Bally 873 Payout Issues!

[JMac]

I just received a well worn Bally 873 & it has a few payout issues;

1st line single cherry, no pay, double cherry, pays 5 coins as it should.
2nd line single cherry, pays 3 coins, double cherry pays 3 coins.
3rd line single cherry, pays 3 coins, double cherry pays 6 coins.
4th line single cherry, pays 3 coins, double cherry pays 8 coins.
5th line single cherry, pays 3 coins, double cherry pays 8 coins.

3 bars should pay 100 coins, pays 99 on one line and 108 on another, this I can live with but I would like have the cherry payouts correct.

Various other payouts are 1 to 4 coins under or over what they should be, this is too convoluted to get deeper into it at this point in time!

I did find one weak contact on the number one reel wiper (Behind the reel) and took care of that, nothing changed.

I have cleaned and burnished all of the contacts and wipers (behind the reels) and checked the tension on all of the wipers and they seem like they should get then job done.

What else should I be looking at on this thing??

*****

One other small thing, one can not see the INSERT COIN, COIN ACCEPTED & WINNER PAID lights through the reel glass mask, a little glow does come through but not enough to notice even if the room is darkened.  The bulbs are all new and bright – This is a new one on me!!

[Amachanic]

Hey JMac. Glad the 962 is good to go again, now for the new toy.. I would concentrate on the hopper. I would check and see if the white 100 tooth gear is advancing one click or tooth at a time. Then make sure it always return back to zero. You have 4 or 5 wiper fingers on the hoppers payout board. I'm sure those contacts have a lot of wear. Worn contact can cause payout problems. Barry Fox did have some, but I'm not sure now. Also check the condition of the spiral cam and the plastic lever it contacts at zero. I have gotten machines in where these were glued back together. You need to take the screw and nut loose and remove it so you can lay down the hopper payout board to check the condition of the teeth off the 100 tooth gear. Advance it and retract the gear to watch if its only advancing one tooth for each coin, or to see if its skipping due to wear or damage. Those 100 gears are still available. I think this will keep you busy for a while. Next we can try to adj the 100 coin payouts. That's a totally different adjustment.

Gary

[OldReno]

It is important for you to look at the hopper board payfingers after each mis-pay.
Log where they are, that can give a firmer understanding of what is happening.

It sounds like your 3 bars may be paying for bars, and a two cherry pay?  Can they both be on paylines at the same time???

873's have a diabolical pay system IMHO, and you can have multiple cuts for the same pay.
Bally engineers were ingenious.

Would you please do us a favor, and take the time to write out what the pay symbols line up to on each of your 3 reels?
Start with the beginning of the reel strip and move up to the next symbol.
Thanks, and it will be interesting to see how these pays develop, and the reel strip combinations.
Some of Bally's stuff was really sly.

[JMac]

Gary,

Thanks for the ideas! The hopper seems to be the cleanest part of this thing. Checked all as you suggested, disassembled some, cleaned and or burnished everthing that I could find, no change!

I did look at the feature unit and what a dirty mess! There is a nylon gear on the left side of the assembly and it looks like a tooth or two is missing (See attached), not having seen a good one, I don't know if it was made that way or not, and I have no idea if the problem could even be here!?!?  In any case the whole mess needs a good looking after.

Let me know about the gear and if the problem could even be in the feature unit??

TIA!

Old Reno, you posted while I was typing my reply, so....

I will do as you suggest but it may not be for a day or two as like some of you I have a life away from the games (Got to go shoot the guns and take care of some other projects).

Thanks guys!

[Amachanic]

JMac.. That notch on that gear is normal. The 873 is a different animal as OldReno said. It does have multi payouts so writing the jackpots is a good tool for trouble shooting the machine. A single cherry playing all line should pay 4. That machine pays out on so many combinations. It's not just paying the highest winning combination, it pays all combinations!!

Gary

[JMac]

Gary,

I suspected the notch could be as you said.

Back to the hopper, Attached is a photo of the ONLY payout that does not happen – All other payouts are working or at least I believe they are; A single cherry on line one does not pay, the attached photo shows the position of the hopper payout fingers (Wipers), in relation to the board, the bottom most one is on the phenolic,not the pad - It looks like the bottom pad could be just a little longer.  I note here that looking at the fingers on other payouts, they are where they should be, moving things to make contact for the one cherry COULD throw the other payouts off!!

