Sega Mad Money Restoration

General vintage slot machine related topics.
sutty
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

Post by sutty »

Hi Guys

Couple of questions if I may? I'm getting much closer to completion, but I have a couple of things I'd like clarity on. First, my Shefras escalator, seems to have viewing slots all the way along it, however, it only seems to pause one coin, which, I presume for inspection, is the previous coin played. The next coin just pushes it through, passing the spring delay lever, and drops through to the pay out chute/jackpot/overflow, as appropriate. Should there be more coins held in reserve, and if so, how should that work. If mine doesn't hold more, do I have an incorrect part on my escalator, or is that how the Shefras escalator works? It looks like maybe there is a hole, at the left hand end, viewed from the rear, where perhaps a different part, or a none broken one, might be able to hold coins back there. On inspection though, I see nothing obviously wrong with mine, in that area, but I thought I'd ask.

Second, I've never seen a back door. I've never had one, and would like to fit one. Until I find one, I will make my own, but even for that I would like to see how they work. Can anyone take photos of the back door of a Sega Mad Money, or any adequately similar machine, to show me how they attach, and work in general? If this is already in the forum, I can't find it. Maybe my search skills are lacking? I have tried, but sadly to no avail.

I have two pieces of metal, which I believe relate to the back door, as below, and have included a shot of my escalator, if it helps any.

31139f5d-fd3b-4ed4-bc6f-e2649243b39e.jpg

grains
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

Post by grains »

Hi,
I have had a few Shefras escalators and they do have multiple slots. I think these escalators can be configured in different ways, but usually the last coin played is visible pushing the previous one down the channel. I have found the multiple slots also help with clearing bent or stuck coins from the channel without removing the escalator and taking it apart.
Pretty sure the hinge is a safety latch used to keep the mechanism in place. Here are a couple of images from my Sega.
vD73cQ4l.jpg


xBHywXKha.jpg

PM me, as I can probably help to locate you a Sega back door.
Here is an image of a Sega door. This one had a few dinks, but should be useful for reference.
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sutty
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

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Thanks grains. With that photograph, I could be looking into the back of my machine. :HaHa:

And yes, excellent for reference.

I knew where that goes, there are holes, and indeed it was screwed in before I photographed it, but what I couldn't grasp was how it was fixed to the back door, because I thought it was a door hinge. :dammit:

I now understand that it doesn't, and your explanation makes sense. With the back door in place, it holds that up, and unless you were to seriously tilt it, the top of the latch couldn't put enough force on the back door to spring it off, and thus the mechanism couldn't slide out. I mean it clicks in place, but that would be easily overcome, but with the door, little chance. The top of that lever, pushing the door off, seems unlikely.

My mechanism is in a fixed place, determined by the front slide stops being vertically pinned, and with an angled plate at the left hand side, which is also pinned to the base plate. Sadly, in that position, I cannot completely close the back latch to a click. It nearly goes fully home, but not quite. Hopefully it will clear the back door, because I see now that there is a bump.

Thanks for looking for a back door. I will PM you. Brilliant! !THUMBS!

That little strip seems to fit on my top back lid, but I still don't know what it does. Is it where the lock latch is supposed to locate? As I said, I've never seen a back door fitted.

Here's a little progress shot.
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treefrog
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

Post by treefrog »

Some people call the Shefras a roll down escalator, which I guess it is, but I normally associate the term with the butchered originals. So yes, last coin shown, and when next played, it pings previous one across.

Back doors: be aware, non original Sega back doors may not fit your machine. Even Sega clones are not all the same and may not fit each other. I have a pile of a both and always check which is right one for the job…
sutty
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

Post by sutty »

Thanks for the heads up treefrog. I think you mentioned that a little further up the thread, when we were wondering if mine was a Sega. I already PMd asking if measurements were needed, so if there's doubt I'm sure we'll bottom it out, but again thanks. It would only cause frustration if it didn't fit.

