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.

Busy day. Started with the SMC1. It has needed very little in the way of adjustments. Working from the get-go it has run like it should. I tested cartridges and needles until I found a combination I liked the sound of. I’m using the purple sapphire needles instead of the yellow diamond. I can hear no difference between the two. This juke has reconed bass speakers in it abd it really makes a difference. Best I can say is the bass sounds firm. I’ll usually make three selections at a time while tinkering with the box to check proper selection and play. The only thing that cropped up was the mech moved a hair too far left when picking up 100/200 and tripped while actually past the record rack. A slight adjustment inward of the limit switch ramp solved that. I will continue to select and play several records each day to check the box out. There are still some cosmetics to do to actually consider the SMC1 finished. I have already contacted a fellow who had asked about availability of any jukeboxes informing him of this one. He and his wife will visit in a couple weeks. Plenty of time to wring out any problems.

I got the animation motor gears back from Fred Mlakar. What a guy! I’m so impressed he would repair these for me. I very carefully mounted these on the motor shafts, vacuumed the interior one more time-the juke looked like someone had thrown a purple fuzz bomb in it. Someday I will get all of it out. Mounted the lamps and they performed perfectly and quietly. I dropped a quarter down the coin slot-nothing. In the process of removing the coin chute a veritable flood of coins came through. Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters. I got a rebate! The coin mech got jammed and kids most likely poured all the coins they could find down it. I have some very interesting “rebate” stories to share some day. I mounted the mechanism and removed the electrical selector for cleaning. It will get a very thorough look what with that burned contact block contact. Something somehwere in the selection system caused that.

I got another cabinet lock set from the “Z Man” Zuddie S. to replace the set with two left side locks he originally sent for the New G. I really needed only the right side as the left side had the #221 keyed correct lock. I tried like hell to get that left lock to work on the right, mostly to make double sure that yes, he had accidentally sent two of the same locks. I installed the right lock in short order with the lever and latch and now have a dome that can be locked from both sides just like Seeburg intended.

A couple days ago I visited my buddy Jeff R to help him tear down a DS160. He wants to keep some parts to use on another DS he’s restoring and gave me the rest. We spent a couple hours separating the box into two piles amd heaved the carcass to the alley curb. I dragged my booty home piling it around and under the Camaro. I dragged the mechanism out today and tore it down the same way into two piles-good stuff and junk and put it all up. I pile all the junk metal pieces, and at times that has included cabinets, at the edge of the alley. There’s always someone coming by searching for scrap metal. I get a warm and fuzzy feeling helping someone out and an even warmer, fuzzier feeling that I have more junk out of my life.