The subject of degreasing vintage slot machine parts is not a complicated topic. There are several ways to go about it depending upon the equipment at your disposal, but essentially the basic process is the same. You need some sort of solvent, a way to immerse the individual parts, a couple of hand-held wire brushes and some good, old fashioned elbow grease.

There are a ton of commercial degreasing products that you can find at your local hardware or auto parts store, and they all generally work pretty well. In a pinch you can use spray-on oven cleaner or even dishwashing detergent, but typically the commercial products will be both cheaper and more effective. You can often buy the degreaser in a concentrated form and mix it with water to the strength needed for your particular job. Many modern degreasers are also biodegradable, making them easy to dispose of once the job is done.

For small parts, carburetor cleaner is an ideal solvent for removing old grease, and you can get it in a paint can with a built-in parts basket. Carburetor cleaner is pretty toxic stuff, however, and you may end up with a disposal problem once it is loaded up with grease. Generally you cannot pour it down the drain safely.

If you have access to a parts washer, that’s most definitely the easiest way to go.  The photo to the right is one of the basic models from Harbor Freight.  Just a note about Harbor Freight: Many people dislike Harbor Freight because of their cheap, imported tools. Although I don’t shop for heavy-duty tools at Harbor Freight, they are a great source for inexpensive (read disposable) tools and miscellaneous supplies. If you have one of their showrooms near you, pay them a visit and check out their stock. They generally have at least one parts washer on display. With one of these washers, you can load up the basket with many slot machine parts, then use the built-in pump to recirculate the degreaser/solvent over the parts while you do something else. This is a very easy and effective way to go about degreasing, and the washers come in multiple sizes and prices with small models starting at less than $50.

If you don’t have a parts washer, though, you can still get the job done. Get a large plastic tub or bucket, drop in your parts and then cover them with degreaser. Let them soak, stir them around from time to time, and use a wire brush or a stiff plastic bristle brush to attack the grease. This may take a while, but it works just fine.

After you’ve gotten rid of the grease, it’s usually a good idea to rinse the parts thoroughly, and possibly even clean them with mineral spirits to get rid of any residue left from the degreaser depending on your next course of action. Generally you are going to follow up your degreasing processes with some sort of rust removal and rust protection, and you certainly don’t want any residue interfering with your rust prevention efforts.

As you can see, this particular part is already missing from the handle-side of the machine (it was in the cash box when I bought the slot, so at least I won’t need to find a replacement.) On the other side, you can see the part in question at the top of the cabinet. It’s secured with a screw and a carriage bolt. While we’re at it, we’re also going to remove the parts indicated by the other arrows. The bottom part is a locking bar that keeps the mechanism base plate in place (held onto the cabinet again by a screw and a carriage bolt) , and the middle part is a very simple holding device that keeps the locking bar out of the way when you are removing the mech from the case. I’m not going to photograph these parts separate from the cabinet since they are all very simple and self-explanatory. I’m removing all of these parts from both sides of the cabinet.

Next, I’m going to remove the armor plating from the non-handle side of the cabinet.

This is a simple part that was designed to inhibit cheating, making it harder for someone to drill a hole in the side of the cabinet and use a wire to stop the clock, trip the jackpot or otherwise manipulate the mechanism. It’s easy to remove, but depending on the screws left in the cabinet you may have to remove a few.

With the armor plating removed, we’re down to bare wood on this side of the cabinet.

At the very top of the cabinet in the photo above, you can see one last metal part attached to the cabinet side. This is another security feature, and is held in place by one or two screws. I’m going to remove it now, although some people advise leaving it in place to add some structural integrity to the cabinet side for later when we separate the sides from the base. In reality, that’s probably a better approach, so let your best judgment guide you.

Now we’ll move along to the other side of the cabinet, where we’ll find all of the handle hardware.

The handle starting lever needs to come off, and it’s secured to the case by a spring and to the pump linkage by a cotter pin (or in this care, a bent nail.) It’s also secured to the handle itself by a large nut in the center. Please also note the arrow above that points to a carriage bolt. This doesn’t need to be removed just yet, but it’s important to note that it is a shorter carriage bolt than many on the machine. The handle starting lever must be able to clear this bolt/nut in order to work, so remember that for later.

The handle starting lever is missing a small dog and the related spring, but luckily I already have a spare.

Moving along, let’s remove the handle starting lever bracket assembly and the handle arm bushing.

In the photo above you can see the three screws that connect these two parts together. If you haven’t already removed the short carriage bolt I mentioned above, you need to remove it now. These parts are generally very greasy, so act accordingly.

Here’s the cabinet with those parts removed.

Now we’re going to look at the front of the cabinet and talk about a few parts.

