Excessive pop-up valve pressure, pop-ups not functioning?

[tgoviper]

Good evening, pool savants
Until about a week ago, my Caretaker 5-port valve worked great at operating the pop-up valves in the floor of the pool (around 22psi). One night I noticed none of the pop-up heads were raised. The pump (Pentair IntelliFlo) is functioning as it always has, and there's the same amount of pressure at the filter (Hayward S244T, 1 year old), approximately 30 psi when the pump is at 3100 rpm.
However, the pressure in the Caretaker is now spiking upto 40 psi and the pop-up heads don't raise up. I bought and installed a new rebuild kit a couple years ago. Do they go bad this quickly? I've taken apart the Caretaker this time and everything seems fine, the pistons don't seem worn out and the gears aren't rattling around or anything.

Any ideas? My sincere appreciation, in advance.

 

[jblizzle]

So the strainer mesh on the top of the dome was clean?

It is not possible for the pressure to be higher at the dome than what the filter is reading ... so I think at least one of your gauges is bad.

 

[tgoviper]

Yeah, nothing in the strainer mesh. It didn't make sense to me either that the pressure would be higher at the dome so I thought it was a bad gauge as well at first. When the dome PSI ramps up though, there are leaks at the junction at the top of the dome that aren't there at normal pressures.

I took off the joint that connects to the dome and ran the pump, water (a lot) flowed out normally. Could it be the gears inside are bad already?