First - Newbie here. My dad owned this White Water machine since I was 9 and I have always admired it. Recently, he gave it to me as a gift, but that gift came with a few problems. I have a computer technical background and a close friend of mine has an electrical background. Together, we are trying to fix the issues.

Problem: The flasher near the whirlpool keeps firing randomly and giving the player 50k points. Sometimes this doesn't happen at all, other times it happens non-stop from the moment you click the start button. The ball is traveling through the whirlpool just fine and is being identified by the optos in the whirlpool exit and the mine. It is causing major gameplay frustration because the scoring of points causes the second ball for whirlpool challenge and gold rush to not send.

Solution attempt 1: I spoke with someone over the phone who thought opto 87 was the problem, so we changed the opto board under bigfoot and are still experiencing the problem.
Solution attempt 2: Changed the optos in the mine (they were problematic anyway), cleaned the subway and cleaned the optos in the whirlpool exit (62).

After cleaning the subway and the optos at 62, the machine worked great for a few games. I let it sit to go let the dog out, when I came back in and pressed the start button, the whirlpool just kept going off. It shines the flasher directly behind the whirlpool and gives the player 50k.

Any help or direction would be appreciated.