873A No pay

[Phan000]

Working on this 873A.  Have cleaned well, including all switches.

Steps up with coins, insert coin light goes off.  Winner paid light stays on & machine does not pay for any combinations.

I believe that I’ve heard hopper cycle. I never did figure out the filter board thing on this one.

What is the next thing to look at?

Thanks!

[Phan000]

Update-

I tried playing a few more times and the machine paid on this hit.

Now I am even more confused...  perhaps the first reel strip is not lined up properly?

[wolftalk]

assuming the filter board doesn't change any of the standard circuit behavior, the winner paid light is on when the payout counter reset pawl switch is closed.

sounds like the payout counter reset coil isn't getting powered, so check the payout counter zwro switch near the spiral cam and reel mech B switch.

note that if the payout counter is just cruddy and the wipers aren't resetting all the way, the winner paid light should still go off. 

when the payout counter reset coil powers, the pawls should lift off the ratchet teeth and stay lifted.

[tuna]

873 is a 5 line machine, Your machine appears to be a 809. Is there a metal tag on the outside of the machine?  If it is a 809 with a 873 hopper you will have mismatched payouts like in the 2nd picture.

[wolftalk]

873 is a 5 line machine, Your machine appears to be a 809. Is there a metal tag on the outside of the machine?  If it is a 809 with a 873 hopper you will have mismatched payouts like in the 2nd picture.

good point.  The 873 generally used a 30 pin hopper plug and the 809 used an 18 pin plug.

gotta assume that the hopper was originally in an 873A, but it's been converted for use in an 809.  Or the whole machine was an 873A converted to an 809.  Or it was just created from bits of various machines.

it's not likely that someone randomly stuck parts into a cabinet that don't work together properly since the plugs usually wouldn't mate up (not counting a sledge hammer to get the pieces in).

those reel tapes with blanks aren't common.  The 809's I've found that used melons/bars/sevens/$2.50 and blanks are called "Money Gusher" models.  They used the M-645-118 payout counter disc and the reel tapes were m-220-[1344, 1345, 1336]

I don't show bally producing a generic "money gusher" machine - they were all made for specific casinos.  Finding an exact schematic would be difficult, but any 809 schematic should be reasonably close except the reel wiper wiring and payout counter traces/connections.
 

[rdaniel]

The reel tapes look like those found on my 873 Y, melons and bars. Seems that the reel tapes do not match the feature glass.

[Phan000]

The reels do have all the items on the feature glass.  May have been hidden in the photo.

There is no metal plate on the side of this machine.

I tried putting the hopper in a different 873 machine & blew a fuse. 

The Mellon does not pay on most slightly misaligned hits.  Neither does the bars.  The 2.50$ hit on the alignment in the attached photo & jackpot bell chimed.

Seems like if the first reel strip was out of place,  it the machine would hit on every misaligned win?

[DavidLee]

Align the 7s on the pay line.
Index arms can be pulled back to release the reels as to realignment 777.
At this point the 7s should and or can be aligned on the center line.
The slot index arms most likely will be in the deepest slot.

If the reel tapes are loose, it might be possible to slide them into place.

If not the reel edge crimping can be lifted slightly to aid in the re-alignment.

Possible no pay could be the result of dirty or misaligned wiper boards contacts.

[wolftalk]

as tuna said, the 873 is a 5 line machine.  It also has 22 stop reels.

count the number of symbol positions on the reels, including blanks.  Is it 20?

there's a number of things you can do to make life easier:

1] post a picture of the payout counter disc showing the wiring on the bottom and the M-645-xxx number

2] post a pic of the left side of the reel 1 metal slotted index disc showing the code/numbers stamped into the disc (MG-1 or 484-1257 ?)

3] post a pic of inside the cabinet with the hopper removed showing the hopper beau plug

if the index disks are per [2] above and tapes are per previous post, then BOTH the deepest and shallowest slots on the reel 1 index disc map to blanks.    The second deepest slot on reel 1 is the 7 (depth 5).  Reels 2 and 3 the deepest slots are depth 5 and those are 7's as david said.

in other words, the slot depth / wiper position is the same on all three reels for the 7's, but reel 1 is odd as there is a deeper slot on it for some of the blanks.

it is possible the game started life as an 873 and someone converted it to a 5 coin multiplier instead of a 5 line pay, but that's a huge amount more work than just modifying an 873 hopper to use in an 809. 