I don't know who has parts or not on the forum, so if we can't come up with a solution, maybe you could see if you have something suitable. I'm relatively new here, and just feeling my way around, not knowing who has what. All I can confirm is I have nothing, other than my one machine. :HaHa:
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

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Thanks for the comments both about the last played coin in the Shefras. At least I know now that I'm not looking for a fault, or a missing component, and that the slots are to help see blocked coins, and to clear them out. I had a coin yesterday that kept being kicked out, and when I checked it, it had a tiny bend in it. It could barely be noticed, unless you studied it. I hit it a couple of times with the hammer, to flatten it, and got it to work. I was impressed with the tolerance of the slide that it would reject a coin with such a minor deformation. It's all a very clever mechanical marvel. I'm guessing it's narrower there, than beyond, so that if it locks up it does it where it can be rejected.
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

Post by sutty »

Lighting all done. I'm happy with the wiring and the safety of the earthing, and I think the outcome looks good from the front.
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

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For grins, I thought I would just revisit one of my original photos.
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special when lit
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

Post by special when lit »

Looks great, like new
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

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Thanks, special when lit, I'm almost there now. Treefrog, has kindly managed to sort me out a back door, and with a little bit of work, it will look the part nicely, so when that arrives, and given some time to work on it, the job should be complete, at which point, I don't know what I'll do? lol

Over the last few days I've been playing it extensively, I'd go as far as to say exhaustively, just to see if it does everything correctly. After an early hiccup with a slider jam, which I think was caused by a very worn thin coin, it has been flawless for hundreds and hundreds of plays, including jackpot pay out, reserve top up, and reserve door close, and all pay out values, including the 27 way win face pay out. I forget his name now, but he pays out, lol.

The slide jam turned out to be a blessing, because I'd been hesitant to dismantle them, worried I'd screw it up, but I had to, and when I did, I discovered that they were all full of oil and gunk. At some point in the past, before I knew any better, I'd obviously oiled them, perhaps several times, and they were pretty nasty. Taking them out afforded me the opportunity to give them a good clean, which I did with wd40, and then wiped them all dry before restacking.

It might seem odd, but for me, it has to work exactly as it would have done in service, before I can let my mind rest and say it's complete. Even though the jackpot would pay infrequently, seeing as, relatively speaking, it will barely be played, I had to have it where that three pull jackpot cycle works every single time. I had countless attempts, and failures, at trying to get the reserve door to open, when full. On peering in from the back of the machine, the arm that would drop down after a jackpot would not be pushed in correctly on the following pull. It would get half in, and then flip up and off the slider, before it was fully depressed. It tried countless base positions, and it was impossible to find a sweet spot where the jackpot would reset, and the reserve door would open. It seemed like I could only have one or the other, i.e. the reserve would open, but the jackpot would not reset. Well the jackpot would close, but it would not latch, so pulling the mechanism out of the machine would result in the jackpot dropping. Either that, or the jackpot would latch, but it would latch too soon, which lifted the reserve actuator up and off the slider, so the reserve door could not open.

In the end, the simplest of solutions has come up trumps. I glued a tiny, thin, piece of leather onto the door opener actuator, which made the slider grip it, and not let it flip up and lift off it prematurely, whilst still allowing it to slide off when it should. It was the last key to perfect operation. I know it isn't how it would have been done, but hey, it works, perfectly, after many many test trips of the jackpot.

Leather-pad-and-adjusted-springa.jpg

That was very nearly the last thing that was bugging me, and that bit of leather has solved it. Treefrog solved a minor outstanding issue for me, whereby the house tray overflow would be selected preferentially over topping up the jackpot. It would top up, but a little too slowly, for my liking, with most coins going into the overflow for the house.

When the reserve drops, it's a little short of filling the jackpot, and it needs topping off. I think it has to be like that, because otherwise the reserve door might jam, when closing again, if it filled it too much, or at the very least they'd only drop into the overflow anyway, so no point in having too many coins come from the reserve. It's not its job to feed the house, at least not at that moment, so it makes sense to me.

The deflector, which moves out of the way for each coin, to feed the coins to the house tray, after the jackpot is completely full, moved a little too easily, and so I was only getting about 1 in 5 coins that would go in to top off the jackpot. When full, of course, they all drop through, but before that the jackpot should be preferential, or at least that's the way I see it. Treefrog suggested coming in a couple of turns on the spring, to give it just that bit more force to flip the coins into the jackpot, whilst not going too far, thus still allowing it to trip properly to the overflow when completely full, and not causing a jam. I'd been pondering doing this, but once he'd suggested it, I thought more about it, and it became blindingly obvious. This was a spring I'd made and I wasn't replicating a broken one, I'd never had one. All I'd ever had here was a rubber band, so I had been using my best guess, which was obviously wrong.