We’re going to be removing the sub-base plate next, which is the large cast iron plate that the mechanism sits on when it is in the case. This part is secured to the bottom of the case by four carriage bolts, two on each side of the cabinet. You should be able to find them easily, but the sub-base is also connected in other places. The two brackets pictured above (one installed, the other just laying in place) are the ones we discussed when removing the lower front casting. They don’t need to be removed in order to get the sub-base out, but I wanted to document them so that you could see where they are supposed to be installed. Also, take a look at the coin cup and cover. They are connected to the sub-base plate by two screws and rectangular washers identified below.

Lastly, the sub-base plate is sometimes connected to other parts of the cabinet by wood screws as pictured below.

Once you get all of these screws, bolts and such out of the way, the sub-base plate should lift right out.

Here’s what the cabinet looks like with the plate removed:

At this point we want to remove the pump and related linkage parts. Here’s what they look like still mounted to the cabinet:

The easiest thing to do here is to remove the pump from it’s mounting bracket, and then disassemble the linkage parts. The pump is held to the bracket by a couple of screws.

There’s one last piece remaining on the machine, held in place by a carriage bolt.

With these parts removed, you can either remove the handle mounting bracket now, or leave it on the cabinet base to provide the cabinet with some added rigidity when we remove the sides. I’m going to leave it in place for now. With this piece removed, the armor plating will be free to come off, and the top rail will also be accessible. I’m not going to photograph those parts since removing them is pretty much the same process that we did for the other side.

Next we’ll tackle the coin cup and cover.

There’s a screw in the back of the coin cup cover that needs to come out, and there may be other screws in more obvious places, but all of these screws should be easy to locate and remove.

That leaves just the coin cup and related molding, pictured below.

These parts are secured to the cabinet base with a couple of screws, so you’ll have to tip the cabinet up to get to the underside. In this particular case, however, there’s a bit of a surprise waiting for me.

First off, the cabinet base has split and separated at a point right behind the coin cup hardware. I was expecting this, so no big deal there, but it’s also lost some of its thickness at some point and been glued to some sort of fiberboard base. This is not a good thing, since that can’t really be refinished. In addition, someone has cut a very ragged hole in the base itself. You sometimes see this on some vintage machines for a couple of reasons. Some operators would cut this kind of hole to correspond to a hole in whatever stand they were using for the machine and hang a cash bag instead of using a cash box. Other times the operator would cut a hole and use it for hardware that would lock the machine to a stand as a security measure. In either case, this sort of modification is known by the technical term “crap.” Here’s what the remaining portion of the base looks like with the loose piece put in place, and with the fiberboard removed:

It looks like the base may have sustained some water damage at some point, and that might be the reason for the fiberboard addition.

There are a couple of paths I could take on this restoration, given what we now know about the base. I could glue the cabinet base parts back together and cut a new piece of thin wood to take the place of the fiberboard, but then I’d have to deal with the hole somehow. I could buy a whole new cabinet, or just a cabinet base (both of which are readily available.) I’m not going to decide just yet, however, since I still need to get the cabinet sides separated from the base. If the sides give me trouble or reveal more surprises, then I might need to get a whole new cabinet. Hopefully, though, I’ll just have to worry about the base. We’ll be talking more about the cabinet in our next chapter.

We’re going to start by removing the escalator, which is really simple.

The escalator is essentially the part of the slot machine that accepts coins, makes sure that they are the correct denomination, rejects slugs and determines if the player is using checks. We’ll be disassembling it later, but right now we just want to remove it from the top front casting. It’s held in place by three screws denoted by arrows in the photo above. You might want to save the middle screw for last, just to keep the escalator from swinging out of place while you are removing the screws. Outside of the case, the escalator looks like this:

You occasionally see some strange things when looking at escalators. They really aren’t that tough to get working correctly, but some people are lazy. More about that later.

With the escalator removed, we can now get to a couple of pieces of glass on the front casting.

Now, removal of the frames identified above is pretty simple, but you do need to be careful with the glass when you remove the frames or else the glass will fall and break, giving you another item to replace. Often you will need to replace the glass anyway, but there’s no point in being careless. Some people prefer to leave the frames in place, remove the top casting and then deal with the frames with the casting resting flat. Honestly, that’s probably a better approach, but since I removed the frames at this point that’s what I photographed.

In the photo above you can see that someone has used strips of paper/cardboard as shims to separate the three pieces of glass from the reel windows, and this is pretty typical. Some people tape around the edge of the glass to space it out and keep it from rattling, and generally I think that’s a good idea. We’ll worry about that later, when it comes time to reassemble the case. All of the glass is pretty scratched up, and will probably need to be replaced. There’s nothing magical about the glass, and you can get any glass shop to cut you replacements for a small amount of money. If they don’t have the specific thickness you need, sandwiching a couple of pieces together to get the right thickness is a viable option.

For now, let’s wrap the various pieces of glass in paper or rags to keep it safe and move along to the removal of the top front casting.

