It sounds as if your Winkie target likely sits too low in the down position in relation to the surface of the playfield. There is a screw at under the playfield that allows for adjusting the height. I added some plumbers tape to the threads of the screw to keep it from lowering again.

Of course, you likely have to replace your coil, transistor and possibly the fuse before this info will matter.

Even so I wouldn't think it would hold the coil on. Thats typically a short pulse measured in milliseconds.

I'm thinking there was an issue with the driver transistor locking on. Have not yet heard of it on WOZ but it is a pretty common thing to have happen. Just usually when they lock it's permanently. Whats wierd is that he was mentioning that it only has happened a couple times and the ball search releases it.

BTW... What software version are you running?

I've seen this a few times now on several different WoOz. Really not sure why software is allowing this to happen, but it is.

Ensure the DT switch is adjusted properly.

--
Rob Anthony
Pinball Classics
http://www.LockWhenLit.com
Quality Board Work - In Home Service
borygard at gmail dot com

I had a coil lock on due to a bad transistor. I sent the board back to JJP for repair. You can talk to JJP staff to diagnose if you have a multimeter. If you just replace the coil stuff cut on pinball with playfield raised, door shut and visually see if coil locks again. Immediately cut off pin if coil locks. I think it costs about $85 for main board repair.

This will sound hard to believe to those of us who have been fixing pins as long as I've been, but whereas in the past a melted coil sleeve would absolutely mean a shorted FET and perhaps damage back into the board, on WOZ I have actually seen coils smoke without dead shorting the transistor. Check the board with a multimeter if you have one before pulling the board out. The transistor actually may have survived.

Cool is way cooked. Hope the transistor is okay.

The big wide lug gets the wide connector originally light blue with double wires.

If the coil doesn't have a diode then it doesn't matter which wire is on which lug, unless there is a diode in-line with one of the wires somewhere.

The original way JJP was installing the wires was with the slide-on connectors. They changed it around 2014 to soldering the wires on the lugs to be a more reliable connection.

You may need to bend the drop target bracket just a hair to get the target to sit level with the playfield in the down position. It should be level on the front and back.

Exact same happened to me a couple times on my new WoZ, not too long ago - completely melted down the coil in the end. JJP support (Victor/Frank) sent me a whole new drop down target assembly, which required a bunch of soldering in the middle of the playfield of course since there are no connectors for this in there. I tried to suggest that perhaps the coil should not be repeatedly trying to push the target up if it is stuck to avoid melting/frying/catching fire/etc but they did not seem terribly interested in that at the time. (not enough reports of this i think was the response?!) I have since suggested it again a couple days ago. I have heard from someone else who said they immediately open the coin door or turn the machine off if this happens so as not to melt it down, but this is really a terrible solution, and I don't think its right that we would have to "babysit" our machines while anyone plays, keeping an eye out on the target ready to open a coin door or turn it off. This is clearly a defect in the handling of the machine and easily fixable through a code patch. I'd honestly suggest we all speak up on this to get it addressed.

For what its worth, my target is as flush with the playfield as possible, but the top is slightly angled forward so it can't be perfect. Definitely correct that a carefully balanced ball will stick there, although thats not how mine happened, it was simply a case of bad timing in the middle of the multiballs.

It has been well over a year since I did it, but I am fairly certain I had the same problem when I received my game and all it took to fix the level of the target to the playfield was to bend the drop target bracket just a tiny bit.

As for the code and burning up coils, I recommend e-mailing Keith Johnson at Jersey jack.

Yep, that's probably the best contact. Support is typically more interested in solving the problem immediately at hand, not always root cause analysis and they might not pass it along unless it's occurring with a certain amount of frequency. I think since this sounds like something that can be prevented via a code update, Keith would be much more interested, especially if we can include some sort of evidence along with it. I'll see if I can reproduce on my WOZ tonight (not as far as burning my coil, but to demonstrate the trap).

Good news for those worried about having to babysit their games for this (albeit rare) occurrence. I haven't reviewed the video yet and may still shoot a slow motion shot to add to it, but this does not appear to be a software issue. While I can not completely rule it out given my limited testing here is what I found:

1. This can really only possibly happen during multi-ball because the game only resets the Winki with a ball secured in the castle VUK hole.

2. If you by chance have a ball directly over the Winki while it is resetting, each reset fire counts as a shot towards knocking down the Winki's.... What happens is that it fires reset, senses Winki down, counts a hit, and resets again (between 1 - 3 times depending on how many Winki's are up). This is of course dependent on a properly adjusted Winki down switch.

So at MOST, the coil will only fire up to a maximum of 3 times rapidly. For the coil to continuously fire there would need to be something wrong with the game.

