors are now directly connected to the Node 10 board with the OEM leads, using the correct pins, and free from the guerilla gorilla's handiwork (see pic).

2 months and about 500 games later, and board number 3 is still performing like a champ! The ramp wires are a little too short to route through the existing path, but I'll take dangling wires any day, if it means this stupid issue is finally resolved!

One additional bit of info: I did open up the old ramp motor to see if the conductors could be easily replaced with 22ga leads, and they cannot. There is no chance in hell that I would attempt it, at least. It would involve disassembling the innards of the stepper, and from the way everything is packed in there with tight tolerance, the prospect of getting it all back together would likely be daunting (and unsuccessful). I would advise against opening the motors, period.

Final observation: The weird "clock stops working until next boot" issue has also gone away! So either the clock motor WAS bad, or maybe they fixed the issue with a subsequent code update... but either way, my clock and ramp are both rock solid as of today, and I'm a happy Rush camper again.
IMG_7530 (resized).JPGIMG_7531 (resized).JPG

Oh wow... and almost $20 cheaper than what I paid the manufacturer!

It would have paid to shop around, especially since I'm ordering from Digikey on the regular. I grabbed the first one I saw. Live and learn.

Yep. This one is 23 bucks, and works beautifully.

https://smile.amazon.com/Crimping-0-08-1-0-18-28AWG-Ratcheting-Connector/dp/B01N1RFZZ4/ref=sr_1_1

Left connector is the clock, right connector is the ramp.

Regarding your question about gameplay, I'm not 100% sure. When I was waiting for my replacement Node 10 from Stern, the ramp was in the down position the entire time... but it still registered hits via the opto at the top of the ramp to start modes, multiballs, etc.

I believe if you prop the unpowered ramp in the "up" position using one of the creative ideas pinsiders have come up with (sponge, rubber ball, etc), the game will behave more or less like a Rush Pro.

IMG_7531_notated (resized).jpg

Yes, the ramp LEDs and opto switch are driven from different node board(s), so they'll continue to work.

It never occurred to me to prop the ramp in the "up" position, and I can tell you that the game is not very enjoyable with the ramp permanently down. Hard shots come rocketing back SDTM, and half of those hard shots don't trigger the opto before returning at warp speed. Not sure if that's a problem on all Premiums/LEs when the ramp is down, or if I have a flaky opto on mine.

It's a node 10 board (same revision as originally shipped with the games) and a Lin Engineering stepper motor (same part number as the others) with long leads terminated in a Molex 0.100" 4-pin connector that attaches directly to the node board, eliminating the suspect connector between motor and board. Oh, and a few zip ties to tidy up the wire routing.

Completely anecdotal, but I've been following this from day one due to my premium being one of the affected games. I'm pretty sure you either have an impacted game, or you don't. Games that blow their Node 10 boards don't seem to be popping up after thousands of plays. Does that mean that it's impossible for a prem/LE to blow its Node 10 after 3000+ plays? I would not take that bet.

Honestly, you'd think this would make it even easier for Stern engineers to figure out the root cause. Get one of these offending games into the lab, throw it on a test rig, cycle it until the boards blow, and collect the data. But hey... we're going on two years now, and it's still fucking crickets out here.

The cynic in me thinks they'll just keep tossing old Node 10 boards and "crimp free" motor leads at the impacted customers until a new Node 10 "Rev 2" is available, which should have the protection circuitry mandated by the manufacturer of the driver IC. Short of that, I don't think there is any "fix" forthcoming.

In the meantime, you can probably get a smokin' deal on the prem/LEs that have the problem. Thoughts and prayers to those who bought theirs NIB.

Just through visual inspection of my blown Node 10s, I could swear that the traces to the toasted driver chip lead(s) go back to the home switch inputs (and associated resistor "daughter card"). I can't be 100% sure about that, though, as those leads are tiny, and my eyesight isn't what it used to be. If that's the case, I can't figure out why there would ever be anything but +5V DC on those switch lines... but I am not an EE.