In the photo above you can see that the top front casting is secured in six places. There are two carriage bolts on each side that secure the casting to the sides of the cabinet, plus a pair of screws/nuts that attach it to the bottom front casting. In the photo you can also see that the casting is damaged at the point where lower right carriage bolt is located. This isn’t a huge deal from the perspective of keeping the top front casting on the machine, but it’s definitely not optimal. While not a big enough flaw to justify replacing the casting, it might warrant a repair. As we delve further into the disassembly of the case and cabinet, we’re going to end up with a lot of carriage bolts, so we need to be sure to save them along with the related nuts.

There’s also another situation that I discovered while removing the top front casting, but it will be easier to see a bit further down. For now, let’s take a look at the casting after it’s been removed.

Looking at the arrows above, we can see the damage to the lower right “ear” that is supposed to receive the carriage bolt. We can also see that the two screws intended to secure the top casting to the bottom casting have been bent under rather than going through holes on the bottom casting. These will need to be cut off and replaced… no way around that. In the above photo you can also see the various screws and related hardware that secure the decorative elements found on the front of the machine to the top front casting. There’s really no point in detailing the removal of each of these elements since their removal is really straightforward… just unscrew the screws, remove the elements, and keep the screws/washers with their respective parts.

Here’s what the casting looks like from the front:

Now we need to remove the bottom front casting, which should be really simple at this point.

The bottom front casting is secured to the sub-base plate (or should be) by a couple of brackets as indicated by the arrows above. In this case, only one of the brackets is actually in place and secured to the sub-base. Also, if you look at the top of the casting to the right of the jackpot, you can see one of the places that the casting should have been connected to the top front casting by those bent-over screws, but now the story is becoming clear… the “ears” that should have received those screws are broken off. Now, I don’t know for certain, but I’m assuming that someone didn’t know what they were doing, tried to reassemble the case at some point, and just forced the top casting into place which bent the screws and broke off the ears on the bottom front casting.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I missed this defect when I was examining the machine before buying it, and it’s exactly the sort of thing I should have been looking for. On the brighter side, however, I was already expecting to replace this casting anyway, just because it doesn’t have the posts necessary to install a gold award dispenser. It’s very likely that the existing casting isn’t original to the machine anyway. I’ll probably have this casting repaired, if possible, for use on another machine at some point in the future.

For now, though, let’s just get the casting free. A long screwdriver can easily access the screws holding the brackets to the front casting, and once they are removed the casting should lift right out.

In the photos above, you can see several things. First, the arrows show us the various screws that secure the jackpot assembly to the casting. Removing it will be our next task. Next, we can see the broken ears we’ve been discussing to the right and left of the jackpot assembly in the second photo. There’s no point in crying about that at this point, however, so let’s remove the screws and get the jackpot free of the casting.

Well, this is technically a jackpot, but it’s missing virtually all of the important parts. This isn’t a surprise… I knew the condition of the jackpot going in. Later on we’ll be looking at the jackpot in more detail.

We left something behind when we removed the jackpot, however, and that’s another piece of glass and some related hardware. With the jackpot assembly gone, the glass and front spacer will lift right off.

Well, this is just nasty. The glass has been painted black at some point to cover the non-functional jackpot. The front piece is rusted and grimy. It also looks like someone painted at least part of the machine white at some point and didn’t bother to remove the glass or frame before doing so. The glass is a total loss, but we might be able to save the other piece.

As with the top casting, there are a few decorative pieces mounted on the bottom front casting, and these can be removed in the same manner. Just be sure to keep all the screws straight.

Next we’ll start removing the cabinet hardware.

]]> http://www.slotrestoration.com/2010/02/22/front-casting-and-related-parts-removal/feed/ 12 http://www.slotrestoration.com/2010/01/30/horizontal-fingers-and-payout-slides/ http://www.slotrestoration.com/2010/01/30/horizontal-fingers-and-payout-slides/#comments Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:42:00 +0000 Slotter http://www.slotrestoration.com/?p=17 [...]]]> The last parts left connected to the base plate are all related to the payout system. A word of caution before we proceed: As we remove the horizontal fingers and the payout slides, it’s important to keep them in order just like we did for the vertical fingers a few chapters ago. We’re going to try to remove the entire horizontal finger assembly as one unit, but if it becomes necessary to dismantle it I’m going to thread a piece of wire through the parts to keep them in order. The same thing goes for the payout slides.

Anyway, let’s get to work.

Here we see the horizontal fingers and the payout slides. We can go ahead and disconnect the large springs for the payout slides and the small springs for the horizontal payout levers at any time.

The photo above shows the first part we’ll be removing. Since the springs for the coin slides are connected to it, we need to go ahead and slip them off of the ears on the timing lever bracket. Once the springs are free, we can unscrew the two screws pointed out above to remove the part.

You’ll notice that there is a partial date printed on this particular piece, but that will not always be the case. Sometimes when you tear into an old machine you find bits of information like this, which is sometimes useful but often confusing.