I bent two coils more, to shorten the spring, and it worked perfectly. Nearly every time some coins would drop, heading for the overflow, one or more would end up in the jackpot, filling it brim full in double quick time. Once full, they all went into the overflow, without any problem, so I couldn't be happier with the outcome there. Thanks for the confirmation Treefrog. The spring in question is the one pictured to the right of the leather pad, on the reserve door opener.

Sorry for the long post and I'm not sure if my ramblings here will ever help anyone, especially for all of the regulars here, who are familiar enough with these mechanisms to perhaps tweak them more correctly, but I thought I'd mention what I'd done to solve these two jackpot issues, just in case.
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coppinpr
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

Post by coppinpr »

a good job well done and a good idea to get Tom involved as he really knows his stuff, Not sure I agree with your jackpot operation theory, it has always been my impression that the jackpot refill was never meant to be totally preferential and some coins were always meant to fall directly to the coin box. From the operator's point of view, this has a two-fold benefit 1. the jackpot tends to have fewer coins in it when it pays out and 2. the coin box has more so there is at least some revenue going into the coin box all the time. Some machines are mechanically made to actually do this, the BDR mechanism has a gate that only deflects one in 4 coins to the jackpot.
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

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Cheers for the thoughts. I'm not sure, but it's interesting to ponder. I considered it both ways, but it was filling too slowly, for my liking. It could have even been less than 1 in 5, that was just my estimate. Those two turns, seemed to bring it to a much more even distribution, favouring the jackpot, but some still went into the house tray, so I thought it a better balance. Don't forget, I made that spring myself, so there's every chance I made it too weak. It's not entirely jackpot now, but considerably more preferred, until it's full.

I tried to put myself in the mind of an operator, and thought, if it were my machine, I would want that jackpot full, sooner rather than later, attracting even more players to my machine, which would have a beneficial effect on overall machine revenue, especially if they weren't all my machines. In my mind they're meant to be full, hence the principle of a reserve jackpot in the first place. If they didn't want that jackpot sitting there looking all pretty and enticing, they wouldn't even bother to fill it up again from a reserve, which I'm sure many machine designs don't have, but in this case they do, so it must have been the plan.

I bet a machine that pays the jackpot twice, because it's random, and can happen, that machine would sit there for an awfully long time without the enticing visible jackpot being refilled. I feel sure that they would really struggle to get it filled up again, and if I were an operator, I'd want almost every coin that came my way heading for the jackpot, until it was full. If I were a player, and saw two machines, one with an empty or partially filled jackpot, and one that was brim full, I know which one I would play. My thoughts would be, as perhaps any other player might be, they're both equally random, but that one can't pay out as much, if I get lucky, so I'll play the full one. :!?!:

If they wanted to pay less with the jackpot, the box and reserve would just be that bit smaller, by design. It will all have been calculated, and no doubt tested, and combined with reports from their clients and operatives in the field. I suspect that they learned that full machines do better, overall, despite losing more on any given jackpot, hence the principle of the reserve. During the design phase, if they discovered they paid out a little too much, I presumed they would be slightly redesigned to alter the overall percentages. On this basis I concluded that as long as it pays, on average, what it's designed to pay, by random chance, then the jackpot needs to be full to attract players. More players, more turnover, and more to average out your 22% share of the machine's throughput, or whatever the correct percentage is, for a given machine's set-up. I think I read that my reels are 78%, but I'm sure there are ways to perhaps ways tweak it, especially in the original design phase.

Just my thoughts, and I have no way to know how these things were actually designed, so I'm most likely wrong, but I decided on, fill quicker, more plays, and more revenue overall, so I went with speeding it up a little. Again, my spring was no doubt too weak, having been designed by me, from scratch, without having anything else to reference it to. I just made it strong enough to pull the flap back up, without considering how hard it needed to stay there, so it was super floppy. Dropping a single sixpence on it moved it nearly every time, unless it caught it just right.

Like I say, I don't know, I was just trying to use my best guess. I've studied little of the history of these machines, and no doubt there's an awful lot to them in terms of how these things are calculated and designed, but I did think about it quite a lot, to try and do it right. Hopefully I got it close to how it would have been, but I'm not sure of much, let alone this.
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

Post by sutty »

I was just thinking about this even more, sorry. The quantity of coins required to top off the jackpot must be trivial, compared to the number of coins played to win a jackpot?

