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Road show fuse blowing - Argh I need help! FIXED

H

Hiro996

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10 Years
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Mar 24, 2013
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Hi all,

I have just restored my Road show pinball machine, got all excited about playing it, tested everything in test mode - all good, fired the first ball - still all good with everything working fine and the shaker vibrated the house just as it should(!) but then a few minutes in - bang! Fuse 104 blew and the machine reset itself.

A quick look in the manual revealed fuse 104 drives solenoids 9-16 but this is where it gets interesting (or rather odd!).

Solenoids 9 - 16 are described in the manual as driving Red and Teds various solenoids but after F104 blew both red and ted continued to work fine in test mode, instead solenoids 1-8 failed to work but the manual suggests these are controlled by F105 which is fine!

There are no repairs to the board changing the fuse circuit so I am at a loss as to why the wrong fuse seems to have blown unless my manual has a typo (which I doubt - it was sourced from IPDB).

I replaced the two transistors which are linked to the blowing fuse and still the fuse blows. I noticed the shaker just started to spin up when the second fuse blew so I unplugged it and stuck a new fuse in again, now it gets even more odd - according to the manual the shaker is on the F103 circuit - F103 has never blown and when F104 blows, the test mode reveals the shaker to still be running fine. But when I unplugged the shaker and fitted a new fuse everything appears to be fixed - I played the game for an hour with no issues so I plugged the shaker back in and F104 blew again as soon as the shaker was activated, even though F104 is not on the shaker circuit and again when I entered test mode, solenoids 1-8 were not working (due to the blown fuse) but the shaker worked fine!

I am now at a loss, could it be:
1. The shaker vibration causing two wires on the solenoid 1-8 circuit to short taking out fuse F104 (even though the manual states F105)
2. The shaker somehow over powers the F104 related circuit
3. Red and Ted (who already look very scary) are in fact alive and sabotaging the game?!

I'd also love confirmation re the F104 issue - can anyone confirm whether it drives 1-8 and not 9-16 on their machine - it's all very strange and driving me mad, any help would be gratefully appreciated!

Thanks

Kevin
 
Sounds like it's possible that a connector has been incorrectly put back on the wrong pins in the backbox.... Hence the wrong fuses being taken out...

Motor circuit uses J118, J122 and J107 (page 115/148 of the pdf) so I'd look there first then at the other connections to the driver board (page 144, 145 and 146 of the pdf).

Otherwise it might be the vibration causing the short. You could manually shake the machine or thump the sides to see if that is the case.
 
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Thanks @Moonraker . I forgot to say - I checked the connections and they are fine - also in test mode the correct solenoids fire in line with the test mode text. I will try manually shaking the machine as suggested.
 
those manuals are a real pain sometimes had exactly the same thing on a taf the other day blowing f104 solanoids 9-16 wire violet with orange tracer tested all coils on that circuit all fine put in new fuse blew instantly had a quick look about and the thing knocker coil looked suspect so disconnected new fuse in jobs a good one that coil is no 2 and the wire going to it is violet and yellow pain in the bum
 
Thanks @chris b .

I unplugged the shaker - all works fine and physically shook the machine - and the machine continues to run perfectly. Is there a way I can test the resistance of the motor?

It's still a mystery to me why the shaker motor causes the fuse to blow on a different circuit. When the fuse blows the machine resets, after resetting with the blown fuse still in place the shaker still works fine but coils 1-8 are out due to the fuse, how is it possible that the shaker blows a fuse on another circuit?
 
A stripped or bare wire touching somewhere it shouldn't? Follow the run on both circuits from a to z and look for possible snags etc? ( totally guessing btw!)
 
The issue is now fixed - thanks for all the assistance, much appreciated.

I removed the cover of the shaker with the intention of swapping it out to see if it was causing the problem as suggested. It was then that I noticed a wire to the game counter had been incorrectly routed inside the shaker cover - the motor paddles had stripped the wire and it was randomly shorting whenever the shaker span! This explains why activation of the shaker took out an unrelated fuse.

I repaired the wire and routed it correctly (outside the shaker housing!) and all is well.

Thanks again for the help everyone.
 
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