The part in the photo above can be removed at this point, although it is probably easier to wait until the coin slides are removed. I chose to remove it now, so that’s what the photos reflect. It’s secured by a shoulder screw visible in the photo above, plus a spring that is attached to the underside of the base plate.

The safety slide lever assembly is the closest thing an antique slot machine has to a pinball machine’s “tilt” mechanism. When we remove the payout slides you will be able to see the safety slide itself, which is really nothing more than a thin piece of metal with a hole in it. It its normal position, it allows coins to pass down through it and out of the mechanism into the payout chute. If the machine has been jarred during its cycle, however, the lever trips and the slide moves backwards to prevent coins from passing through.

The entire safety slide/lever mechanism is sometimes called the “non-beating” mechanism for obvious reasons. Although these are relatively minor parts, they sometimes cause problems. If the small spring attached to the safety slide lever breaks or loses tension, or if the lever gets generally gummed up, the safety slide can travel backwards on every pull of the handle, preventing the machine from paying off. For this reason, if you have a machine that won’t pay off at all you should probably spend a bit of time checking to be sure that the lever travels freely and that the attached spring returns it to its proper position.

Here’s a view from underneath the base plate:

Once the shoulder screw is removed and the spring is disconnected the lever can be removed, although it takes a bit of maneuvering to get it out from under the coin slides. For this reason, you may want to leave it in place for now and remove it later.

Next, we’re going to remove the horizontal fingers and the related bracket as one piece if possible. If you haven’t already disconnected the springs shown below, go ahead and do it now.

In the photo above you can also see the screw-in shaft that secures all of the horizontal fingers, and it’s perfectly OK to take this shaft out and remove each finger individually. In fact, that may be easier all around. I’m going to leave the shaft in place for now, though, and try to remove the entire assembly at once.

The horizontal payout lever braket is secured to the base plate with a couple of screws. Once they are removed, if you are trying to remove all the fingers one at a time or all at once, you will have to work them backwards GENTLY to get them out of the guide bracket up near the slides (seen near the top of the photo above.)

Sometimes there is a spacer underneath the horizontal payout lever bracket, so be sure to watch for it and replace it when you reassemble the machine.

Let’s see what the assembly looks like once we have the assembly off the mech:

All of the fingers look the same, except for the very top one which has the hook for the spring that I destroyed earlier in the teardown (the jackpot finger), and the bottom one which has a protrusion on the front edge (the one-cherry finger.) Even though the middle four fingers are essentially identical, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t keep them in the same order when you reassemble the machine. Parts wear together over the decades, and changing them around can sometimes cause you problems.

You may also notice in the above photo that some of the fingers are bent a bit on the right-hand side. If you encounter parts that are bent inside of an antique slot machine, your first instinct may be to straighten them out immediately. This isn’t always a good idea. Bending was a common and accepted adjustment in most antique slot machines. Until you are certain that a bend is causing you problems, you should probably leave it alone. There’s a good chance that someone who knew more about slot machines that you do put the bend in the part intentionally a long time ago, and you don’t want to inadvertently undo their good work.

Anyway, back to the mech:

Four screws secure the payout slide coverplate. Here’s what the underside looks like once it has been removed from the mech:

With the cover removed, we can finally see the coin slides themselves:

At this point, the slides are not secured to the mech by anything, and can be lifted straight up. Be sure to keep them in order!

Notice that I’ve tied the slides together with a piece of wire to keep their order straight. Remember our discussion regarding the number of coins held in each slide? Here’s a visual:

We’ve only got a few parts left to remove, and they are all secured with basic screws.

Don’t misplace the spacer shown above. Without it installed, the horizontal fingers will bind in the guide and not work properly.

We’ve got another bumper that needs to be removed. This one stops the payout slides at the back, making sure that their holes line up over the circular hole in the base plate that leads to the payout chute.

It’s secured on the underside of the base plate with a screw.

This bumper is in better shape than the others we’ve seen, but it’s hard as a rock and will probably also need to be replaced.

There are four posts that held the payout slide coverplate that could be removed from the base plate now, but in general it’s not necessary to remove them unless you are doing something extreme to the base plate. I’m going to leave them in place for now.

Believe it or not, that’s it! We’ll have some minor disassembly to do as we clean the various parts of the mechanism, but we’re done with the mech for now. Check it out:

The two parts highlighted above are pretty easy to remove. The coin detector lever should be familiar to you from our earlier discussion regarding the operation of the mechanism outside of the cabinet. This lever interacts with the escalator to determine when a coin has been inserted, and in turn allows the mech to cycle. We’ve also discussed the anti-check payout control assembly at some length. Both should come off the mech easily at this point. The coin detector lever is held in place with a shoulder screw.

