Selector Unit Cleaning & Reassembly

Disassembly of the Selector Unit "pin bank" (previous post) revealed parts that were quite dirty:

And my initial fear and concern upon on seeing this was with regards to corrosion. However, as shall be seen, thankfully those concerns were unnecessary.

A close-up of the inner portion of one part of the pin bank:

Knowing that I had spare parts to fall back upon, in case I messed something up, was certainly a factor in my decision on how to proceed, because had I not had these parts, I would have been more conservative in my approach to what cleaning chemicals, if any, to use. From the disassembly process I found some blank-off plates that seemed to be of the same material as seen in the pictures above, and I used these as "test studies", just in case...

One I soaked in "Formula 409" cleaner for an hour, and the other I soaked in "Mr. Clean" for an equal amount of time. What I found after, thankfully, was that neither had swelled-up in any measurable way, and that both cleaners seemed to be equally effective- meaning hardly at all! "Truly, this was some "serious" gunk", I thought....


But then I broke-out some 00 gauge steel wool, and with some good ol' sweat and "elbow grease", the results were both immediate and satisfying:

It was nice to have clean parts, sure, but the next step (reassembly) was the part of the procedure that I had consistently read was going to be a Pain In The Butt!

Before continuing, I need to point out that the Selector Levers have a small mark, or dimple, on the "outer" surface that can be seen either in the picture above (somewhat), or much more clearly here:

Interestingly enough, I found the Selector Levers from the 1452 were slightly bowed-out, and I assumed that this was the reason for the mark, but those from the "spare" 1438 assembly had no such marks, nor were they bowed in any way I could find. If one were to put the two assemblies side by side and give them only a cursory glance, this would be very hard to notice.

Regardless, I knew they had to be installed properly.

But doing this is easier said than done! Shifting back to Present Tense here, note that the assembly is essentially a "sandwich", with an upper piece, a lower piece, and the levers in-between, and one would think that this would be a simple procedure! Wrong! Here's the deal: Because of the different radii between the inner and outer pieces, the springs on the levers MUST be compressed when reassembling the unit, otherwise the holes will NOT line-up.

I had read of several methods on how to do this, and in the interest of (possibly? hopefully?) helping someone NOT make the same mistakes as I, I will mention them in-turn.

Method #1 involved cutting small pieces of hose, sliding them onto the ends of the levers, allowing the friction of the hose to hold the spring down/compressed. So I dun got me some of that-there hose, cut it up into short sections:

And gave it a whirl!

Except what I found was that by the time I got to about this point, the "first" hose was beginning to work it's way off the end of the lever, and it would pop-off, sometimes flying a good distance across my work bench!

No matter what I tried, and I made several attempts at this, the hoses always popped-off. Some not right way, but I never got to the point where I had all of them on at the same time. Frustrating!

Method #2 involved using alligator clips. Having failed at the first method, I decided to do a little testing first, and I used some alligator leads I owned:

Nope, that didn't work, as the clips kept snapping off, and I found that I needed more room. So I mounted the plate in my bench vice and tried again:

At first everything seemed to work, but it was right around this point that I ran out of room, and any bump or nudge on any of the wires would cause a cascade effect that caused several (many!) of them to snap-off. And if you will notice, I never even got to the pins located in the openings between the jaws of the vice! Spinning the assembly around was NOT going to be an option...

However, I felt that I was onto something here, so I ordered some smaller clips on Amazon (a box of 100 was the smallest quantity I could find), and waited for them to arrive.

Fast forward a few days....

Clips arrived, and having given this some thought in the meantime, I reasoned that I needed better access to all sides of the assembly, so I came up with this idea:

By being VERY GENTLE I was able to install all of the levers, but once again, any bump of the vice or the work bench would send them flying. And I hadn't even installed the contacts yet!

Here's the furthest along I was able to get using this method. As you can see, all of the levers are installed, as are the contacts:

Looks promising, I know, but close tolerances between the upper part and the levers required me to manipulate everything somewhat, and EACH AND EVERY SINGLE TIME I TRIED INSTALLING THE TOP, however gentle I tried to be, the whole thing would fall apart on me!

"So now what?", I thought....

Here was my answer: I went to the hardware store with one of the levers in-hand, and went straight to the tubing section, There I found various small engine gas lines of various sizes that looked good, so with the permission of the owner of the store, I cut-off very short pieces of various size tubes I thought may work, and slid them onto the lever as a Test.

And then I walked around the store a bit, allowing for some time to pass...

The "winner" was this stuff:

Which I promptly cut it up into very short pieces so that the entire section of hose was on the "flat" of the lever, and not on the sloped portion, as may be seen here:

Not wanting to commit too far to this method (I've been burned before!), I set this aside for the night.

And the next morning it was still in place!

Which was a heckuva lot longer than any other method I had tried.....

So, I installed my little sections of hose on all of the levers:

 As well as all of the contacts:

And I was quite pleased to find that I could manipulate the assembly enough to get the top part back on!

