Aristocrat Arcadian - Mixed nickel and quarter parts?

[Abe Frohman]

Picked up a non-working Arcadian.  After about a day's work I have it running fairly well, but the coin-in and the payout gizmos are jamming very frequently.  Also, the coin reject hole isn't large enough for a quarter to pass through it, not even close.  Is it possible this is a nickel mechanism in a quarter box?  If so I doubt the quarters would work in the jackpot slides, in fact if I try to feed it nickels they partially fall through when the sliders are in the non-paying state.  So it looks like the whole machine might be a quarter machine except for the coin-in assembly, not sure.  But the quarters in the jackpot slides seem very "tight" - almost like the machine was geared for a coin smaller than a US quarter but not as small as a US nickel.


Would (could) someone have mounted a nickel coin "acceptor" in a quarter machine?


I also understand that this machine is not US-made.  Australian maybe?  For UK currency?  And there could be slight differences in the foreign coins, etc.  The face of the machine says 25 but doesn't show a "cents sign" or anything like that.  Just wondering what could be causing the frequent jam-ups before and after the tube, I can't imagine the operator would be opening and disassembling the chute every 30 minutes to clear jams from misbehaving quarters.  Any ideas?

[rokgpsman]

I agree with your thought that it could have been setup to use a foreign coin that is different (slightly smaller?) in size to our US quarter. You might be able to order some metal tokens to use with it that are close in size to what the machine coin handling parts expect. I've seen tokens in a variety of sizes. The coin entry bezel on some machines can be disassembled and the innards filed to make it larger, but that might not be the case with what you have.

If you measure in various places that the coin path travels maybe you can come up with a size that the coin should be? Can you post a few photos showing the coin path points that you think are the problem?

[Abe Frohman]

You can see here that the quarter is too big to escape out the bent coin diverter, and sometimes the coins don't level out after falling into the payout blades.  And sometimes the blades chop one too few coins, or I get one last coin after the payout blades retract on next spin.  But otherwise the quarter travels the whole path cleanly.


The machine will play reliably for a good number of spins until something just doesn't sit right and then it's screwdriver time again.


It seems it needs a coin quite a bit larger than a nickel, but noticeably smaller than a quarter if it's going to escape the bent coin return yet not fall into the hole in the jackpot blades.  I'd really like to have the thing play US quarters reliably, though.  I'd WTB something if I knew what it was?  Hmm...

[rokgpsman]

Looking at your 2nd photo I wondered about the alignment of the 2 metal halves that form the coin opening. I've put an arrow pointing to the area in your photo below. It looks like the upper metal plate that forms the upper half of opening is not as large as the lower half of the opening, on the left side of the opening in the photo??  Are you thinking that this opening should be larger or smaller for reliable quarter operation? If a little larger would be better you can probably file or machine it larger.

[Abe Frohman]

Good eye!  But alas, even the bottom half is still a few mm smaller than a quarter.  Filing could work, but wait - there's more:

The path is also too "thick" causing the quarter to not fully engage the little kicker lever for the reject.  So if you intentionally (or mistakenly) drop a second or third quarter in, you can very easily jam up the queue with coins and kick the machine into "free play" mode and empty it for free!  Not a good situation for "the house" for sure.  I didn't see anything bent or shaved, etc.  Again, looks like a slightly different (thicker but smaller diameter?) coin would make everything work.

But given that the front door does have a "25" emblem on it (interchangeable, yes) I'm working with the assumption that it was tuned for someone's quarter, somewhere.

Can't seem to find any detailed info on the web about this machine, and I tried to look up English and Australian "quarters" in history and nothing is close in size.  Check Canadian too.  I'd guess that somehow I ended up with a nickel mech on top, and that the payout blades are just finicky...  But I hear these machines, when properly tuned, are decent workhorses that wouldn't have required dismantling a few times a day to unjam.

I have a bad habit of just buying more like machines so that I can compare them to each other and piece together what goes where - I gotta stop doing that!

 

[rokgpsman]

I believe a US quarter size is 24mm diameter (0.944882 inches),
a Canadian quarter is slightly smaller at 23.88 mm (0.940157 inches).

.....
I have a bad habit of just buying more like machines so that I can compare them to each other and piece together what goes where - I gotta stop doing that!
 

Ha! That's part of the hobby for many of those really into it!   

[Abe Frohman]

Hmmmm....  Interesting.  The cut-out indeed is the perfect size for a nickel.  And now that I am taking a closer look, there is a spring behind the coin mech that is all sproingy, and there is a nut missing from one of the two bolts that hold the mech assembly on.  I'm becoming more confident that someone Frankensteined this machine back together using a nickel coin mech in a (probably) quarter machine?


What are the chances I'm going to find a quarter coin acceptor for this machine, here or elsewhere?  I'm pretty confident that's what's going on here.  One of those deals where you try too long to disprove your correct initial gut instinct, maybe?

[rokgpsman]

Any chance the person you got the machine from could give you some history on it, maybe they have other parts or assemblies that came out of it or would fit it?

[Abe Frohman]

Nope, he was a nice guy and I'm not accusing at all, but you know the "I don't know much about these things" routine where they claim it was playing just perfectly until the grandkids did something.  The main reason the machine stopped playing was that the main assembly had been tightened too tightly with a wrench, causing the kicker to not spin the reels.  Loosening it up gave it the proper action.  Ain't no way that happened form the grandkids playing with it too roughly, so obviously someone was in there trying to restore this machine before me.

But with this coin checker I doubt the machine ever played straight even on a good day.  Even when I'm *trying* to count, I can never remember if I already put a coin in and invariably put two at a time, causing a jam.  (With the rejector not working)

I suspect he was frustrated with the same issue and didn't have the inclination to figure out what the heck was causing all these jams.

I think I might need to find out where this show is coming up near Chicago in a couple of weeks (never been to one) and see if anyone has a for-parts Arcadian I can buy on the cheap...





(edit to fix tiny unreadable text)

[filounet]

Hi,

Do you still need answers to your questions for this machine?
I have some machines at home including this one

Filounet