If you aren’t familiar with term “shoulder screw” this photo should make the concept clear:

As you can see, the threads of the screw don’t extend all the way to the head, and there is a “shoulder” between the head and the threads. That shoulder is the surface upon which the lever rotates.

Back to the anti-check payout assembly, it is held in place by two screws: one at the back of the mech, and another on the side. They should be easy for you to locate.

Once you have this assembly off the mech, be sure to play with it a bit to get a good idea of how it operates, particularly if you intend to reinstall it and leave it in working condition rather than applying the “fix” we discussed earlier.

Now let’s move on to the overflow pushbar assembly.

We’ve already removed the pushbar itself in an earlier step, but this is the lever that actually operates that pushbar which keeps the coin tube from overflowing by pushing coins into the jackpot assembly.

Moving right along, let’s look at the operating fork dog.

Removing the cotter pin and the related spring frees this up to be removed.

Another easy part to remove is the operating lever stop pin, which is secured by a single shoulder screw and related spring.

The operating lever lock assembly is ready to come off, and again we need only remove a single shoulder screw and related spring.

Let’s take a closer look at the rubber bumper attached to this piece:

Yuck. This part obviously isn’t doing much good since it has almost totally disintegrated. We’ll have to replace that before reassembling the machine.

Now we’re ready to remove the main operating lever.

Once again, a single cotter pin and a spring attach it to the frame.

This is a very substantial part that does the job of transferring energy from the handle to the mechanism itself. We’ve also got another small dog to remove, and it’s no more difficult than the last one.

The frame is starting to look pretty bare… take a look.

The only parts attached to the frame that need to come off prior to the removal of the frame itself are related to the coin tube, and they are only secured by a couple of screws.

The lower coin chute assembly is secured to the frame by a couple of screws shown above, and the coin tube cover is attached to the coin tube by a couple of screws that should be pretty obvious.

Now, on to the coin tube itself.

The coin tube is where all the coins used for non-jackpot payouts are stored, and is connected to the frame by a single screw pictured below. Once the screw is removed you can lift the tube straight up.

That’s the last of the parts that need to be removed from the frame… now we can remove the frame from the base plate by removing two screws as shown below. These two screws are sometimes difficult to remove, so you may need to apply some WD-40 or a penetrating solvent like B’laster. Just a quick word about B’laster… it’s wonderful stuff. It may not free up every frozen, rusted screw, but it does a heck of a job. It’s great stuff to have around.

In the photo above you can see the two shafts we removed and replaced earlier, along with another bumper that probably needs to be replaced. Let’s take a look at what’s left of the mechanism.

All of the parts left on the base plate are related to the horizontal payout levers or the coin slides. We’re in the home stretch now, and we’ll tackle those parts next.

Secured by a single cotter pin, this part pushes coins off the top of the payout tube once the tube is full. The excess coins are then routed to the jackpot assembly and ultimately the cash box if the jackpot is full.

Let’s take a quick look at the slot machine mechanism… it’s really starting to look bare.

Now we need to turn the mechanism around and work on the other side for a while. First, let’s remove the check detector operating arm assembly.

If you look carefully at the photo above you can see how this operating arm engages the anti-check payout control parts we looked at earlier. If the check detector arm is allowed to move forward by the escalator because of a check being played (there’s a special pin to sense the hole in the middle of a check) then the arm trips the anti-check payout control lever, allowing the anti-check payout hook to drop. This, of course, would hold the vertical payout pushback lever in place, restricting the movement of the vertical fingers and disallowing any payouts of coins as we discussed in the previous chapter. It’s a neat system, when it works.

The check detector operating arm assembly is secured by a single cotter pin, with an attached spring near the top of the arm.

Now we’re going to remove the coin advance bar operating lever, which is easy to pick out in the photo below.

This part interacts with the escalator at the beginning and end of the mech’s cycle, releasing and resetting the coin advance bar locking lever which allows/restricts the advance of coins across the escalator. It’s secured by a couple of cotter pins and a spring, so those need to be removed.

Let’s take another look at the mechanism before we proceed. We’ve made a lot of good progress.

The name of this part tells you pretty much exactly what it does, specifically pushing the vertical fingers back away from the payout discs at the beginning of the cycle. It’s attached to the machine with a screw-in shaft, seen above just below our old friend, the anti-check hook. Now that the parts are uncovered, you should be able to see exactly how this troublesome part works. If you look at the portion of the pushback lever assembly that looks like a roller, you can see several places where it looks like something has “grooved” the roller. These spots are where the vertical fingers have worn the roller as it has pushed them back, time after time. If you look at the end of the roller, though, you see something that looks like a rounded nub. If you rotate the pushback lever assembly so that it pushes back on the fingers, you will find that the anti-check hook will slip right over that nub, holding the roller (and consequentially the fingers) in place. Since the fingers can’t travel forward to check for a payoff condition, the machine will never pay off.

We’ll remove that part later.