If I've got it right, it pays out 2 jackpots in 8000 plays, with 20 symbols per reel. Mine only does melons and bars, because they took out the stars, which I think, according to the original legend, also paid a jackpot, but on my machine, the numbers should look like this, having just counted.

I think the jackpot size can be reduced, if my understanding of part of the jackpot mechanism is correct, when I took it apart? There is a screw, and a spring steel flap, so you can screw it in or out, and the spring steel flap bends and always remains in contact with the back, keeping a smooth surface presented to the coins to ensure they slide out properly. It would be interesting to know if this is what this is for, if anyone can confirm, but that's what it looked like to me. This only just occurred to me, despite having seen it several months ago, when I took it apart, so I'd be keen to know if it's true.

Anyway, as it stands, having topped it right up, my jackpot, not counting the extra 18, which pays from the sliders, to make sure you win something, held 126 coins. Maybe it's meant to be 100, not sure, but maybe I could get it a little closer to that, if I screwed that screw in or out a little, if that's what it does? The reserve held 96, not much less, but not quite filling the jackpot, as I think is intended. Obviously it's somewhat variable, as the coins tend to tumble off in clumps, sometimes balancing, etc, but it gives a reasonable idea of what's going on. This means I was 30 coins short for the top off, for a jackpot that pays one in 4000 plays. This means, to top it off, represents only 30 out of 4000 plays, or 0.75% of the takings for a jackpot cycle.

If we talk about filling the whole jackpot, then that is significantly more, but still it would only be 5.6% of the machine take, and that's including filling the reserve too. 222 coins out of 4000. So even to fill the entire jackpot system represents only, roughly, 25% of your take home revenue, of 22% per cycle, on average. Yes, that's significant, but 30 coins to top it off, is not. I think the benefit to the operator of filling it quickly has to be considered important.

If there are more ways to win a jackpot, that I have missed, say 3 or 4, because I don't know these machines well enough, then, if 4, it's still only 1.5% of the throughput. All the other win methods make up the difference, and must be much more significant. I bet an empty jackpot would cost the operator more than 1.5% of his takings and it's worth filling it up quickly?
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

Post by sutty »

So many plays now it's getting silly, and things just work. I can't tell you how impressed I am with the way in which these old machines were designed and built. Properly made to last. How can it possibly work so well, after years of use, and then worse, years of no use, sitting on the garage floor, in the damp, for close to fifty years. I know you guys already know these things, but I think they are amazing.

The handle return dampener works too. During my restoration, I took it apart to examine how it worked, and saw a leather formed cup, with no grease. I put some in there, ran my finger around the inside to tease the cup open, just a little, reassembled it, adjusted the air vent for what I thought was a reasonable amount of force required for the handle to be sufficiently damped, and it just works.

I mean, a pump style plunger, with a tiny amount of attention, just works, after what, 60 or 70 years. Simply astonishing. I was watching the Repair Shop on TV the other day, and the outside guy was restoring some sort of pump, which had a leather cup. He showed how to make another one, which was very interesting. Leather of the right thickness, make a wooden template, and plunge formed it when hot and wet. Leave it for 24 hours, drill and refit.

If my plunger ever stops working, I now know how to make another. Also found an online tutorial for same, which showed basically the same process. Looks like you can buy them too, in all sorts of sizes, but it's fun to make things, when possible.

Very, very, impressive pieces of kit, which I'm sure you all know.

I'm very pleased to have found this forum, and thanks to all concerned for the help along the way.
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coppinpr
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

Post by coppinpr »

Everything you say is interesting and valid, although I think you give the operator back in the day a little too much credit. Most could see no further than their pocket and would do all sorts of things to cut payouts and JP sizes which, as you say, actually put players off from playing certain machines. It was common practice for example to disconnect the reserve jackpot so jackpots in quick succession paid next to nothing. (the adjustment on the JP is as you say to reduce the number of coins). Welding up payout holes on the pay disc and adding loser patches to the reel strips was normal, let alone the more hidden options like cutting off sections of the star wheels so certain symbols could never come up. Over the years I've had about 5 machines that came to me with "bugs" placed to upset the balance of the reels or kick the reel one space more.

