With the door ready to go it was time to find replacement carriage bolts. I didn’t have the 1 inch 10-24 black carriage bolts on hand, but I had a plain steel version. A common problem with new carriage bolts is they tend to have raised lettering on the top. Not something you want displayed on your newly restored control panel as the original hardware was smooth. This door used 12 carriage bolts, ugh. Plus the control panel has a bunch in the same size. I took a batch out to the garage and used the bench grinder to remove the lettering. I followed that up with a course and then fine grit sandpaper step to smooth out the rough marks made by the grinder. I didn’t do this by hand; I put each bolt into my cordless drill and spun it at the maximum speed. It worked well. To paint them I stuck the bolts into the edge of a scrap piece of cardboard. I lightly primed, then painted with black Rustoleum with a final clear coat for durability. Overall this was a pain and I will be ordering some carriage bolts for next time!

The coin mech assembly was simple, but had some parts that couldn’t be disassembled completely. I was able to rotate a few parts around on their rivets and did my best to clean everything using a toothbrush and some simple green. Lots of crud came loose. After drying everything completely, I used a product called Never Dull metal polish on the chrome and any easily accessible metal surfaces.

Never Dull is sold in a small metal can and looks like a big roll of cotton wadding. Most automotive stores sell it or some variation of it. It smells, but it sure does take the dirt and grime off metal parts. A shame the big chrome components aren’t visible from the outside as they turned out great. The return buttons were corroded and polishing them by hand would be a pain. I loaded them into my cordless drill and spun them at high speed, this made the cleaning and polishing quick and easy. I couldn’t get all the pitting out, but they looked better than before. The exterior coin return chutes were plastic and cleaned up with soap and water, so did a pair of “brownie” style .900 token mechanisms that I’ll use to replace the metal quarter mechs. Once it was all dry, I put the door back together. Here is the result.

The next step in this project is to finish putting the control panel back together and then putting everything back in the cabinet. The basement water issue has delayed my progress on this, but I hope to have it back up and running by the end of this month.

After carefully removing the tiny nuts from the bottom of the pcb, you can carefully remove the button assembly, revealing an odd looking glass tube with some leads. This is called a reed switch. When the button moves up and down it passes a small magnet over the tube which effectively opens and closes the switch. I’m told they are very durable and should last a long time with proper care.

The buttons that were numbered came as larger assemblies with a shared housing. The others had individual housings. I took them all off the pcbs and disassembled each one. Each individual button consisted of 9 small parts, amazing how much effort went into making these things! I used a little oxy clean in a small bucket of warm water and let the parts soak. After about 20 minutes I started taking them out one by one and cleaning each bit with an old toothbrush. Lots of work, but after a good rinse you can see a huge difference. The buttons still have a bit of aging or yellowing, but they look 100% better.