Back to the pushback lever assembly, it’s a pretty simple thing to remove but some caution is in order. The slot in the threaded shaft is very small, and you need a screwdriver that will fit all the way in the slot before you attempt to unscrew it. This shaft and the next one we will tackle have a tendency to stick, and if you aren’t careful you can break them fairly easily. I’d recommend that you not use an electric screwdriver for any slot machine disassembly tasks, but that goes double for these shafts. If the shaft gives you trouble, you may want to use some sort of penetrating oil to loosen it up, or in a pinch you can actually grab the center of the shaft with a pair of vise-grips and turn it a quarter-turn at a time to loosen it up if necessary.

Anyway, carefully unscrew the shaft and remove the pushback lever assembly.

It’s not a bad idea to replace the shaft after you’ve removed the part, but you might want to hold off for just a few minutes since it can get in the way when we remove the vertical payout fingers. I didn’t take that advice, and it caused me to miss something important. More on that in a minute.

The process for removing the vertical fingers starts at the top.

Before we go any further, remove the springs from the top of the fingers and store them in your spring jar. I’m planning to replace a good many of these anyway, but you never know when you are going to need an extra spring. (That’s called foreshadowing for those of you who failed Freshman English.)

The removal of the vertical payout fingers is a little involved. They are secured by a screw-in shaft like the part we just removed, although this shaft sometimes also has a lock nut on the back of it. Check for that before trying to unscrew the shaft. The same cautions apply for this shaft… it’s easy to damage.

Anyway, once you have the shaft removed, the payout fingers can be lifted out almost straight up, except for one thing.

Yup, while I was worrying about getting the fingers around that first shaft that I’d already replaced, I didn’t notice that there was a spring attached at the bottom of the front finger. This spring isn’t always present, and I just plain forgot about it. As you can see, I pretty much destroyed the spring.

Luckily this isn’t a big deal, and I probably have a spare, but I’m still irked at myself for missing it.

Enough with the spilled milk, though… let’s take a closer look at the vertical fingers.

Take a look at the photo of the fingers out of the machine above and notice that I’ve threaded some wire through them to keep them in the same order they were in on the machine. This is another good habit to cultivate. If you happen to forget, however, the order is generally easy to determine if you look at the bottom of the fingers.

If you look at the notches above (not counting the saw-tooth stuff on the far left… that’s just for hooking the problematic spring) you can see that the notches get smaller as you go left towards the front of the machine. The actual “working” part of the vertical fingers is the spot just below those notches. Notice that it gets bigger as you travel to the left. This part of the fingers strikes the horizontal levers, which in turn release the payout slides. The more slides that are released, the bigger the payoff.

The fingers above correspond to the symbols for bars, melons, bells, plums, oranges and cherries respectively. If you look at the two far-left fingers, you can see that there is no notch at all, meaning that when activated these fingers hit ALL six of the horizontal levers, causing ALL six of the coin slides to travel backwards and drop their contents, including the very top slide which also trips the jackpot mechanism.If you total up the coins in all six slides, you end up with 20 quarters although this varies from machine to machine.

The finger for bells triggers five slides for 18 coins, the plum finger triggers four slides for 14 coins, the orange finger triggers three slides for 10 coins… but then we come to the cherries finger, which has two different possible payoffs.

The cherries finger is a special case, and can actually have two different states based upon how far it travels. If it moves just a little bit, as it does when there is a single cherry on the first reel but no cherry on the second reel, only the very bottom horizontal lever is triggered for a payout of 2 coins. The bottom horizontal lever has a special extension (which we will see later) for this exact purpose. When the finger finds a cherry on both the first and second reels, though, it travels far enough that it trips both the first and second horizontal levers, giving us a payout of 5 coins.

Based upon the above, we can also figure out how many coins each payout slide holds based upon the payoffs of the machine. From top to bottom, here are the coin capacities of the six payout slides:

2 — three bars or melons
4 — three bells
4 — three plums
5 — three orange
3 — two cherries
2 — one cherry

Pick any winning combination above, then add up the coins listed to the left of it plus all coins listed below it and you should end up with the correct payout totals, not counting the jackpot of course.

If this doesn’t make sense to you now, don’t worry about it too much. We’ll be taking a closer look at both the horizontal fingers and the payout slides later. The important thing to remember is that if you don’t keep the vertical fingers and payout slides in the proper order your machine will pay the wrong number of coins for winning combinations.

For now, let’s remove the vertical finger guide assembly.

We’ve just got a couple of screws to remove, and then the guide should be hanging by a spring.

You’ll have to detach one end of the spring, but it doesn’t really matter which one. Here’s the finger guide by itself after removal, along with more errant grey paint.

We could have just as easily removed the finger guide before removing the fingers themselves, and that might well have been easier. When completely disassembling a mechanism, the order of parts removed just isn’t that critical.

