Sega Mad Money Restoration

[sutty]

I think my escalator and top reel lamp solution has worked out okay. It's exactly where I want it, and it's proof of concept at least. Hopefully it's where it would have been with the original lighting mod.

The left hand plate is at an angle, deliberately, to allow adjustment of the distance out, to make it parallel to the reels, so the holes didn't need to be precision. The holes were already there, as it was some punched strips of metal I already had, though I don't recall what they were for now.

Last shot shows the tube fitted with the escalator in place over the top. Left hand tube end will not be fixed down, it will just float there, or I would have to drill the plate. I'm happy with the mid tube support for that end. Maybe I'll use some double sided tape, but it should be fine anyway.

No need for it to shine through the right hand part of the front glass, as we look, because that has a solid metal jackpot plate, which cannot be backlit.

[sutty]

Not sure what to call this, so I'll just describe it. Do people bother with implementing the 'pull overspeed blocking mechanism'. Clearly I should have some sort of pawl, to engage with a very durable looking saw tooth device, on the side of the case, but in my case it has always been missing.

Are these devices routinely removed? How hard are they to find and if not easy to come by, could one be made? For that matter, what do they look like?

[coppinpr]

does the parts list you mentioned not show it? or does that not extend to the case parts? ask Tom (treefrog) he most likely has a container full of them

[treefrog]

If your talking about the speed lever on the handle assembly, yes they were or are often removed. They were to prevent damage by pulling handle too hard as the lever would flip out and engage the teeth. I guess they were removed possibly due to reliability as when gummed up or warn could lock out machine when you don’t want. Like many added anti cheat and anti everything devices, many were removed from machines by operators later in life as they caused more problems than they prevented for the operator.

As such you don’t need, if desperate I probably have one.

viewtopic.php?p=61572#p61572

[sutty]

Ah, thanks for the link. Yes, that's the component I was referring to, anti-slam device it is then. Not desperate in any sense, I was just trying to 'repair' it as it should be. If it's common for them to be removed, I'm not overly worried, though it might have been fun and nice to fit one, just for the sake of 'how it would have been', but with it never having been on my machine, it's less concerning.

Let me take a look at how it would fit, because I probably also have some sort of pin missing too. Maybe you could let me know how much you want for it, and I could decide. That picture in the link is very nice, because it shows exactly how it works too. Very clever in its simplicity. I like it, weight vs inertia.

I'll take a picture of what I have in place already, in that area.

EDIT:

does the parts list you mentioned not show it? or does that not extend to the case parts? ask Tom (treefrog) he most likely has a container full of them

Thanks, I didn't see your post until after I had responded to treefrog. It seems he does have one, which would be nice, for the sake of completeness. Yes, the parts list does mention it, but the pictures are so poor, you can't make out what it looks like, and, I didn't think to look until after I posted, lol. The picture taken in the linked thread, that treefrog posted, is perfect, for seeing what it looks like and exactly how it works. They call it speed lock, or so it would seem.

[coppinpr]

It never occurred to me before, and I'm sure I'm wrong (I don't have a machine I can climb over to look into) but is the missing part actually the same as part number MLB 2805 the operating fork Dog (our old nemesis, from the "dog & cog")?

[sutty]

I couldn't say, but then I'm sure you knew that, and were asking someone else.

[sutty]

treefrog, Tom, I've been trying to PM you, but I'm having some trouble. Probably my lack of understanding of how it works. Would you please contact me to discuss the anti slam device you may have available.

Thanks

Sutty

[sutty]

Just thought I'd post a little bit of assembly progress. Still waiting on a bunch of imperial screws, my chrome work, and may make a new handle spring as well, but I wanted to make some progress, to keep me inspired. Hopefully, what I have put together, can remain so, as I progress. Previous reassembly efforts have been beset by 'oh damn' moments, when I realised I had to back track, just to get something in where I had done it in the wrong order.

[sutty]

Just a further little update. I'm waiting on some small imperial slotted round head bolts, and it has ground me to a halt. I ordered them ages ago, along with a lot of others, and they sent pozi, for one of the sizes. I told them, and of course, they resupplied pozi. I told them again, and they were profusely apologetic, saying they would send them out right away, but later getting back to me, saying there was a stock bin error, hence the duplicated error, and it had left them without stock, and that I would have to wait several weeks, whilst being even more apologetic, asking if there was anything they could do to help. I said, well now that you come to mention it, I now realise I need 5 other bolts, which I was going to order, but if you can throw them in for free, that would go a long way to helping me forget the issues. They agreed, which was nice, but still, I have a week or two to wait now. Still waiting for chrome parts too, so I'm definitely at a halt.

Anyway, the delay has possibly lead me to inventing jobs. I said in a previous post that I may well do a new handle pull return spring. The one I have works, and looked reasonable, especially after giving it a good brush up, but a few over loose coils at one end, and the lack of a proper termination plate at that end made me decide to try and make one.

First job was to wind the spring, making it well over length, in case the start and finish coils needed to be discarded, plus not knowing how many I would lose due to the unwind process that takes place, when you stop winding. Here is the blank wind, straight off the drill.

Next, I only had one end for the old spring, as you can see from the above picture, so I made a new end to approximate to the other end, out of a scrap piece of stainless steel I had available. I did a quick spray with black paint, to make a pattern, then quickly rescued the original to wipe the paint off. See below:

Next I used my dremel to grind the new spring to the correct length, drilled and ground my template to shape, and then fitted both ends. See below:

Very happy with the outcome here. Time will tell if it works, because I can't fit it until I can proceed further with the assembly, but it seems to be good.

[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.

[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.

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.

[sutty]

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

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.

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!

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.

[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]

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.

[sutty]

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.

[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.

[sutty]

For grins, I thought I would just revisit one of my original photos.

[special when lit]

Looks great, like new

[sutty]

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.

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.