The makers did indeed try hard to find setups that would encourage players, but it didn't always work out. The Mills "Melon Bell" was a classic disaster. Mills spent a lot of time and money researching for this machine. They even brought in "a prominent psychologist" to find out what was a man's favourite colour to encourage players. It was the first machine to use a "Melon" symbol and had a massive jackpot, $10 (a lot of money in pre-war days). The machine was a total failure. Players and operators hated it. It was withdrawn within a year and converted into what we now call the "bursting cherry" with the JP removed. The "prominent psychologist" decided that violet was men's favourite colour, so he was a waste of time as well!! Only the melon symbol survived to become a standard symbol.
see the "Melon Bell" here https://www.penny-arcade.info/the-mills-collection

As far as your damper restoration, never use the word "grease" on this forum. Members like BP and Treefrog are getting older now and you risk giving them a heart attack. Never use grease anywhere in a machine. On the damper pump, the cylinder should be empty and the leather piston washer should be worked with a little Vasoline to get it pliable again. That's all it needs.

All these machines are indeed fantastic works of engineering. Apart from the obvious workmanship and quality build there are many hidden treasures. For example, there are several anti-cheat devices that are not obvious. Let's say you get a big winner and you have worked out (God knows how) a way to pull the handle with exactly the same force in an attempt to get the same result... Not possible. There is a small spacer in there with the central hole drilled a little off centre. This causes the clock to slightly change its power every time it's pulled. :dammit:
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

Post by sutty »

Really interesting stuff, cheers, thanks for taking the time. I shall follow that link and have a good read shortly. Cheating, is not really what I was referring to though, I was thinking of it more from a design perspective. Hell, I wouldn't put it past some, to block up the jackpots completely, and just glue a few coins to the back of the glass, so it always looked full, and never paid. If someone complained, every now and again, when it should pay, just fob them off, and give them the hundred coins or so they were expecting to send them on their way. Many would be too frightened to ask, if they looked mean enough, lol. It's not how they're designed to work though, and just because other people cheat, that's not how I want my machine set up. I did say, if I were an operator, not what some short sighted chap might do to theirs, but yes, still very interesting indeed to contemplate.

As for the grease, it's the only place there is some. It's what was in there before I got it, all dried up, so I cleaned it out, and put some new in, and teased out the cup a tad. I knew nothing of the correct way lubricate these things, when I was doing that, but I have since read in here not to grease anything for the light amount of play we do to them, in comparison to a service machine. I didn't realise it extended to the pump though, and I'd already done it, so I wasn't planning on re-visiting it.

In what sense is Vaseline any different to grease? Very much the same viscosity, to what I used, but, quite possibly, more harmful to the leather? It was a synthetic grease though. Can leather really be susceptible to grease, if it sat in a greased tube for 50 years, or more, and still didn't fall apart when I opened it up? Aren't all the other leather pump cups greased, from the old bicycle pump, to the garden sprayer, etc? That must surely have been the thing in the past? By the way, it isn't packed with grease, of course, it's lightly greased as you described, but not with Vaseline, that's all. If it were full of grease, it wouldn't move, or would come out everywhere, and in no time flat it would block up the vent hole, etc.

I'm not being awkward, I'm genuinely curious and asking, because if I've done something to compromise that cup, I will take it out of the machine again, clean it all off, and replace it with Vaseline, but right now it's working perfectly, and I'm not entirely clear what's wrong with having grease inside there. It's not like I can get it all over my hands, lol.

Seriously though, the last thing I want is to cause harm to any of the members, so if I'm out of order, I will correct it.

Thanks again for taking the time and the very interesting post.
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

Post by sutty »

That's a good read about the melon bell and the reasons it failed. Designers and companies make mistakes, but successful ones have more successes than failures. Sometimes they simply go down paths that they feel hard to back track on. Naysayers get talked down, because some senior guy thinks it's a good idea, or they are afraid to speak, for the same reason, even though many think it a flawed concept. Those days were not the same as an open type co-operative working environment, that we might see today, so things like that can happen. It could have been just one guy's idea.