That was some of the more complicate disassembly that we’ve done so far. Next we’ll tackle a few easy things.

The lever is held on with two cotter pins, so no big deal to get it off the mech.

Next we’re going after the reel timing lever itself.

The reel timing lever is the part responsible for slowly allowing each reel stop lever to come in contact with its related star wheel, stopping the reels in a 1-2-3 order as the clock unwinds. It’s secured by a cotter pin and an attached extension screw.

The extension spring must also be removed at this time because it attaches to two ears and isn’t locked into a hole, so if we don’t remove it now we might lose it. More such springs are on the way, so we need to be sure that we have a box or jar in which to store all the stray springs.

Now, we move on to the clock assembly itself.

Earlier we referred to the main operating fork as the “spine” of the slot machine mechanism. If the operating fork is the spine, the clock assembly is the heart. If the clock stops, the machine stops.

Removal of the clock is accomplished by removing four screws that secure it to the base plate. Please note that these screws are located directly on the base plate. You don’t want to unscrew the wrong screws here and have the clock come apart. On this particular mech, the front two screws (right in the above photo) don’t even need to be removed since they are in slots rather than holes. Loosening these two screws and removing the two in the back of the mech should allow the clock to slide free.

The clock mechanism is pretty dirty, and we may well have to disassemble it and clean each part individually, but I’m hoping that a dip in some solvent and a re-oiling may be sufficient. Time will tell, I suppose.

Next, we’re going to remove the payout slide lock lever. It’s secured with a single cotter pin.

This lever holds the payout slides in place until all the reels have been stopped, the payout fingers have been released and the horizontal payout levers have been tripped (if applicable). This lever being activated essentially marks the end (or at least the beginning of the end) of the mech’s cycle.

Now it’s time to remove the kicker assembly. It may have been hard to locate in earlier photos, but you shouldn’t have any trouble now.

The kicker is attached by a single cotter pin and a long extension spring, so it’s easy to remove. Before we do that, take a look at the photo above. That long extension spring provides the direct power that spins the reels by pulling the kicker as it presses against the underside of the payout discs, kicking them into rotation. The second spring that is integral to the assembly pulls the top portion of the assembly out of the way after it kicks the reels, allowing them to spin without running into the kicker itself.

As you will recall, one of the initial problems I had with this machine was that the reels weren’t spinning. The problem that caused that condition was that the top part of the kicker was gummed up with a bunch of hardened grease, oil and dirt. Since the top part didn’t want to rotate, after the reel discs started spinning they were running into the kicker, which was stopping them again and causing the machine to make a “Clang!” sound as the reel disks were struck like a gong. It’s a common problem, and nothing that a good thorough cleaning won’t fix.

Here’s the kicker out of the mech:

Onward and upward… next time we’ll tackle the payout fingers and some of the related parts.

The timing lever’s job is to trigger the vertical payout fingers so that they travel forward and detect any winning combinations on the reels at the end of the mech’s cycle. It’s held in place by a cotter pin and a spring that is attached to a lever on the clock assembly. Removal is pretty much self-evident.

Next up (or more appropriately off) is the timing lever link assembly. Take a look:

The timing lever link assembly provides an interface between the timing lever (that we just removed) and the clock assembly. On later Mills machines (like this one) there is an adjustment screw that allows you to vary the timing of the payout fingers’ release. Optimally, the fingers will release halfway between the stop of the third reel and the point at which the payout slides are released. Anyway, to remove the timing lever link assembly, remove the cotter pin under the adjustment screw on the left of the part, then swing the part out to get to the other cotter pin pictured below.

I’d recommend leaving the adjustment screw in place for now, particularly if your machine was in generally working condition when you started disassembly.

There’s one last part we’re going to remove before taking out the main operating fork, and it’s a little hard to see. It’s a small bracket on the back of the timing lever bracket and stud assembly. It is secured with two screws, as seen in the photo below.

Remove those two screws and the bracket will drop and you’ll have to fish it out of the mech. It looks like this once removed (with the screws replaced, of course):

With that part out of the way, we are free to remove the main operating fork, which is somewhat like the spine of the slot machine. When the machine is cycled, virtually every part of the operating mechanism depends upon the main operating fork. Removal of the fork should be pretty easy now that we’ve removed so many parts. The fork is secured by four screws as shown in the two photos below.

Each pair of these screws secures a removable portion of the main operating fork bearings. It’s important to note that these bearings should be replaced exactly as they were removed, meaning that you should keep the right one on the right and the left one on the left. You should also keep them aligned the same top-to-bottom, so be sure to keep them straight and replace them immediately after you remove the main operating fork assembly. Here’s what the fork assembly looks like after removal:

As before when we removed the rear bracket, we’re not going to attempt further disassembly of the main operating fork assembly at this time. We’ll tackle that later during cleaning. By the way, notice the grey paint on the spring above. That’s a sure sign of someone taking bad shortcuts.

