When Beaky(Andy) comes to my place next, I will get him to look at my machine closely to look at what on your machine may be the problem. My gut feeling is that you definately have a problem on one of your boards which may require a fix. I had the same problem on my dirty harry, and I traced it to both a transistor on a board, and a melted short circuited problem with a flasher and its melted/damaged metal base.

I will ask Andy to do me a favour and look at my machine and the schematic. Where are u located ?