Cyclone- I think I fried something.

[MameMaster!]

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I replaced my worn out flipper mechs on my Cyclone (I had rebuilt them about 2 years ago) with brand new replacements from pinballlife.com (they were the correct ones and the correct coils).

All went perfectly and they worked fine.

Pushing my luck, I also replaced the flipper leaf switches with brand news ones as well....all went well UNTIL I press both flippers at the same time.

I heard a hum....then the flippers went dead. Sure enough I blew the fuse. I replaced it and now the back board flasher are always on and the flippers still don't work.

Well actually the do "work" but not correctly. If I physically push the plunger in about half way the selnoid activates when I hit the flipper button but when it's in a normal position, it "tries" to activate but clearly doesn't have enough power to fire.

It kinda' just lightly buzzes and moves but doesn't actually activate.

Again- the back board flashers  are still on as of now.

I checked all of my soldering points, and double check all of the connections to make sure nothing is touching where it shouldn't but nothing obvious is jumping out at me.

Any suggestions?  

[MameMaster!]

I didn't replace the coils-- I replaced the entire mech with a brand new coil as below from pinball life.com:

 

Any other suggestions ? 

[ed12]

yup wired backward's
u have the :eos=end-of-stroke:switch,acting as the flipper button
before u go any futher open 1 side of the diode across the coils and chk for it to be shorted,then rem the white band is the cathrode side ie positve,then doulbe chk it from there,also make sure u are not shorting out the :eos: switch
for the back board light ,u could have sent a high voltage into the light matrix,
again look for a blown diode...a manual come's in handy right now
best of luck

ed

[MameMaster!]

Thanks for the suggestions...back to the lab! 

[ed12]

hi
i double chked your pic
u have a eos not even wired ?
the other dose not have the coil :break:wired
rem u are working with 2 coil's with in 1
1=high-power side
1=low power side
the high power side is your :pull-in:
the low power-side is your :hold:
the :eos: must be wired to the high power side
with williams and bally i have seem it hundered's of time's where ppl reverse this switch,thus fregging up there :matrix:

ed

[MameMaster!]

That photo isn't mine. Jim posted it. 

[MameMaster!]

Thanks for the suggestion!

Tonight I'm going to disconnect both flippers and see if the lights go off.

Assuming they do, I'll reconnect each flipper one by one and see if they work.

FINGERS CROSSED!! 

[smartbomb2084]

So what is up with that highjacked IPDB CYCLONE pic with a Series wound flipper coil on the right and a Paralell wound coil on the left?

How is that helping anyone?

[ed12]

what pinballjim posted
is a pic of a bally/william's
both are normal flipper coil's
ie high/low power
ie pull/hold
both have the matix switch and the eos switch
just thk the lord it is not a gottileb,or u would have a pile
of smoke instead of some simple damage >fuse/diode<

ed

[smartbomb2084]

The right flipper in the pic is a series wound coil. It has only ONE diode.

The left flipper in the pic is a paralell wound coil.  It has TWO diodes.

Save the schooling for some one else and use the best tool in your toolbox... YOUR EYES !!!!

Which one is correct?  According to the manual the left coil is the correct one.

[MameMaster!]

For those of you playing at home-- after many hours of trying to get it to work on my own I called in Ron of NYPinball.com. He's a good guy and thankfully lives really close.

Coming to my rescue- we learned the following:

I mis-wired the flippers (I reversed the wires) causing all of the following---
I burned out a fuse in the power supply (that I didn't notice)
I burned out all 4 diodes (two on each filpper)

Lessons learned-- go more slowly, and start with one flipper at a time. Most importantly, the replacement coils that you can buy are wired differently than the original coils (essentially they're backwards - BUT that doesn't necessarily mean you should reverse the wires-- that's what I did).

Ron and I kept burning out fuses and diodes until we had it all figured out.

Meh.

I was able to upgrade the flippers my my TOM without any issues, but I think that was blind luck.

At least its working now and I had an expensive lesson in diodes & wiring. Oh well.