Bad Cats
Williams, 1989I have a recently purchased Bad Cats machine. It was working fine and then one day the doghouse kicker and the five and three drop targets quit resetting. The targets and the doghouse register when hit but the solenoids to kick the ball and reset the targets don't work. Can anyone help me trouble-shoot this problem?
The manual shows these three coils are fed power via a YEL-VIO wire. My guess is the wire broke at the beginning of the daisy-chain. Inspect each coil under the playfield and resolder that wire if necessary. If that doesn't pan out, you'll have to work backwards to the the Backbox Interconnect Board, checking for the YEL-VIO wire connections and see if you need to reflow the solder joints for those specific headers. Same goes for the Aux Power Board as you continue to work backwards.
Check the fuses (with a meter out of the machine) that are on that aux board.
If one is bad, need to see if one of those coils has a black wrapper. If so, it is burnt and likely have a bad transistor with it.
Thanks for the input. I've checked the YEL-VIO connections at the three coils and they all appear to be in good shape. I also looked at the fuses. It appears that fuse F4 is used for the YEL-VIO wires. I pulled the F4 fuse and it looks different that the other fuses. It has a coiled copper colored wire on one half and a single silver wire on the other half and they seem to be connected in the middle of the fuse by a glob of solder. I don't have a meter to check the fuse, so is there any other way to see if the fuse is bad or not?
If you're going to work on pinball machines, it's worth buying a meter, and some spare fuses to have handy.
Fuse F4 is also tied to the flippers, and the slingshots ... are they working okay? If they are, the problem isn't the fuse.
Bill
ufopinball know it has been a while but my Bad Cats just started acting up in a similar manner. Looks like you had some suggestions to check the coils but all of mine are working in the diagnostic test. When I play, the 3 bank, 5 bank, trash can kickout, and vary target are not registering. There is a five pin connector for the vary target under the pf and mine was hacked up (soldered wires and electrical tape holding it in place). The wires going to that connector are common in the problems that are not registering. Plan to repin that connector once I have the right connector. Is it possible that those problems are happening because that one connector is not connected?
Quoted from PinballManiac40:Always fix what you see wrong or burnt and go from there. You might be worried for nothing.
Been a while and thought I'd post this for anybody else having issues. Had a broken trace on the 5V and had to jump it.
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Fountain Valley, CA