Fellow pinsiders,

I'm struggling to fix my Space Shuttle that I picked up a few weeks ago, at which time played great with no issues. However the past week has been hell keeping it up and running. My initial problem was the 2.5 MDL fuse that controls the solenoids kept blowing randomly. When the fuse would blow, the game would not kick out a ball into the shooter lane, nor would the slingshots, jet bumpers, or ball locks activate. I replaced the fuse about 4-5 times and finally figured out the right lock ball chamber had a stuck switch and the kicker would activate over and over and over again until the switch freed up. I fixed the switch as it was simply bent out of place. Played 2-3 games with no issues and now I'm back to a game won't start because the ball won't kick out into the shooter lane, however the fuse is not blown. The MPU shows code "0", so no errors there. I'm extremely new to pinball and pinball troubleshooting, so my skillset is very minimal at this point but I'm willing to try almost anything. Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks for the replies guys.

Sagejr - It definitely has 3 balls installed. However I think you might be on to something about the credits/free play. The game was on free play, but now I'm wondering if the game reset to defaults during the most recent fuse blowing. I'll check that first thing tonight when I get home after 6pm est.

KenH - Once I check the credit/free play issue, I'll report back on the diagnostics if that is indeed my next step.

OK a little update, although still not fixed. So it had nothing to do with the credits or free play. Evidently the fuse I had in there was bad even though I couldn't see a break in the fuse. Replaced it, and of course everything starts to work again. I proceeded to play a game to see what would happen. I locked the ball in the right lock, then lost the ball. Played ball 2 for awhile and finally locked the ball in the left lock. On ball 3 I tried to hit the space shuttle ramp a few times but missed and then randomly the ball kicks out of the left ball lock and when that happened it blew the fuse and thus I lost the jet bumpers, slings, drop targets, etc. I'm out of fuses temporarily and didn't have time to run any other tests. That's all for now.

Ok another update. I got some fuses in over the weekend and tonight I finally had a chance to tinker with the game. Initially I replaced the fuse and played a game to try and determine if something specific was causing the fuse blow and after 3 games and 3 blown fuses I couldn't find a pattern. It does seem to involve locked balls in some capacity but I have tried left lock only, right lock only, both balls locked, and the fuse has blown at various stages of the game. Moving on....

After 3 more blown fuses I finally did what KenH suggested and went to Page 12 and went through every diagnostics. Not one single error. After I went through the entire diagnostics tests, I then went back to the solenoid tests and let each solenoid go through about 25 tests before moving on to the next one. Zero issues. Finally I did the "Auto-Cycle" test, and let it run in that mode for about 10 minutes with no issues. Turned it off, back on and played game one, no issues as the game didn't last long. Played game 2, during ball 2 I locked ball #1 in the right lock lane, the game then announced "ball locked or whatever" and then the fuse blew as the game did not kick out ball 2 into the shooter lane. I then lifted the PF and felt all solenoids to see if any were hot or overheated and as far as I could tell they all felt fine.

Any other ideas?

One more update for my fuse blowing issue. I went through every wire and connection on the PF tonight, while I didn't find a loose or broken wire I did find one odd spliced set of wires(see pic), although I don't think this has anything to do with the fuse blowing.

After checking over everything tonight I put in another fuse and started to play a game. I'm on ball 2 with zero balls locked, I shoot the 3 drop targets down, and for some odd reason a ball ejects into the shooter lane, although the fuse didn't blow. I drained both balls and played ball 3 with no problems. Game over. I then started another game, no balls locked, and out of nowhere the fuse blows (the ball was in the middle of the PF and did not hit any target/switch/bumper). That's all I got for now, pic attached of the strange splice.

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Final update as Space Shuttle has performed a successful liftoff. Fellow pinsider "WMSpin" stopped by tonight and helped me fix the issue. We ran through the normal solenoid/coil tests, switch tests, etc and everything checked out OK. We then started playing a game by manually moving the balls around and halfway through ball 1 the game "kicked" out ball 2, even though ball 1 didn't drain yet as we were manually rolling the ball over switches, and hitting targets. When the ball kicked out prematurely it blew the fuse. So we inserted another fuse, and started the process over, only this time we didn't use any balls but instead used our hands to activate every switch/target/etc. We did this with no issues, the only thing we hadn't activated at this point was the flippers. After using the flippers for about 30 seconds the fuse blew, and when it blew you could here a small sound like something was seizing up or locking up involving the flipper assembly. So we replaced the fuse one more time and narrowed it down to the left flipper. After lifting the PF and checking over the assembly, we noticed a wire connected to a diode was hanging loose. I soldered it back on and we are back in business. Now, my buddy is still clueless as to how/why this wire on the flipper assembly, which was independent of the fuse that controls the solenoids , was making the fuse blow. Attached is a picture of the issue.

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