Dear Taxi lovers,
I just got a Taxi few days ago and I noticed that the Joy Ride lights on the front board are not working, the reason is simple the lights' board is not connected to anything, I tried to look on internet to find where this board should be connected, but no success.
Can someone help me to find where this Joy Ride lights board should be connected ?
Thanks a lot

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Look for a plug with the wire colors in the below picture

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Thank You very much, I saw that chart in the user manual but I'm not familiar with this and I don't know how to interpret it. Also I didn't found any spare cable in my machine which are not plug, I believe I missed also the cables that connect from the Joy Ride Board to ?, if someone know the place where those cable are connected this will be great.
Thanks a lot

That chart is the lamp matrix for the lights. Each lamp in the machine needs two wires to light it up. The top row of the matrix is one wire, the left hand column is the other.

So, all of the JOYRIDE lights are controlled by the yellow-brown wire. Each individual light is a different red wire. So JOYRIDE 10,000 is Yellow-Brown and Red-Brown. JOYRIDE Spot Passenger is Yellow-Brown and Red-Black. JOYRIDE Mystery is Yellow-Brown and Red-Orange etc. That's how you read it.

There should be a harness with a Yellow-Brown Wire, a gap, and then 5 Red wires (each with a different color stripe that corresponds to the matrix) that plugs in to that board.

But anyway... If you can't find a harness that isn't plugged in in your machine, and no one else comes back with an answer, I will take a picture of mine for you when I get home from work in a few hours.

Edit: Oh and on the Main board, J6 and J7 are the lamp matrix connectors. If you are looking at it from the front of the machine, it's the two lower right hand corner connectors. One should have all yellow wires with different color stripes, the other should have all red wires with different color stripes. The wires for that joyride lamp board will come off of those wires in some way.

Should go to J20 on the board.

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Pretty easy to make one if its missing.

Thank you very much to all of you for your help, I now understand why it's not connected.
The J20 on my board doesn't have any connection box. I guess if I want my JoyRide light to work I'll need to change that card.
Thank You

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I wonder if the board has been swapped out for another from a different game (my guess). You could always solder a header to that bank of pads...it's not too hard.

Yeah, that's weird.

wizstef Does that board have a Williams sticker on it with '553' somewhere? That's the game number for Taxi. If it doesn't I'd bet that's not the original board.

It's not the original board, the number D12313-567 indicate that it it has been swapped with another System 11B game (567 = Jokerz!)
I also noticed that the 2 others electronic cards on the right side come from the same game (see picture)

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Thanks for the advise, I'm not so good at that but I can ask a friend.

Wow, that snuck past the pros at TnT...

It seems that this Taxi has been restored by TNT on 2018, i don’t know them but seems to be a good pinball company, right ?

Anyone seen this or have suggestions on how to 'fix'

When the ball is shot from Dracula's catapult and arrives at the left inlane it come in so fast that it bounces from the in line to the outlane and drains. Doesn't happen all the time but enough. Can the power of the catapult coil be reduced? Or other suggestions?

Thanks

Maybe move the wireframe a little?

Thats what I was thinking.

Or if its way to fast, raise the playfield pitch a tiny bit.

Alright have a question for you guys. I’ve owned several Taxi’s over the years half Marylin and half Lola. The playfield is different in which one says Marylin and the others say Lola, but the translights all have been the same with a dark brunette hair color on backglass. My question is why aren’t the orginals blonde on the translights?

There is a blonde one.

https://classicplayfields.com/shop/pinball-backglasses/taxi-2/

I have a Lola machine with a Marylin translight.

Maybe the Lola ones are more common, and if you need to replace one that's what you get more often than not?

But the Marylin ones exist.

Yeah I’ve seen the reproduction ones, but I’ve never seen an orginal with blonde hair..

I have an original Marilyn translite. In many respects it is superior to the CPR backglass I picked up when they did their first run (as discussed earlier in this thread, and elsewhere).

The current run of CPR are very good.

