The cosmetics for the SMC1 have been finsished and the juke is done. Hah! That sentence only covers about five hours of work to the lower front door. I prop those up on the bench and then remove the glass, the lower screen and trim pieces. Everything gets cleaned. I’ll even take nasty screws and clean ’em up on the bench grinder wire wheel. The black anodized pieces get wiped down. Glass is cleaned and even this is more involved than it sounds. Seeburg used some kind of sticky foam tape around the edges of any glass. Just a pain in the butt to remove and clean up. Glass will usually have something on it after all the years that involves a razor blade and/or polishing compound to remove. The most labor intensive part is getting as much of the old paint off the bottom screen as possible. I use a 3/8″ drill and a wire wheel and this helps but is still a tedious chore. Can’t be glamor all the time. Grills get painted semi-flat black.

Then I had fun trying to decide which way the reflective glass went. I had neglected to mark it. I tried it both ways. I even messaged Joe A. the SMC King to see what he had to say. I believe I got it right though. Once re-assembled though, all the trouble is worth it to put one of these jukes back to as close to new as I can get it. The SMC1 looks good and sounds superb.

Today is back door day for the New G. Someone had mounted a C backdoor and it rattled. I hate rattles of any sort whether the jukebox is a $500 juke or a $5000 juke. I have the Old G backdoor and actually a C in the garage so I pulled all the doors and stacked them together to see what the difference was. The difference is about 5/16″ thickness. Wandering down the wood aisle at Lowe’s I found a piece of two foot long wood the perfect thickness. Even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then. I had been sweating just how I was going to be able to get a piece of wood just right on the thickness. Using a jigsaw I carefully cut a 3/8″ wide piece from the plank and trimmed to length. After sanding the paint away I glued and clamped the piece in place.

I went through the electrical selector cleaning the slides and their followers. Very straightforward. I was glad I pulled it apart after seeing how dirty it was. No sign of any wires amiss or burns to account for the contact block contact being burned. How that contact got burned may remain a mystery. After wrapping it up I re-installed it in the New G. I unsoldered the five wires from the selection reciever to the credit unit and removed it. The unsoldering only takes a couple minutes and it is a lot easier to work with on the bench rather than in place. It was somewhat sticky so I lubricated the moving parts, took the cancel coil off and cleaned the coil bore and the plunger. They were filthy. I think oil or lubricant gets added here by people mistakenly thinking they are helping. It is a temporary fix at best as any oil attracts and holds dust. Get enough dust and you have dirt. I keep them clean and dry. The coil sleeves are brass which is self lubricating. Cleaning these two pieces freed up the credit unit action considerably.

Someone had put this unit on free play the quick and dirty way by bending the reset ramp out of the way and flipping all the credit switches up. This would be OK except for the fact that the latch bar solenoid stays energized. They can buzz annoyingly or actually catch fire from the heat.There is a chintzy workaround for that too. Cut one wire to the latch solenoid but then you have to press the letter/number buttons down at the same time to make a selection. I am putting one of Vern Schmitt’s fine free play units in this box. It is selectable Free Play or Coin Play. It also has a really cool feature in that if a button is pressed down energizing the latch bar solenoid, after 10 seconds it will release rather than stay down and do bad stuff. ie: buzzing, flaming etc. I finished the credit unit by filing the points as needed and made sure they were correctly adjusted. Operating the credit unit by hand showed all points hitting and the action light and smooth. I re-installed it and re-soldered the wires. It will get an electrical check out when the time comes.