This is an interesting one... can't say I've ever had this happen previously...

I was playing TSPP and my left upper playfield flipper stayed engaged. I powered the game off and back on... the flipper coil immediately engages as soon as high power is set to the playfield. If I cut high power off the flipper coil disengages. Needless to say, the coil gets pretty hot.

Is this a sign that the flipper coil has gone bad? That would be a new one for me, but it does make sense. I have owned this game for 10 years and I'm quite sure that is an original coil - 2004ish. If it isn't a bad coil, then what could it be?

Thank you!

Ah a backbox part. Good suggestion... I had just fixed the 5v connection - connection had come undone and the game was down for a few months. However, knowing how to test a transistor is beyond my skill level.

Thank you that is good advice. It is interesting. When I first noticed, I thought the flipper was just stuck (mechanical), but as soon as I turned the game off it immediately went to rest. You know how you can open the coin door and it moves full power to low power? That rests the flipper. I can then push in or pull out the full power thing (do we call that a knob or what?) and the flipper reacts.

So yes, I'm 100% in on it being electrical. I had a 5v issue that I fixed earlier today - wire had become removed from the connector. I'm wondering if I did something wrong when setting that back up that lead to this issue. I played for probably about 45-60 minutes before the flipper problem presented itself.

I'm going to take the game to a friend's house tomorrow. My length of service in pinball and the number of games I have owned FAR outpaces my ability to work on electrical issues.

Excellent. I used to live in Newnan. Peachtree City is very, very nice. You should like it there very much.

I dropped TSPP off at a friend's house this evening. He should be able to fix it. I spent about 3.5 hours on just getting the 5v power to connect again - probably should have been a 10 minute task for someone with the proper skill. I'm concerned something I did there caused the other damage.

The flipper is now fixed. However, the game still has a random ball kickup problem. Current status = stumped on that one.

What happens...

Playing the game and almost randomly you'll get a ball kicked up into the shooter lane. Sometimes it's just one. Other times you may get four. You may play 5-6 games without this happening and then it may happen over and over again in the same game. I thought maybe it was the opotos in the trough but those are nice and clean - didn't help any.

I thought it may be a shorted switch somewhere as it does tend to happen when the ball in play is on the left side of the playfield - like the cleatus kid loop and pop bumpers. But I tested those switches 100s of times without getting a ball to popup.

Has anyone had a similar issue? What was wrong? Or what do you think may be wrong here?

They were cleaned and reseated. I do notice that if I put an index card over one side, that it does trigger a ball kickout. So the idea that the trough boards are the problem does make sense.

TSPP is an older game where the balls have switches and then there are optos in the position at the kickout.

It's not expensive... may be worth it just to buy and see if it fixes the problem.

https://www.pinballlife.com/opto-transmitter-and-receiver-board-set-for-data-eastsegastern.html

Everything has been fixed.

Upper left flipper stuck on = transistor on the board... forget which number but replacing it corrected the issue.
Extra ball kick = very interesting. It was NOT the trough opto boards. It turned out to be bad soldering on the same circuit causing noise. I had replaced a few coils and switches ten years ago when I got the game. Apparently my skills were not up to par as most of what I did then was now falling apart. Redoing all of that (thanks Bob!) fixed the issue.

Extra bonus:
The Homer had has never worked during my decade of owning the game, another replaced transistor solved that issue too.

Game is back home and running well. Thank you everyone on here for your help.