New Life Games Tech Forums

I just bought a 873-A fruit machine from an estate sale and overall it's in pretty good shape.  When I tried it at purchase, it seems to payout (no quarters).  When I got it back to my parents house and threw some quarters in, I immediately noticed that none were coming out of the hopper.  Further inspection revealed the "coin kicker" was fully extended and prohibiting coins from going past it to the mechanical counter / change payout crome bowl. 

Any ideas on this one?  Burnt coil or something needing to be cleaned?  I sold my Bally Slot Book when I let my last machine go, so I'm out of luck...

Any help greatly appreciated!

Hi... Is it possible that your hopper has timed out? If you hit a jackpot and had no coins in it the hopper, it would run till the timer would shut it off. There should be a slide lever that runs under the hopper to the timer in the left rear side of the cabinet. Push that lever in and reset the timer. If yours doesn't have one remove the hopper and push it with your finger.

1st  make sure its a 25 cent  hopper see if coins fit in space on hopper wheel and make sure both wires or on coil that pulls inthe diverter on upper hopper ,the hopper is turning right? if not the timer might have just ran out

If the motor runs it's probably a burnt coil, since that coil goes in parallel with the motor and if the motor has power it should be pulled in. Is it stuck - can you move it manually? Check for broken or detached wires, too.

The motor runs and the hopper turns to make the payout.  The coin kicker seems to be fully extended and knocking all the quarters out of the way.  If I physically push back the coin kicker, the hopper will successfully pay the proper amount of coins.  The hopper seems to be correct for a quarter.   I don't see any burnt/disconnected wires.  It will manually move when pushed.

The coil is open circuit, then. If it's burned out it should be obvious, blackened. If it looks ok, perhaps the coil wire became disconnected from the tag at one end, and you can fix it. Otherwise you'll have to replace or rewind it. If you have a meter you could check it for continuity - it will be quite low resistance - but disconnect it first or you'll be measuring the motor.

It didn't fix the actual problem, but I removed the spring from the coin kicker and the machine plays fine.

The 873 I bought yesterday had a similar issue, but it was just a case where the spring and washer were missing from the pin on the kicker arm, so the kicker was basically disabled like yours is now.  You will probably notice an extra coin here or there in your payouts, that kicker is supposed to quickly kick away the next coin in the hopper so that you don't have chance of being overpaid one coin when the current payout is finished.