What to do, add a little solder or?? to extend the pad??

The parts on my 962 are not the same, but close enough to see that one cherry on line one pays out as the wipers ARE on the pads, ARGhhhh!!

[Amachanic]

This just looks to be that your stop bumpers worn down. It is adjustable, jam nut on the top, and its a small allen screw.. Loosen the jam nut and extend it out about 1 full turn and tighten, be careful not to over tighten. I have broken them before..  That will move the starting position just a bit forwards. Just make sure the zero switch relay is still opening and closing. This is the rubber bumper that gets sticky not allowing the switch to open I told you about. You can replace them with a pencil eraser.

Gary

[RiseLikeRa]

Good eyes Gary and a great picture!  That rubber bumper seems to be warn down to a nub.  I would opt for the pencil eraser now since there is not much adjustment left to be had.  I performed this task on my 809 a few months ago and not a bit of trouble since.  I used a grey eraser over the pink kind because it seemed to be a slightly less gummy compound.  I did add a dab of glue to the eraser to make sure that I did not lliberate itself.

BTW  how do you make those highlight circles on your pictures?  I have always wondered about that.

Ra

[Amachanic]

BTW  how do you make those highlight circles on your pictures?  I have always wondered about that.

Ra

Ra.. To do the highlight picture circles, you need to take what ever picture it is, and as your viewing it on your computer, you should be able to click on edit or something similar and get it into a photo shop program. Once there is where you can do the magic. It took me a while, but if don't try you never learn. I messed up a lot of pics before I figured it out. Thing that nice is you don't have to save what you don't want.

Gary

[RiseLikeRa]

Gary:

Thanks.  I will take a junk picture and give it a try.

Ra

[JMac]

This just looks to be that your stop bumpers worn down. It is adjustable, jam nut on the top, and its a small allen screw.. Loosen the jam nut and extend it out about 1 full turn and tighten, be careful not to over tighten. I have broken them before..  That will move the starting position just a bit forwards. Just make sure the zero switch relay is still opening and closing. This is the rubber bumper that gets sticky not allowing the switch to open I told you about. You can replace them with a pencil eraser.

Gary

Gary,

I did look at that and yes, not enough adjustment left on it.  I like the eraser idea, I did try something else last night but it was late and sleep was more important!  I will get with the program here in a little bit and let you know how it went.

I used Photoimpact for the highlights, but Windowz Paint will do it too!!

Again, thanks to all that chimed in!!

[JMac]

This just looks to be that your stop bumpers worn down. It is adjustable, jam nut on the top, and its a small allen screw.. Loosen the jam nut and extend it out about 1 full turn and tighten, be careful not to over tighten. I have broken them before..  That will move the starting position just a bit forwards. Just make sure the zero switch relay is still opening and closing. This is the rubber bumper that gets sticky not allowing the switch to open I told you about. You can replace them with a pencil eraser.

Gary

+++++++++++

Gary,

The 873 is now paying out correctly (All lines) on a single cherry through three bells and the sevens.  The only one not correct is the three bar two hundred coin payouts, the count is closer to three hundred coins, I did not count ‘em (.984 tokens), lines 1 - 4, line.
I can live with the payouts as they are but I have some questions about what is normal operation and if not normal, where do I look?.

1  Is it normal for an 873 to payout the sevens jackpot and go dark (That part I know is normal), When pushing the reset bar it pays out again and so on, the only way to get it back to ‘normal’ is to drop a coin in it, or hit the coin switch while holding the reset bar in!?!? Three sevens on line five do not pay anything, just lights the candle and sounds the bell (Forever), one must coin it up to shut it up!?!?


2.  There is a key switch on the side of the machine, is that normal for an 873?  The switch seems to do nothing.

3.  I have come to the conclusion that this 873 started life as something else and someone converted it to an 873, markings on many parts and original tag missing with a stick-on Bally tag stamped 873, no dash, no suffix.


The key to get it working was the hopper ZERO adjustment, I replaced the rubber and adjusted the timing of the zero switch, I used a VOM for the switch, not my old tired eyes, that last part did the trick.