I have a pile of dead boards if any motivated and/or knowledgeable individual wants to take a shot at post-mortem analysis. They range from a board that failed with zero noticeable signs of damage, to one that damn near blew the driver IC clean off of the board. That one resulted in a burnt spot on the underside of the PF, and visible smoke under the PF glass!

If you have access to a 3D printer, I highly recommend printing out this ramp wedge to turn that LE into a "Promium" while we wait for a permanent fix.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5913092

Ramp is propped up to the optimal height, and the game behaves as if it were a Pro model (aside from the dead drum clock on the PF). It was created by our own aamauzy in response to his own Node 10 woes, and it works like a champ.

I'm one of the poor souls with a game that is a "chronic" destroyer of Node 10 boards, and I had the same thought.

I've lowered the power on just about every coil, and sadly, it doesn't seem to help. The VUK, diverter, all flippers, top scoop and instrument lock fork have been lowered to the absolute minimum levels that still allow normal gameplay, and I'm still blowing up boards. In fact, I probably need to boost the top scoop kickout a little bit, because half of the time, the ejects don't quite make it to the upper flipper.

I've blown boards with both steppers connected, clock disconnected and ramp connected, and clock connected and ramp disconnected. I've swapped out motors so many times, I think the pile in my parts bin is in the double digits at this point.

Man, I absolutely *love* this game, and it was the theme I was waiting for literally all of my life... but if I could shrink myself down and hop into that little time machine on the playfield, I'd set it for January 2022 so I could go back and order the Pro model.

Premium owner here (or "Promium" owner, more accurately).

I played a couple of games "stock" after unboxing, but I installed the shaker within a day or two after that.

At least four of my *eight* (!) node ten boards blew up with only the shaker motor installed, the others with a combination of shaker, and EL/topper.

The poster is technically correct, in that Stern has received two "problem games" back from the field, and they are currently analyzing them in their lab. Probably something they should have done, oh I don't know, maybe 12 or 18 months ago? Better late than never, I guess.

To my knowledge, there is no official fix as of today.

As the proud owner of one of these impacted Premiums, I've been mulling this over for a couple of days, and since 95% of the roughly 2K games played on my machine have been in "promium" mode... I'm now wondering if I even understand what the correct operation of the Time Machine is supposed to be!

Some balls will sail right through the Time Machine when the ramp is permanently propped up (particularly the really fast shots up the ramp), but I don't know if that's by design, or if the magnet is trying to grab it, and missing. Is the TM supposed to attempt to grab *every* ball shot through it when the ramp is up (premium/le), or the TM is ready (pro)? I haven't put enough games in on the location Rush Pros around me to notice the difference.

But I guess short answer is: Yes, my Node10-affected game occasionally misses TM catches... but I don't notice it happening with "fade" over time, as you would expect with flipper coil fade over a long session. It might happen on the first 60 seconds of ball 1, and then the rest of the game it seems to be behaving normally, for example.

I'm just going to put it right out there and say that they're *completely* full of shit.

There are over 5 DOZEN of us on this Pinside thread alone. That's not counting the buyers who aren't on Pinside, and more importantly, the operators who can't be assed enough to complain about the issue... they just stuff a racquetball under the ramp, empty the coinbox, windex the glass (if we're lucky) and move on. There's one of those fine specimens on location near me.

In January, Support told me that they had two of the "problem games" pulled back from the field, their engineers had them back in the lab, and they'd have a permanent fix announced shortly. Well, that was now just over three months ago, and it's looking more and more like their latest "fix" is to solder the motor leads directly to the Node 10 board!? Are you kidding me? They should have known over a year ago that the motor leads are not the problem.

I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to have to a) live with my "promium", b) sell the game at a severely reduced price (disclosing the issue to prospective buyers, because I'm not a complete and utter scumbag), and try to find a Pro, or a Premium/LE without the issue, or c) wait for the fine folks in the pinball hobbyist community to solve yet another one of Stern's cock-ups.

Since I absolutely love the band, and love this game... my money is on option "c".

I guess option "d" would be the Stern engineers getting their collective heads out of their collective asses, and it's looking more and more like that's never going to happen. It's a shame that Borg and team have this black stain on what would otherwise (IMO) go down in history as one of the GOAT games.

</rant>