Just a quick repair on a Williams F-14 Tomcat. I had three set of flashers that were not working. The problems were similar, but each one was a little bit different. The main thing to check on these flashers are the bulbs along with the auxiliary board that has 4 ceramic resistors. These resistors have a tendency to break off.
Flasher 8
The first set of flashers that I repaired was the easiest. It had a broken resistor on it, and replacing it fixed the flashers.
Flasher 8 New resistor in place
Flasher 4
I checked the 4 resistors on the auxiliary board, and they were fine. I figured both bulbs had burnt out especially the one in the back of the playfield, which can be difficult to get to. There are two wingnuts that need to be removed along with the connector. I removed the board and tested the bulb, which to my surprise was good. I noticed that there was a broken trace on the board. Repaired that and replaced the other bulb (below the right targets) and the flashers now worked again. Note: resolder the header pins on the small board with the 5 lights.
Flasher 4 Burnt trace with jumper installed
Flasher 10
These flashers were locked on as soon as the game booted. I figured this was going to be a bad transistor, but was wrong. I pulled 1J-12 connector off the driver board and the flashers stayed lit. This told me that the problem wasn’t on the board, but on the playfield. I checked the auxiliary board and saw that there was a solder bridge between two traces along with broken resistors. I pulled the board and cleaned it up along with replacing the parts on it.
Locked on flashers Auxillary board. One resistor missing and two were broken. Solder bridge Resistors removed and board cleaned Board repaired
I was glad to get the flasher back up and working. It was nagging problem, but not an immediate need to get them fixed. The game does look a lot better with them working.
I did order the parts to install the originals that were removed from the game. This will be a project down the road.
