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First answering the disc alignment, if you have aligned the reel discs when you have loosened and then tinged the clamps on reel one and they still skip out when playing, you may need to adjust the star wheel on the reel tin. These are held by screws and should have enough adjustment to cover half a star wheel tooth, which is probably out of kilter...

New issue, the boot - I assume this refers to the lower part of the upper finger that engages the horizontal fingers. Is this issue happening on every win/finger? If only one, which win is this? Can you take a picture from rear of the issue. Can you check the lower part of the finger, as each win will be cut to engage the correct horizontal fingers. I have known the wrong fingers to be installed, also on higher win to have been chopped by operators. Some upper fingers are bent slightly differently, like the cherry wins - tend to be bent inwards more.... If you can get a close-up of the lower part of the upper fingers, it might help, but the issue may be something else, like the payout locking lever on the side of the mechanism that stops the fingers engaging - common issue, catches people out all the time, so piccie from side of mechanism as well....(showing whole of mech from side please). Edited, see picture below, not all machines have this lever.

The payouts are fixable, but always frustrating to work on. My advice would be get it paying out as it should be for these strips and change the award card if needs be.

The payout problem you have would not be an operator inflicted one, it would make no sense - punters would continually be pestering the attendant for wins showing that hadn't paid.

First, get all three reels stopping in the right place (I'm surprised adjusting the reel clamp didn't fix this?). So what you're saying is the bar that holds the vertical fingers back from the payout discs is not moving far enough to the right during the wind down (when viewed from behind the mech) to allow the fingers to go to the edge of the frame that holds them, thus right through all three discs on a three (or, I presume) 2 reel winner? If so, then the starting position for that bar (which is set at the "at rest" position of the mech cycle) would seem to be not quite returning to the full start position. This could be as simple as a weak main spring or very dirty clock, but I'll bet it's that payout lock Tom mentions above, except you said 1 cherry pays, and nothing else(?) How about a video of the rear of the machine during the cycle please.

TF, please don't laugh but I never saw the locking bar lever as I don't have one on the mech that I was looking at. I moved the lever to the right and it released the reset bar...DOH!!! I could kick myself.

Now it pays out perfect as the pay card on the machine shows, but it needs the original reel strips now as it pays on:
1 cherry 2 coins
2 cherries 5 coins
3 oranges 10 coins
3 plumbs 14 coins, although the plumbs have been blocked for some reason so will unplug the hole.
3 bells 18 coins
Melons or bars pays 20 plus the jackpot.

Would anyone know where I could buy the reel strips from or am I better off just making my own?

P.s Big thanks for all the help guys - feels like I won the lotto when I sorted it out.