Excellent work

And their new Meteors PFs are much better than the original silk screened Meteor PF I bought from them (missing an entire set of score values!), and Mircos Taxi PFs are superior to the CPR PF I picked up (also in the silk screened first run). My timing with CPR products has not been good. Still, the products are much better than what I had to begin with. Oh yes, the Seawitch and Taxi plastics I have have fragile backsides, relative to the originals and the PPS version of the Taxi plastics. That said, I am honestly happy the Taxi glass and Meteor PFs were improved for you and others with the switch to digital. I can say that my EBD glass from CPR is excellent!

I've got my friend's CPR gold meteor with all the ugliness that I need to drop off for scores and clear. Still pissed about that one. I think it's ridiculous that cpr essentially said "welp, sorry." to those who ordered and didn't even try to make their playfield situations any better. With the amount of money he spent on this thing he shouldn't have to go fix it (and in some ways, he can't. But the scores can be, at least). JMO.

I'm tempted to limit my financial outlay and just use the Meteor PF as is. I'll call it the "CPR's Folly" Edition, or something like that. In the meantime, I'll keep enjoying Taxi and working on the EBD PF swap.

I hoping someone can help me with the wiring on my pop bumpers, which have never worked since I bought this project. More specifically, which side of the diode do the power(?) wires attach to? I'm referring to the two white-green wires that attach to the lower pop switch stack, the two white-orange wires that attach to the right pop switch stack, and the two white-black wires that attach to the left pop switch stack. Two of mine have the power wires attached to the silver band side of the diode, while the third one is attached to the black side of the diode. I hope this makes sense. For some reason I am unable to upload the pictures I took of my switch wiring. Thanks.

The non-band side of the diode should be connected to the white wire you are referring to. (I imagine the diode was installed backwards..However without a picture I cannot verify that.) The banded side should be on a lug by itself on the switch stack.

The Left Pop Bumper wire should be White/Brown as per the Switch Matrix for TAXI. (however there are often errors in the game schematics)

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As far as your pop bumpers not working First check to see if you have 25 Volts at either terminal of the solenoid lugs.

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Here's a pic of the inconsistency. Middle/lower pop is wired one way, the right is wired another (the diode related wires only) as mentioned before.

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So in the picture above, the right pop is wired correctly, and the center pop is wired incorrectly (as is the left pop). Thank you for that info, Pin-Pilot. Much appreciated.

Yes, replace the diodes with 1N4004 or 4007.

Do you have a volt meter to check if there is power at the solenoid lugs (25 Volts)?

Thanks for the additional attention, Pin-Pilot. I actually have a thread on this topic (pop and slings problem) in the alpha-numeric forum, but thought I would get the answer to the wiring question above more quickly in this thread. I do have a DMM and I have done some testing. So far, the problem has been isolated to a switch issue that is not on the MPU itself. Also, the pop switches were missing resistors (had diodes in their place) a problem which has now been rectified. Thanks to you, I believe I now have the correct wiring of the switches. All switch parts are new, by the way. Sadly, my main issue with the pops and slings remains. I am now searching for a short in a wire somewhere in the chain and working through Clay's guide regarding switch errors. I'm grateful for your help, but I'm also thinking forum etiquette dictates that I shouldn't take this discussion further in a second thread. That said, if you're in the mood for the challenge of solving a switch matrix issue with a village idiot like me as the go between, I'm happy to add more details.

I can look for the other posts and see if I can help out. However there is a LOT of talent here that has seen a lot more repairs and knows the systems well. I am sure your issues will get sorted out. No need to rehash your issues on a separate thread.

I'm pretty sure I used that hole. I don't remember doing any drilling

Nah. I do the same thing on my System 11 games. I never really understood the whole “drill a new hole” ordeal either.

The lock and lock plate are fairly easy to get. Action pinball has them.

The mechanism itself is simply a bent piece of piano wire held in the a piece of angle stock.

Pretty easy to duplicate if you get a sample from a blown out cabinet.

The hard part might be to borrow one to copy.

Maybe hit up Chris Hutchins at high end pins. He might have a spare or at least one to copy from.

After two weeks of error free play, a new gremlin has appeared. Soon after a one player game begins, additional players are automatically added to the game. At some point, the game resets. I have yet to open the game up, but my initial thoughts are as follows:

1) A problem with the 12v coming from the power supply (That said, it has a brand new Kohout power supply, so if there is a power drain, it's probably coming from somewhere else.)
2) A problem with the old bridge rectifier upstream of the power supply?
3) A problem with old (dried out caps) on the MPU (C30 and the other three nearby caps); the board has NVRAM installed and no signs of acid damage.
4) Perhaps a mechanical issue with start button is adding new players during the first ball played

If there are other (more) likely culprits, feel free to let me know. Thanks.