If I grasped it correctly, them thinking that the jackpot having to be attendant paid was a feature, is amazing. Not sure why people wouldn't play it, but I can imagine why operators wouldn't want it, with $10 worth of jackpot sitting there, and then when won, you couldn't just collect it. If you had to call an attendant to go have it paid, and then manually refill it, what's the point of having $10 sitting there in the machine, all the time, doing nothing. Might as well just have the guy give you the ten bucks. I mean, why would you want to have to have your time taken up with dealing with that. Hey, I won the jackpot, oh, right, I'll get the manager. Sorry, can't find him, you'll have to come back. What the heck, I want my money. I'm not authorised, he's not here, I'll rip your head off, etc, etc, so the manger has to be there, all the time the machines can be played, unless they let every spotty little oik employed give out the $10, which isn't going to happen, it's a lot of money, as you pointed out, and as the article mentioned too. So he can't go to the toilet, nip out for a breath of air, have lunch, etc. Horrible idea, but someone thought it was a feature?

Someone should have spoken up, but didn't, and it happened, but one machine being a pig, doesn't mean they didn't get most of it right.

Great stuff. I'd been to that site before, but I was looking for info on my machine, and although I skim read a bunch of other stuff, I hadn't spotted that little gem, or at least read it in any detail. Nice one, thanks.
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

Post by coppinpr »

as to the grease your "skim reading" again, I never said to put any Vaseline in the tube,I said work some Vaseline into the leather to bring it back to life, (or you could simply replace it)you don't need anything in the tube or you will end up with oxidised grease just like you had when you got the machine and, as you say, the small amount of grease will block the vent hole and oxidise blocking the hole.
The idea of having the Melon Bell jackpot attendant paid and filled (there would always be an attendant with a long chain of keys around his neck (in the UK these always seemed to be called "Lenny")on duty in a room full of "Bell style" machines) was most likely considered a feature for the operator(with a spin-off for the player) as it gave the operator the option to leave the JP in place and pay the punter in notes. that way the machine always had a full JP and the punter was most likely going to change up the coins before he left anyway, from the punter's point of view the machine always looked worth playing, In reality, this was a disaster for the operator, as all JP wins, even if in quick succession were the full $10 (which was all the operators narrow view could see)
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

Post by sutty »

No, indeed not, I read that, and it is indeed very lightly greased as it stands, but if I were to redo it, with Vaseline, according to your instructions, that is exactly what I would be doing. I think all I did was wipe round the cup, with a fine film anyway.

Either way it's clear that it needs to be redone, so I will, and I'll work it into the cup with my fingers, to revitalise it.

Cheers

Sutty
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Re: Sega Mad Money Restoration

Post by sutty »

coppinpr wrote: Wed Apr 13, 2022 6:43 am(or you could simply replace it)
As a matter of interest, I'd prefer not to replace it, but if I have to I will. I've tried hard to keep every single screw, the electrics, etc, original, where possible. Of course, it had to be rewired, unsafe, etc, but I used pretty much everything I could, that I already had. There were, of course, screws missing, where I had to buy replacements. I got the exact same types, after much searching, however I went with stainless steel, which I thought was a better bet, but it turns out I even feel bad about that, lol. And, they are a pain in the neck, because when you drop them, you can't pick them up with a magnetic screwdriver, lol.

Of course compromises had to be made. I had several springs missing, so I had to make replacements, so they are not original, and in the case of my main spring, it doesn't even look like a real one, because it isn't tapered at each end and I didn't have the tools or the skill to do that, but at least it works. Sometimes I get fixated, it must be OCD, and I have to use the right thing, other times not so.

I can't tell you how mortified I was when I thought I'd broken one of the chokes, through my own incompetence, whilst stripping the wires and pulling it off. I wrote about it earlier. My feeling was, survives in service for goodness knows how many years, then waits quietly for 50 years, and when I lay my hands on it I break it. :dammit: Thank goodness I was able to fix it.

If I do need to replace the cup, I will be making one, unless a genuine original can still be sourced. One might say, who cares, it's inside, can't be seen, buy one of almost identical spec, but then I'll know, and it will bug me, maybe. I never know which things will get me.

For example, other things, don't worry me, like the fact that my legends are replacements, on clear vinyl, but I had no choice, the others were almost destroyed, and the way I replaced them, as far as I knew, was the only option available to me, so a compromise had to be made, but I've still kept the originals, dreadful though they are.

Right, off to strip down my dampener, because I've done it wrong.

Thanks again.
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