My Rob Zombie has been down for about two weeks. Spooky support has given me things to try, but nothing worked. I'm on software version 23beta, which I was running for a few weeks before issues started. Basically, if I turn on the machine and start a game, using either flipper (even before plunging) blows the fuse associated with that solenoid bank. I ordered 3a slow blow fuses from pinball life, which are supposed to be correct fuses. I also took an original 3a slow blow from elsewhere in the game just to be sure, and it blew after a three flips. The pinball life slow blows are single-wire style while the originals in the game are the coiled looking fuses. But like I said, I tried an original coiled style and it blew too.

I measured resistance at the flipper coils. There's three lugs on each. For the left coil, left to center was 5 ohm (this one was really hard to get a reading on, really had to poke the probes into just the right spot to get any reading), center to right was 130ohms, left to right was 127ohms. For the right flipper, left to center 4.6 ohm, center to right 132 ohm, left to right 128 ohm. Checked all other coils and they're in the 5-6 or 12-13 range. Does it matter where I probe them when I'm checking? I'm just probing the solder bulbs or trying to poke the wires directly when needed. Also, does it matter that those two fuses are burnt out while checking the resistance?

Thank you. But the left flipper blows one Sol bank and the right flipper blows the other. They're on separate Sol banks. And my resistance readings posted above seem good if I'm doing it right. What's the next step I should try?

So tech support's suggestion is to buy new coils. Can someone help me narrow it down so I don't have to replace every coil? And is that even likely to help? The left flipper blows Solenoid bank 1 and the right flipper blows Solenoid bank 2. Is it really likely that I'm looking for a bad coil as the root of that problem?

Thanks, I'll give that a try. I should have said this before, but one of the things I tried was firing the coils in the test menu. When I do that, they do NOT blow the fuses.

No, I can't do a 'hold' but I fired each flipper about ten times rapidly, and it does not blow the fuses in the test menu. Each flipper coil has a menu item for high and low. Spooky told me the low is for hold. If I manually hold a flipper in the up position I'm supposed to be able to use the low test, but I can't get it to do anything other than kinda pulse a little bit.

I put new fuses in again just now, pulled glass, started a game, plunged ball, and rolled ball around firing all of the coils (slings, pops, vuk). All coils fired except the right slingshot. It does fire in test and it looks like I have a broken switch wire. Confirmed it's not grounding/shorting. Then I tried the flippers, and the right flipper blows the Sol 2 fuse and the left flipper blows the Sol 1 fuse.

Machine is HUO with 292 plays. My only NIB, and I'm not really sure what kinds of things should be getting worn out at this point.

Yes, I've been emailing with him for the past week. I came here to see if anyone had any other ideas. I don't know enough to understand how the flippers can fire fine in the test menu but immediately blow their respective fuses when a game is running. It must have something to do with the high-low functions, as only the high is really being tested in the solenoid test.

There's an SD card for updating software. I'll try reinstalling the software and report back. Thanks.

Looks like two diodes on each flipper. Can I just unsolder one end of each diode and check with a dmm?

So I asked tech support about this initially and explained that I was on 23beta for at least a couple weeks with no issues, and I never got an answer as to whether this could be a software issue. I just rolled back to v22 . . . and game is up and running again! Unfortunately, the reason I went to v23beta is because the ball-drain error makes v22 unplayable on my machine (I know some others don't have an issue or seem to have it occur less frequently, but it was crashing my machine almost every game). I'll ride it hard tonight on v22 and see if maybe just reinstalling that version has made it any better as far as that error on my machine. Since V23 worked for a couple weeks then started acting funny (corrupted, i think LTG said), maybe something similar was going on with my v22 when I had it installed initially. Thanks for the suggestions everyone!