[slotsteve]

your 200 pay wiper is bent  you can see it in the pic    easy fix , plus its on a slide and you can move it so its off hot spot at 200

[Amachanic]

Hey JMac.. Glad to hear the two coin payouts fixed. I guess those 2 call yesterday helped find and fix the problem. As Slotsteve posted the 200 coin wiper on the lower right corner of the hopper board now needs to be adjusted. That set of contacts is adjusted by loosing the 2 mounting screws, then sliding the contact so they just come off the pad at a 200 coin count. You can adjust it the same way using the meter as you did on the 2 coin payout. Just advance the spiral cam 200 clicks then meter out that set of contacts and tighten the screws. If your machine is timing out before the 200 coin are paid, then you might have to check the safety time adjustment. I've never had to adjust a timer before, but I know it's talked about in the manual.     On the good job done..

Gary

[JMac]

your 200 pay wiper is bent  you can see it in the pic    easy fix , plus its on a slide and you can move it so its off hot spot at 200

Optical illusion/camera angle - The wiper is is as it should be.

After messing with the hopper for some time now, the pay out situation is this; all payouts are correct from single cherry to three bars on all five lines...  Now when three sevens line up, the thing pays 240+ coins.  Whetever is supposed to tell the fool to stop paying is broken or out of adjustment (I suspect the latter).  The spiral cam runs the 'floating mech' until it can go no farther, at that point it has paid 240 plus coins and shuts down.

I thought that I found the contacts that were supposed to stop it but after many adjustments, no change in behaviour at all!

As a side note: Last time I posted it was the bars paying off too much and the sevens payout were right on, thee bars are right on now, 100 coins and the sevens are wacko!!

What am I missing??

[OldReno]

It sounds like your outboard wipers are out of adjustment.
Read here for how to do that: http://newlifegames.net/nlg/index.php?topic=17554.0
and here: http://newlifegames.net/nlg/index.php?topic=18831.0
Found those on OldReno's troubleshooting tips page. Has anyone read it?

Glad your pays are getting closer to being correct.
Keep at it.
One important test is to manually step the payboard to its limit, and if the limit is under 200 steps, you need some adjustments.   If it stops stepping before 200, it will runaway on that 200 coin pay, for sure.
Also if the 200 step outboard wiper stays on for over 200 steps, it is liable to pay an extra 20 or 40 or more coins.
200 step outboard wiper should lose contact at about 175 steps.

[OldReno]

This may help, too: http://newlifegames.net/nlg/index.php?topic=18776.0
It's good to get a general idea of what the hopper payboard does, and I offer the above to you in addition to what you are learning about it on your own by working on the thing.

[JMac]

Guys,

Thanks for all the offers of help and ideas.

The latest fiasco with this hopper is this; last night I worked on it dealing ONLY with the 200 coin payout – I was at it from 9:00 P to 3:30A and made no progress, well if you consider messing up other payouts I did make some progress. 2 cherries on line one now pays 9 coins, 3 oranges anywhere pays from 11 to 20 some coins, etc…  The 200 coin payout when I left EARLY this morning was paying right at 100 coins.

After I got up and got my heart started, I put the ^($^$% thing back as it was when I started yesterday or as close as I could get it.  It is now paying very close to 200 coins on the JP and the other payouts are as stated above (SOME are correct, others no quite so).

You know my grand kids and the visitors will probably never know and if they do notice it, so what!!

I bought the thing to play, not work on and that is what is going to happen unless it really messes up and then I will just take it to Larry at L.A. Slots and let them deal with it.

The ONLY thing that I would like to fix at this point is when the JP is hit and the payout is done, the machine stays on, it does not go dark as it should.  The only time that it has gone dark is on the JP overpay and then it was the timer that shut it off.

What do I need to adjust to get the machine to go dark after the 200 coin JP??

The reason for my throwing in the towel is here; http://tinyurl.com/bd5wfyu - It chronicles my little 2 month hospital stay last year when my cognitive abilities were compromised by lack of oxygen and high power meds including hallucinogenics.   Mechanical issues were never a problem before that and I probably would have had this going on my own before my problems arose.  Not the case now!

Again, MANY Thanks to all of you!!