Any switch errors?

Excellent question, and I thank you for it, as I clearly overlooked it. The Switch Edges test offers up "07" which is the Slam Tilt. The problem is intermittent, as far as when it happens during a game, but it happens in every game. The switch gap looks fine, but I'll take a closer look at the wiring and probably replace the diode. Thanks for the response.

Not sure how this is going to help you, but I just had a similar problem where random switches on my white\brown row on my matrix would go off when I released my right flipper. It would make the game tilt randomly, among other things.

I fixed it by replacing the flipper coil. I am assuming one of the diodes was bad and that was somehow causing it, but I haven't investigated the bad coil yet.

Again, not sure if that helps you out at all, sounds like you have a different but similar problem, but I feel your pain having gone through this myself in the last couple days.

You say the problem is intermittent and happens every game. Do you do something that causes it to happen? Like, when you use the flippers or when the ball hits a popper or something like that? Or does the machine kick out the ball and while it is just sitting there doing nothing random switches go off?

You said that it adds extra players to the game? The Slam Tilt and the credit button (start button) are on the same column (Green\Brown) in the matrix. So is "High Score Reset" and the coin chutes. I wonder if you take the game off of Free Play mode and try it if it will randomly add credits to the game too.

So you might check the Green\Brown wire and J8 as well.

That's a nice little experiment. I'll try it.

No, that's why I called it intermittent, even though it happens every game now. Maybe "at random times" would have been a better way to phrase that. In any case, I have yet to identify a specific action that causes the effect. Marilyn simply says "Oooh, Taxi" and adds a player at various times throughout the first ball that is played. Eventually, she'll say "Oooh, Taxi" and the four player game will suddenly revert to a one player game, starting over with a score of zero, even though the current ball has been in play for a few minutes. Prior to this popping up yesterday, it had worked flawlessly for two weeks.

Thanks,
Steve

I guess what I was getting at is, does the issue occur while the ball is in play doing stuff (hitting switches, poppers, activating coils etc.) or does it happen if you start a game and just let the ball sit there in the trough doing nothing? (or both, I guess)

I'll go check...

Started a game and left the ball idle in the trough. No players added. Nothing. Nada.

Softly hit the plunger shot so the ball rolled a few inches and then returned to its starting point in the shooter lane. Three players were immediately added.

Next test game: Couldn't reproduce the player add with a similar plunger shot. Started playing and it seemed as if the left flipper button was adding players.

Third test game: Could not reproduce the left plunger connection, but three players were added during play. Seemingly in between switch contacts, but I could be wrong.

Turned off Freeplay.

Three more games started. The only difference was that only one player is added mid game in each of the three games, not four as it was during Freeplay.

I had a kind of similar issue. Turned out the fish paper on the start button was worn so it was shorting against ground (ground braid goes to the start button). I insulated but also removed the ground braid from the start button since it seems stupid to ground a plastic button.

So, this was MY problem. I took a look at the flipper coil I replaced a little more closely and as you can see both diodes are... bad. Somehow the leads have broken off (one looks burned). I am not exactly sure how this caused my problem, but somehow extra voltage was being fed into the white\brown row on my matrix. My only clue is that the switch that activates the flipper and the lane change switch (which is on that row) are right next to each other. So, IDK, arcing maybe? (I am sure someone better than me knows why) but that's what was doing it for me. It was also making lights on my machine randomly flicker. But the only switches that randomly fired were white\brown row switches.

You mentioned the slam tilt switch shows closed on the edge test? I would start around there. I would also check what ChrisPink25 said. Check around the other green\brown switches too.

You mentioned the left flipper in one of your tests seemed to add players? What if you leave the ball in the trough and spam the left flipper button a little? My issue was the right flipper, when I spammed the button, ball in play or not, the machine would tilt. Plus, the slam tilt switch is very near the left flipper. (but I am hyper focusing on that because it was my issue...)

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A bad/ broken diode for sure can cause these issues, good idea.