Same here! Taxi and hoping for more pins to come, although I'm lacking space...

While I'm here: did any of you ever redid the Interconnect Board J6 connector (the "looped" one on the right) with a Molex connector? If so, how did you reproduce the loops?

Hey everyone,
The right flipper of my Taxi stopped working about 6 months ago. These past few months have been pretty busy ones for me, and I only (finally!) found time to try and tackle this today. To my great surprise, the right flipper miraculously worked again… For a couple of minutes. Now it’s back to being completely unresponsive again.
I cleaned the cabinet and EOS contacts with [url=http://i.imgur.com/UzDjdKE.png]this[/url] but it didn’t change anything. I checked the fuses, they are all fine.
The fact the flipper came back from the dead for a few minutes really puzzles me (even more so given the fact I didn’t turn the pinball on for months). I’ve had this pinball for a few years now and did some troubleshooting before, but I’m still a rookie and would love to hear your thoughts on this issue.
Thanks!

Added over 8 years ago: Double-checked the fuse: turns out F5 was blown... After digging some other threads, it seems the problem could come from the EOS switch or the diode. Will order new fuses and check those.

Dumb question: how do you guys solder coils directly below the playfield? I've been trying to redo the solders of my right flipper coil (on a Taxi, the flipper fuse keeps blowing and I suspect bad solders to be the culprit) but cannot get any decent solder done. Even with the help of someone else, it's freaking tricky to be precise. Note that I'm far from being a soldering expert.

Is there some secret technique I'm unaware of? Q

Yes, the playfield was lifted when I last tried. Still my issue is with keeping the coil upright + holding the iron + holding the solder.

BTW I don’t think this will be the issue of your fuse blowing ... unless somehow it’s shorting out against something. Could well be a faulty coil which will need to be replaced.

Yeah I also read the EOS were often the culprit for people who had the same kind of issue. But the solders are really bad so I want to dismiss this lead before changing the EOS and/or coil.

Will try to find some flux before trying again, it's not the first time I read it makes soldering much easier.

Thanks for the tips guys.

Solders done but the issue isn't fixed. It worked well for about 15-20 minutes then the fuse blew again. Upon taking a look at the coil, I noticed this brownish area. From your experience, could it be a sign of a damaged coil?

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I checked the EOS gap and it looks OK, also cleaned it. Anyway, I'm going to put an order for pinball parts so I might as well add an EOS and change it while I'm at it. Thanks!

I thought it's that coil because it is the coil of the only part that stops working once the fuse is blown. Didn't place my order just yet, so I'll do some more digging under the playfield.

When you say breaker, are you talking about something like that: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/making-and-using-a-fuse-breaker ?

While I was in a finally-repairing-this-damn-pinball mood, I pulled out the interconnect board which always had connectors in bad shape, including one that's preventing playfield GI from working:

- J6 wires have always been soldered directly to the pins (working fine afaik)
- J7 always had 3 wires directly soldered to the pins as well (working fine afaik)
- J9 had a proper connector but one of the pin burnt at some point. When I tried to unplug the connector, the pin came with it (not working!)

Upon taking out the interconnect board, my plan was to fully replace J7 and J9 male and female connectors with trifurcon connectors. J6 I'm not sure, it sounds very painful to do this "looped" wiring (one wire shared by 2 pins) with trifurcon so I planned on just cutting them and use terminal block strips to re-assemble them (not touching the soldered wires which seem to work fine, although yes yes I know it's not the perfect way).

Anyway, now that I finally saw the back of the interconnect board for the first time, I don't think I'm up for the task with my beginner's skills in soldering. I did manage to successfully replace a pop bumper transistor once, but that's pretty much all I ever did as far as board job is concerned.

Pics are attached. Do you think I can pull this one off or I should send it for repair because the damage level requires expert hands?

Thanks!

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OK so I didn't know soldering braid even existed haha. This seems to make desoldering an absolute breeze. All I have is a cheap solder sucker for now but I will buy some soldering braid asap along with some flux. Dumb questions again:

When desoldering, I should first apply flux then desolder using the braid? Once the solder is gone and connector removed, should I clean the pads that had burnt pins? If yes, how?

Also, do you know what's the patch-up job on the top right of the third pic? The two wires connecting two different connectors.

Quick updates on a couple issues I mentioned here a few weeks ago.

So I ended up rebuilding the whole flipper, incl. EOS, capacitor and coil. I didn't solder anything under the playfield but from my desk, then used terminal strips for the two wires (soon to be replaced by Molex connectors). So far so good, the fuse stopped blowing. I think the EOS was causing it as GRUMPY suggested back then.

While I was at it I did the fliptronic upgrade following VID's guide. Turned out to be much simpler and cheaper than I expected.

Unfortunately the news aren't good for this one. I ended up replacing the connectors on the board myself. I thought I did OK but it turned out it didn't fix the GI problem. I'm really glad I tried (thanks Chosen_S for pushing me) but I'm just going to send it for repair and be done with it.

Ok nevermind, the fuse just blew again. Back to troubleshooting I guess. Maybe I didn't adjust the new EOS properly.