[OldReno]

Sorry JMac, it's hard to do this on internet, and can lead to much frustration.
I think you did a heck of a job so far on this thing, and there is no reason to bang your head on it any further.

When the JP is hit, and the pay is done, it is supposed to stay on.  It will be in lockup mode probably, and will go off when you turn the JP key and insert another coin.  Or you can open the door and push down on the coin in switch.
I presume the hopper stops running after paying out 200 coins on JP???

[JMac]

Thanks for the encouragement!!

When the JP is hit, the hopper pays out, candle lights up and bell rings and then at 200 coins everything stops as it should.  I was told at this point the machine should go dark and need the reset bar pushed and I have been chasing my tail on that last part...  It only went dark when it went into overpay (240 coins+), and I am now guessing it was the timer shutting it off.  ARGHHHhhh!! And I was told it was supposed to do that when a machine was attendant pay, guess my source was wrong on that count!?!? It did make sense if it did that so as the player could not keep playing and miss out on the payoff.

What is supposed to put it in lockup mode, whatever it is it is not doing it...  I just went in the game room and hit the JP and then dropped 5 more tokens and continued on...

Along that line, the 5th line is attendant pay and the bell will ring forever until the coin switch is activated, the reset bar and or the key switch on the side of the machine have no affect.

I could rewire the keyswitch to the coin switch in parallel and shut it off that way, but only as a last resort...

HUO, so I don't really care, but if it is an easy fix, I'll try it...


Again, thanks for the help!!

[slotsteve]

key switch should work a jp relay   might be  not connected , some 873 the 5th line was a hand pay  no coins out  as for the 200 pay  hand count 200 clicks  see where you 200  blade stops either move it or bend it some so it goes of hot spot there  , you can also put a piece of tape over hot spot at 200 mark  or cut foil as last resort

[RiseLikeRa]

Steve you are correct.   My 873 puts on a nice light show when the jackpot is hit 777 on the fifth coin however it is a hand pay and no coins are paid by the machine at all.

Ra

[OldReno]

The machine should not ever go dark on an attendant pay.  That's silly.
The only thing different about an attendant pay, is that you (customer) can not put coins into the machine.
On a jackpot, the coin lockout coil turns off, and the coin lockout armature moves to block coins from passing through the coin acceptor.  All coins will be returned back into the tray, and you can not play off the jackpot.
Otherwise the machine is normal, just like any other pay.
When you turn the JP reset key switch, then you turn the coin lockout coil back on, the magnet in that coil attracts the armature, and pulls it back out of the way of the coin acceptor.  NOW, the customer can put in a coin, and play off the jackpot.  Just turning the JP key does not turn off the jackpot, you have to coin it and play it off physically.  (or you can open door and push coin switch)
The machine should not go black ever, unless there is something wrong, like it's out of money, or running away.
Hope that helps.
At slotsteve, read section on adjusting your outboard wipers.  There is no need to ever cut the trace on the 200 coin foil. The carry over is the only accurate way to stop the pay at EXACTLY 100 or 200 coins. 

Also, kids, the Jackpot relay (if you have one) turns on during a JP, and that is what kills power to the coin lockout coil  that we talked about above...  The coin lockout coil is wired through a set of NC switches on the JP relay.  when the relay turns on, those 2 switches open, killing power to lockout coil, and preventing you from coining the machine from the outside.  Turning the JP reset key does not effect the JP relay directly, but does it indirectly by allowing you to coin another game by turning on the coin lockout coil through a PARALLEL circuit, which happens to be the JP key switch.   Hope that makes sense.  That's how I understand that it works.

[OldReno]

PS, you have to turn and hold the JP key switch until after the machine takes the first coin.  Then you can release it.

[JMac]

Thanks for the info guys...  Other than SOME over & under pays it is now working as it should...

All of the pays except the 200 were as they should be, once I got the 200 pay working some of the others went to hell in a hand basket... Maybe down the road I will work on them one at a time!

Thanks again, invaluable information!!


Oh, one other thing while we are in the area;  please let me know the function of the highlighted switch in the attached photo.  I look at it and then at the one in my other EM (962) and if the 962 is adjusted properly, I am sure this one is not, but I don't know its purpose so I am going to leave it alone until I do!?