The mechanism certainly looks different now… let’s take a look.

The A-frame pictured above should come off easily now just by unscrewing the two screws that attach it to the base plate, but there’s a small part that I’m going to remove first.

This part is called the felt pad bracket and assembly, but it sure doesn’t look like there’s any felt on this one. Removing it is a snap, just undo the two screws securing it to the A-frame, then remove the A-frame itself from the base plate.

Before we move on, let’s take another look at what’s left of the mechanism.

It definitely looks different. Here’s a closeup of the clock mechanism:

If you’ve never taken a machine completely apart before, take some time now and play with the different parts you see. Take note of how they operate and it will greatly enhance your understanding of how a mechanical slot machine operates.

We’ll start with the reel stop levers. We need to get the levers out of the way, then remove them. The first step is to disconnect the reel stop lever springs. The springs are easy to find… they are the long springs attached to each of the reel stop levers that connect them to the back of the mechanism. As with most springs in the machine, one end will be threaded through a hole and the other end will be looped around some sort of post or ear. Generally it is a good idea to slip the spring off of the ear and leave it connected to the part where it is threaded through a hole.

After the springs are disconnected from the back bracket, you can lay the reel stop levers down as shown above. Now we need to remove the levers themselves by removing the shaft at the bottom of the levers. This is a pretty simple matter, although the shaft is sometimes difficult to remove due to the accumulation of dirt and hardened oil/grease.

Depending on the machine, this shaft is usually held in place by two hairpins or cotter pins. (Regional note: I’ve noticed that people in the South tend to use the term “cotter pin” while folks in the Midwest and Northeast tend to say “cotter key”. Either way, they are the same thing.) On this particular slot machine, the shaft is held by hairpins. We only need to remove the pin pictured above, which is easily accomplished with a pair of needle nosed pliers. Be careful when removing this sort of pin since they have a tendency to shoot across the room and get lost forever if you don’t have a good grip.

With the other pin removed, take a small pair of vice grip pliers and lock them on the end of the shaft protruding from the A-frame as pictured above. The shaft should slide straight out, although you will probably have to turn it back and forth and possibly move the reel stop levers as you are pulling.

Once the shaft has been removed, put the other hair pin back in place and store the shaft for future cleaning. As with screws, it’s good practice to put pins back in place before proceeding on.

The photo above shows what the three reel stop levers look like once they have been removed. I’m going to leave the springs attached for now just to keep up with them. Note that the three levers are not identical. The one on the right (as you are looking at the front of the mechanism) has an offset and two holes where the shaft goes through the lever. The other two levers are held apart by a separate, tubular spacer that also goes on the shaft.

With the reel stop levers and shaft gone, we have a much clearer view of the base plate. Let’s take a close look at the label.

Unfortunately I don’t think we’re going to be able to read the serial number through all of the dirt, oil and paint. I’ll still save the label, but I really wish the serial number was readable. Oh, well… you can’t win them all.

The next part we’re going to remove is the rear bracket that holds the reel brakes (if present) and the disc stop lever. It also holds the award token release lever on machines that are equipped for a gold award token dispenser. Removal is pretty straightforward since the bracket is only held on by a couple of screws. We’ll also have to disconnect a spring from the award token release lever. Before we go on, however, there’s a situation we should discuss. Let’s take a look.

As you can see in the photo above, there is a paperclip bent around the bracket, keeping a hooked part behind the bracket stationary. Why in the world would someone do this to a slot machine? The answer is pretty simple, and this sort of “fix” is relatively common on antique Mills slot machines. The part behind the bracket is the anti-check payout hook, and its purpose is to keep the slot machine from paying out coins if someone has played a “check” instead of a coin. Checks look a lot like washers, having a hole in the middle, and were used in some locales to get around anti-gambling laws. We’ll look at this part in more detail later, but for now let me just say that this part is unnecessary for a home machine, and generally a pain to work with. The anti-check assembly has a tendency to freeze up or get sluggish, which can keep the machine from paying out correctly or at all. Some people remove this part completely, and others use a “fix” similar to the one above using bailing wire or a zip tie. For now we’ll just remove the paperclip and the other things securing the back bracket.

The photo above shows the left side of the bracket after the screw and paperclip have been removed. Note how the bracket fits in between the various parts… this will be important during reassembly.

Here’s what the bracket looks like after removal. Notice that the disc stop lever and the award token release levers are still attached. We’ll remove these later when we clean this part and put them back in place before moving on. I prefer working on parts and assemblies using this sort of “modular” approach rather than disassembling absolutely everything at one time. It keeps parts together and helps you get a feel for how parts interact on the machine.

Here’s another view of the bracket and related parts. You can clearly see the disc stop lever in the foreground. This part keeps the reels from spinning backwards while the mechanism is being cocked.

Next time we’ll tackle the main operating fork and related parts.