I'm working on a TZ that has been possessed lately. Lots of resetting, fuses blowing, etc.

I am swapping out the coil that kicks balls into the shooter lane (because, oddly, the center of the coil has an unidentified melted mass inside it so the plunger can't be pulled through). I cut off one of the wires, and then stripped it. And the power in the room went out and came back immediately.

It actually happened twice in rapid succession, as I touched the wire twice. Incredulously, I did the same thing again, stripping the wire with my tool, and it happened again. Not only was it the circuit the game is connected to, but power to the *entire* house went out.

(No circuit breakers were tripped).

WTF is going on?!?

I should note that this TZ was on location having issues, and this is the first time I've tried to work on it since bringing it home.

They really went overboard on the theme integration.

Tell me more about this. I did have a soldering iron plugged into the service outlet at the time (which was working fine). I don't have a plug tester, but I do have a multimeter.

I'm really confused about this. I got a text shortly after from my location (about a mile away) saying that I should check on my games tomorrow because they were having power surges. It's possible this was a coincidence...but it was literally two outages about 60 seconds apart...both at the *exact* moment that I was stripping the same wire in TZ.

Our internet shut off and the router restarted itself...but the clock on the stove didn't reset.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

I was afraid to keep working on it, but will probably give it another shot tomorrow.

Keep me posted on this. Mine coin door doesn't break the high voltage either, but I had assumed this was right before coin door interlocks became a thing.

Actually, it's not the coil sleeve. There is still a sleeve in the coil, but it won't budge, so I can't get it out. I'll take a pic later when I can.

That's of course the first thing I did. Will report back later when I start poking around.

So...service outlet checked out correctly. 120V on hot side, 0V on neutral side.

I recreated the same action with the wire strippers that caused the issue the first time...and nothing happened. So, I'm going to chalk this up to neighborhood power grid issues, which were happening on that same night. Honestly, it's one of the biggest coincidences of my life: neighborhood power goes out twice, each time synced to the exact second that I'm stripping a wire to a bad coil.