Hello all, I have been trying to sort out a problem with my Whirlwind. Two of the kickers are weak, the shooter lane kickout is weak and sometimes struggles to serve the ball into the shooter lane. Also the cellar kicker is weak and sometimes isn't able to get the ball out of the cellar until the second kick after it falls back in. The problem seems to be intermittent, the kicker is always weak but sometimes it will be able to get the ball out of the cellar 7 or 8 times in a row before it has to kick twice to get it out.

The cellar kicker assembly is new (new coil as well) and I have adjusted the alignment so it should be hitting the ball squarely. I checked the wires that go to the kicker coil itself and the solder joints are good. I reseated the wires in the connector for the interconnect board, no effect.

Any ideas where to look next?

Sleeves are all new. I thought the same thing as you but they are on different circuits as far as I can tell.

I’m going to show my schematics ignorance here. So the power wire is the violet/yellow and not the brown/blue?

Ok well that changes things a bit. I’ll check all the solenoids on that power wire and see if there’s a weak solder joint or something. Thanks!

Update: I pulled the aux power board and reheated/reflowed solder on each header pin. I did not see any obvious cracked joint at J12 pin 6.

I checked voltages at each coil with the game in all lamps mode and got good voltages at each coil. All solder joints seem ok.

Any idears?

Interconnect board is brand new. I assumed that would mean the solder joints are ok. Should I still check it?

There were several headers that had been badly soldered on before and half the GI was out. I tried replacing the header and turned out to be a bad trace. Since there was damage elsewhere as well I decided to buy a new board.

I haven’t done anything to J5 and J6. Should I reheat those also?

No headers were messed with on the MPU, just the interconnect which was later replaced with the new one. The connectors to J-5 and J-8 are still the stock IDC connectors. I suppose I could change those to molex but wouldn’t I see a drop in voltage if I had a bad connection there?

Yes I have it. J5 and J8 are both stock headers and look ok on the old board. Most of the damage was at J6.

The interconnect board is brand new and the issue was occurring prior to the new board as well so I don't think it's the board.