I think it could be a bad switch, but even then the delay between fires SHOULD give the ball plenty of time to escape.. it's fast but not THAT fast. Also, if this is happening it would be a very loud and apparent. So given that, there very well could be something wrong with the driver board to cause it to hold on the coil like that.

Wait... correction... I did just replicate it... details soon, this is a software bug.

Dang my giant hand is in the way of the shot so I will have to try another angle but this appears to be what is happening... now that I think about it there may be another way to replicate this scenario, and it *might* be possible with one ball.

Here is what I observed:

1. Ball goes into VUK
2. VUK up kick fails due to unstable ball (hits the wire and bounced back towards Winki)
3. Winki gets knocked down around the exact same time and the failed up kick ball rolls over the Winki just as it's resetting.

The result is a ball locked over the Winki and I could clearly hear an electrical hum from the coil. It ran for a good second before I quickly knocked the ball out of there, but it's clearly possible. Will try to nail down the conditions with a better angled video.

Alight got a nice clear video of it... going onto youtube now.

Weird thing is that this time I managed to capture it with the exact same circumstances that in the past resulted in a normal (non-locking) reset. I'm kind of wondering if perhaps my switch needs to be adjusted now....

Anyway... maybe what the circumstance is is that if the Winki down has too much stroke past the switched position, it will never reset high enough with a ball there to clear the switched position and the coil will hold. The thing is that this is a very minute adjustment... so even if it is a switch adjustment issue, I think the software should be able to account for it by simply ALWAYS pulsing the reset and not relying on the Winki down switch position... possibly with a short (200ms or so) delay before reading the switch again.

I have not yet sent it to him, but will do. I'm waiting for Youtube to cancel the video stabilization "fix"

Awesome checking and video there. Are you able to email that straight to Keith?

Definitely needs to be fixed somehow with certainty - there is a potential for continued power to the coil melting it down until power is removed by an operator who knows what is going on, which is quite possibly (likely?) after damage has occurred and hopefully before a fire is started. At the very least there needs to be a software safety that disengages it after some attempts. Better if it can go into some kind of self-check mode after that where it does a quick check after a bit to see if it has freed up so that it can resume normal operation from the "degraded" mode it was put in by the safety.

Thanks! I believe I am... at least it didn't get bounced back to me like my email to Jen... congrats to her BTW!

Yeah, exactly my thought too elf... in a home environment there is a good chance it will be caught and stopped before doing damage... but on location there is nobody to stop it and it will have to wait for ball search. If it's enough to melt the sleeve and the wrapper, it wouldn't take much longer to start a fire. I would hope something else would blow (ideally fuse) by that point though.

It scares me even at home because I myself am not always watching or even at home when someone else is playing. When the meltdown happened it left a burnt smell in the room that lingered for days.

Oh yeah, that smell is horrible. We had to evacuate our building a day one time after a small electronics fire.

The guy who worked in the cube next to me was preparing to call in a warranty repair on a failed UPS and powered it up to check for any error codes. The next thing I heard was "OH S***!!!" And I saw him running out with the UPS, fire was shooting out the exhaust fan and belching out a thick black smoke. He got it up the stairs and out of the building where it died.

The funny part was the next day people in another department questioned the UPS delivery driver asking him if he was alright because they heard he had caught on fire.

Nice detective work! If all bug reports were this detailed, a Software Engineer's job would be much easier.

Thanks for the thread. Went to a friends house to setup and play his new WOZ. Second game in we smell smoke and you guessed it.....burnt winkie drop coil.

Brand new game...this need to be addressed by JJP.

Bad coil and bad transistor driving it.

LTG : )

Q421 IRL540 Page C-100 and Page D-123 in the manual.

LTG : )

Trips the drop target for when the game wants to knock it down for you. Not used often in the game.

Knocks the drop target down.

Yes. Check Youtube for short videos on how to test a transistor.

LTG : )

I have a 6 month old RR and the Winkie Target stays down all the time. What should I look for that would cause the target to stay down at all times?

Switch at the bottom of the mech is loose, fell off, or needs adjusting. So the game doesn't know if the drop target is up or down.

LTG : )

Not too much to it. Coil shoves it up, coil can knock it down. Be sure that switch is working properly so one of the coils doesn't continue to fire.

Then the transistor that drives it. Be sure it is soldered in good. And check continuity of each leg to a spot on the board away from where the legs are soldered to the board. Losing across or through board continuity can muck up the works. A weak, broken or cracked trace to one of the transistor legs can be hard to see and cause problems.

$80 a coil sounds excessive.

LTG : )