[Phan000]

Here are the photos-  it does appear that everything is an 809-zh, excluding the hopper.  Several pink tags inside also  verify this.

The 7s line up as shown in the photo.  Deeps slots are blanks.

[DavidLee]

Wiper boards need some attention.
De-grease the contacts, clean with a kitchen type scratch pad.
Rivets will become shiny, wipe on light oil, then wipe off excess oil leaving a slight oil film.
This will aid in the movement for the index arm.

The contact alignment is good on the board in the photo.
Check the other two.

[wolftalk]

809-ZH = money gusher models built for the Lady Luck casino with a payback percentage of 82%.

however, I'm pretty sure the wipers are not on the correct rivets on reel 1.  Since the 7 symbol is a depth 5 slot in the index disc, the wiper fingers should be on the row 5 rivets.  Your wipers appear to be on row 4 (unless it's just the camera angle), and that'll make all the payouts wrong.

the rivets (looking at the wiper side of the contact plate) are numbered 9, 8, 7, ... from right to left and the leftmost 4 rows of rivets aren't used - the wipers can't even reach them with those index discs.

that is a 30 pin hopper plug, so someone elected to change the socket in the cabinet so they could wire in the 873 hopper.

the sharpie marks on the pads are interesting ... I assume they cut some of the traces to make them the right lengths for the payouts the 809-zh needed since the payout counter board is not the correct one for an 809-zh.

if you can post another pic of the entire payout counter, that'd be great.  Below is what a m-645-141 board looked like originally.

it's pretty safe to assume the hopper was modified correctly and the game should work, so follow what david said on the cleaning and fix the wiper positions per above and see where ya are.

btw, the reason some blanks are mapped to row 6 is those blanks turned on the hopper mixer relay to burp the hopper.   The blanks that put the wipers on row 1 don't do anything ... there's no wires attachd to those rivets on the spaghetti side of the contact plate.

[Phan000]

Thanks David,

I will clean the contacts today.

Looks like the wipers on reels 2 and 3 are slightly off. Connections look like they veer out toward the reels at the bottom and touch the wrong rivet.

This is what the look like on a 777 hit.

[Phan000]

Here is the photo of the pay board

[DavidLee]

The wipers are slightly off, but okay.
If and when you adjust the arm, loosen the top bolt. Then loosen the bottom bolt just enough as the maintain
pressure on the arm to help keep it stabilized. This makes it easier to adjust and keeps the arms in place
when re-tightened. Check alignment in all slot depths.

Also check the index arm roller for wear, free movement and lubricant.

A properly operating arm should slid back in one motion.

[wolftalk]

they hijacked the lower half of the 50 trace to pay $1.  You should see the 50 trace cut and they somehow got the blue/yellow wire attached to the segment the wipers are sitting on at reset.

then they used the outboard wiper trace to get the wipers onto the upper half of the 50 trace for the $2.50 pay.

that works, and should give the warm-n-fuzzies that the game will pay correctly when you've got other issues sorted.

[DavidLee]

Wolftalk,

I noticed that modification to a 50 pay.
Looks like a bit of solder was added for a final adjustment.

[Phan000]

Thanks for the input.

Wouldn’t the bottom wipers touching two rivets cause an issue?

[DavidLee]

Any rivet that has a wire connected to it could be a potential problem when the contacts straddles rivets.
At this point the wiper appears to be within limits.

Best to adjust the wiper back to center on the rivets.

[wolftalk]

only the most complex payout games use the bottom arc or two of rivets.

in your case, the bottom 3 arcs aren't wired to anything on reel 1, and the bottom 4 arcs aren't used on reels 2-3.

however, I'd do as david suggests and make it look right so nobody else thinks it's a problem.

for some odd reason, I have the reel wiper diagram for the game, so it's below.  The rest of the paperwork is on https://bingo.cdyn.com/slots ... except the schematic, which I don't have.