Tamiya Intermittent Flash
 

My M-26 has just started to flash about every other time I fire the main gun. Machine gun flashes all of the time. Is the flash unit getting weak, low battery, what do you think.

It is pretty common with the older generations of DMD/MFU “flash” systems like that the Pershing is using to either burn out the bulb or “flash” system or both. My M51 and M4 also use the older generation and both “flash” systems are no longer functional. It would be worth it for you to try a new flashbulb & wire set just to rule out if it is the bulb or “flash” system.

Yep. My Leopard did that until it quit working all together. I haven't bothered to fix it yet.

Most times it's the MFU flash circuit that has failed, not the actual flash unit. Tamiya is hard to deal with to get a replacement MFU and if it's older than 90 days forget about it. Unfortunately their customer service regarding their 1/16 tanks has gone pretty non-existent.

The nice thing about the Leopard is that you can buy the flash circuit as a spare part. Aside from the Pershing, the rest of my MFU's flash circuits don't flake out no matter the age.

Now that I'm back in Singapore, I have had to send my MFU (incidentally a Pershing MFU as well) via the local distributor back to Japan. Some months later, it came back fixed and without charge.

Well, no good deed goes unrewarded so I ended up buying the Abrams kit from them when it was first released, instead of going the usual eBay/webshop route.

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm in the process of a move and just found the box that my battery chargers were in last night. Charged the battery and it is now working each time.

The fix isn’t too difficult if you can solder, a chap who fixed my one which had failed has done me a diagram, I’ll dig it out later

Thanks, I can use it if it does in fact die. No hurry.

If you think the bulb has failed keep in mind it probably can be replaced with a surplus camera flash. There are three wires, one to each end of the tube (that's one and two) and one that should reside or lay on the glass portion of the bulb (three), that is the trigger, It should not touch either end of the glass tube metal parts (something to check). Do not handle when power is on, you may get a real bad OUCH! Power down and wait several minutes.

Thank you for the information.