Cyclone lighting

[Angry_Radish]

Continuing to dig into my Cyclone issues, I'm currently tackling lighting..

After replacing bulbs, I have determined my backglass GI lights do not work, and the left side of the PF GI lights do not work as well as the under playfield tunnel lighting for the boomerang.

I've tracked down the backglass GI lights to a bad driver transistor (Q16), but the PF lighting has me stumped.

From what I can tell in the manual the playfield GI lighting is controlled via 1 relay and driven by Q9.
I swapped the relay with the other of the same part# (there are 2 of the same relay boards under the PF) and the problem didn't swap or change.

If there is only 1 point of control for the entire GI for the playfield and one side works, what should my next course of action be?

 

[ELutz]

Have you checked over the connectors? All pinballs are notorious for burning up their GI connectors. And don't forget the fuses. Once the GI gets split into different "chains", each "chain has it's own fuse.

I just pulled my schematics...let's see...

GI juice leaves the transformer and enters the power supply board at J9...it leaves at J8.
From here we go down to the interconnect board...entering at J6...and leaving at J9 and J7. The four fuses on this board (F1/F2/F3/F4) are for the different GI "chains".

Backbox GI goes out J7.
Playfield GI goes out J9.

After the interconnect board, the GI goes to it's relays...and then to it's lights.

I'd pull that interconnect board and look for burnt connectors (or massive hackery...not uncommon).

Edward

 

[Angry_Radish]

Thanks for the reply and for taking the time to look at the schematics!

I'll take a look when I get back home and pull that board, I was discounting the boards further up the chain because of the entire side of the PF GI working and the relay board being ruled out.

Bear with me, this is my first SS pin and my only previous experience has been on EM machines

 

[ELutz]

The interconnect board breaks the GI circuit down into four lines. It can be different from machine to machine. I've seen the backbox on it's own line...broken down into two lines...upper and lower...or right and left. Same with the playfield...right and left...or upper and lower...even upper, middle, and lower. To make it even more confusing, sometimes the backbox and the playfield will share a line. And also, the coin door lights are thrown in there somewhere. The easiest way to sort it out is to look at wire colors on the GI bulbs. There's only four...and each line has it's own fuse...

Brown & brown/white = F1
Yellow & yellow/white = F2
green & green/white = F3
purple & purple/white = F4

Solid color wires are the returns. They enter the interconnect board, pass through, and exit....heading straight to it's associated lights (Edit: this line might go to the relay first...I can't remember). The stripped wires are the ones that are fused. They enter the interconnect board, go through their fuse, and exit.

Edward

 

[Angry_Radish]

Damn, now I want to leave work early!

Problem is, I left early yesterday to figure out the back-box lighting