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Hi,
From today, there is a new offer of a Wheel 'Em In in ebay. I will ask him for pictures of the mechanics (If the MI5 agree )
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ORIGINAL-VERY ... 2ec6fabf6e

I was right, there is no possibility (for me) to talk to the seller.
MI5 ? maybe, or Gladio or Stay-Behind. There must be a military secret about this machine
So, perhaps somebody else could make a try ?

Hi Cleantex
This is the second time this machine has been on Ebay in the last month, I managed to get some photos first time round but didn't bother to bid as it is too big for me
It looks to be a very simple mech for such a big machine... just a row of metal fingers to detect the coins.

Thanks for the pictures,
Finally to see the inner circle
But somewhere is a little disappointing, simple metal fingers and before all, manual feed up of the coin tubes
No conveyor for the coins. Always a great machine and... a big one.
The secret is resolved.

Greetings to England

Armand

I've always wanted to know how the payout tubes get filled?

Me also, but I think it's by hand, I see no other option.

Or perhaps this part is missing, because the tubes are in descending way and shaped also like this. The black tube seems to be an overflow for the coins. So, it can be that this machine is not complete.

I plump for an Archimedes Screw.

1 - There's a an easy power source in the form of the end axle for the conveyor.

2 - Looking at the payout tubes they have angled tops suggesting a flow down slope across the range.

3 - At the end is a black tube for the overflow.


I must learn to read posts fully before answering.

No, no, no.
When I worked in the arcade on Rhyl fairgound our Wheel 'Em In had a little man who lived in the back
and kept the payout tubes full.
Delightful, coppery-coloured wee chap too but very hard of hearing due to all those pennies raining down on him.
Mystery solved. Next?

That is the answer, a little man !
Finally I arrived to find some pictures from him, just changing a bulb in the front panel.

I don't buy the idea that the operator had to refill coin tubes. Maybe on this late version - or maybe it's been altered? I'm not sure I accept the little man theory either. There's a spider, top right, in slotalot's picture. Could she have been trained to do the job?
No, I reckon there was some kind of conveyor. Paul Mitchel, in The Artful Dodgers, describes cheating the machine using pennies on string:

Paul Mitchel wrote:For some reason, the original pennies never returned amongst our winnings (years later I discovered what havoc they were causing to the innards of the machine).

Paul worked in the arcade as an adult and his comment suggests the mechanism was designed to recycle the players' coins.

Well, I changed my mind re my above post and think I have to accept that they were hand filled hoppers based upon the information that has come forward.
I recently heard from another employee of Streets who worked on these games and I've put his story in the Arena together with just about everything else I have about the company: Streets Ahead, Innovative Automatics 1926-82 (A view from the inside).

I have seen some older Streets Wheel Em In machines with a vertical rubber conveyor belt right at the back, about 8 inches wide, with rows of short brass spikes in zig zags across the belt (several inches apart) all the way around the belt sticking through about an inch on the outer side of the belt.
The bottom of the revolving belt allowed the brass spikes to enter the lower hopper from the underside, the spikes pushed through the pennies and lifted them in a constant flow all the way up to a top hopper to drop them and roll down a long chute to allow the tubes to fill by gravity and then out to the cash box chute, hence the tubes cut at different heights. The zig zags presumably prevented coins being dumped at the top hopper all at once and jamming. You could clearly hear them filling up when the machine was being played a lot.
The tubes could never have been filled manually they are not long enough and would have emptied within an hour.

Ah at last - that makes sense and is exactly the sort of thing I imagined.
It's frustrating that nobody could come up with a picture of this and the two chaps who remember working on them did not describe this important and most mysterious part of the puzzle. In fact the only pictures of the mechanism we have fail to show any of this coin conveyor mechanism.

As you say, it would be hopeless if you had to manually refill them, especially as they received lots of play and the hoppers at the back were quite inaccessible. I'll see if I can get a comment from Bob who used to build them.

moonriver wrote: ↑Sun Dec 09, 2018 8:42 pm I have seen some older Streets Wheel Em In machines with a vertical rubber conveyor belt right at the back, about 8 inches wide, with rows of short brass spikes in zig zags across the belt (several inches apart) ...

18 months late to the party but whilst I don’t have any photos, I remember exactly what you are saying. I often watched them being opened up as pennies got caught up. Missed this post otherwise I could have saved a lot of guesswork.

I would like to put another machine in the mix, it is a Prospector and works very much like wheel em in etc.
It is a very popular machine but you do have to fill the payout tubes yourself which is a daily job when you're busy.
I have just had it in the workshop and finally got the belt running at the right speed and a full service.

I'll be visiting to see this rarity in action as soon as this virus carry-on is over.
Can you open the arcade as a protest against the American police? That seems to be 'essential' as far as the authorities are concerned.

Added to the Museum.