The issue is: pistons powered in certain way don't act at all for no reason i can understand.
On the attached screenshot i showed some concraptions that uses very specific way for powering (when you place a block in front of piston, it pushes
that block across, making redstone powered for short amount of time (too short to unpower redstone torch))
if i'd attempt to explain this behaviour it would be that redstone that goes trough piston that unpowers it stops redstone giving block updates to next pistons (but still will power things like lamps)
On screenshot i marked pistons that got activated and those that didn't

link to save file https://www.dropbox.com/s/zzvqz6u1l251eo5/piston%20bug.rar?dl=0