I installed the pins that hold everything together, removed the pieces of hose, and....

(Insert heavenly angels singing here!)

Since I only worked on one section: A comparison, clean versus dirty:

And after I cleaned the other section, a couple shots of the complete assembly:

Feels good!

Feels really good!

 

Selector Unit Removal and Disassembly

Before I started working on this, I read all sorts of horror stories about it on the "interwebs" and jukebox forums and discussion groups, so it was with some trepidation that I approached it. But once I figured out a procedure and/or method to put it back together again, it really wasn't all that bad.

Removal of the unit consisted of following the procedures laid-out in the Instruction Manual, and among some other small things (disconnecting wiring, etc), involved removing the Carriage Assembly:

And pulling the inner shaft out far enough so that the Selector Unit could be removed as an assembly.

Notice the Popularity Counter, the Gripper Mechanism, and the Magazine Assembly remain in-place. I have to admit I was a little freaked-out by this, as I was unaware that there are two shafts involved (an inner and an outer), and I assumed that removing "The" shaft would cause the Magazine Assembly to fall-out. Sometimes it's nice to be wrong...

Once I had the assembly on the bench:

I began taking even more pictures than normal, as I wanted to be sure I did this correctly the first time. But I won't post all of them here (you're welcome!), and I'll keep it to post the more salient ones.

After splitting the assembly I noticed that two of the Clapper Coils were completely disconnected (visible here as a loose wire in the the RH assembly/part):

Which makes me wonder if this isn't what put the jukebox Out Of Service so many years ago. Regardless, I have quite a few spare parts for this assembly, as I purchased a Selector unit for a 1438 on Ebay recently, and they share many of the same pieces, Clapper Coils being one of them.

Disassembly continued with removing the blank-off pieces (not shown here), and then the "pin bank". This is the thing I had heard so much about, and was somewhat hesitant to tackle.

Dirty, nasty, greasy, disgusting.....In my opinion it's a wonder this thing even worked!

Notice the tops of the Selector Levers (shown here as somewhat pointed pieces of metal), which I will refer to in a moment. Also, notice the Selector Levers are able to move back and forth (they appears to move "up and down" here, but that's only because the assembly is lying sideways):

After removing the pin bank, one can see in this picture that there are twenty five (25) coils on the inside of each surface of the Selector Unit (only one side shown here), and these coils are, more or less, the heart of the unit.

 
Here are a couple of edge-on, close-up shots showing the contacts, and thus the beginning of how this assembly works. First of all, notice there are three contact surfaces shown in these pictures: One in the center, and two on each side (yes, those are supposed to be clean and shiny surfaces!). In this picture there are two contacts shown (shiny "plates" with semi-circular grooves in them), and these contacts are in the center position. Note how the Selector Levers (two vertical pieces of metal) are inwards, and thus the contacts do not physically connect the inner contact surface with either of the outer ones.

While in this picture the Selector Levers are outwards, and thus the contacts are outward, thus making a connection between the inner/center contact surface and both outer surfaces:

To greatly oversimplify things, the two outer contact surfaces represent the two sides of the Record Magazine, and thus each record (A side and B side). When someone makes a selection, a coil is energized (shown a couple pictures above), and that coil pulls the Selector Lever outward for that particular record, thus causing the contacts to make an electrical connection between the inner surface and the outer surface.

In turn, the Carriage Assembly (first picture in this post) rotates around the Selector Unit, and when it comes across a Selector Lever in the outer position, it "knows" it is supposed to stop there!

And since the Selector Unit (and Carriage Assembly) is directly coupled to the Magazine Assembly, the correct record may now be selected.

(Yeah, I know it's more technical than that, but for now let's just go with it, ok?)

Further disassembly of the pin bank shows just how bad the contact surfaces are:

Or rather, just how bad they "were"! But that's for the next post.

Refinished cabinet (faux finish)

Thankfully, Scott from Minuteman Services (previous post) was able to find someone willing, and able, to apply a faux finish on my repaired cabinet. He explained that he had not worked with them before, but they came "highly regarded", and when he approached them on the phone with regards to this project, they seemed interested....

So I checked-out their site (http://www.eliascartwright.com/), and upon looking at their work and craftsmanship, my first thought was, "They are willing to work on my old jukebox?"

Thankfully, they were!

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the process, but the end results speak for themselves, I feel.

Naturally the cash door, coin return, and other internal bits visible here weren't installed when I dropped this off, but these recent pictures are the best I have which attempt to show the quality of the faux finish. Truly, the pictures don't do it justice...

Anne and George: Thank you!

Repaired cabinet

Refinishing the cabinet turned-out to be a two-step procedure: One, get the cabinet stripped and ready for finishing, and Two, the actually refinishing (repainting).

I think the best way I can show this is to show a progression, of sorts.

Original cabinet condition, left hand side: 

Right hand side:

Peeling laminate (or what I thought was laminate):

60 years of smoke, gear lube, and just general "gunk" on the rear foil:

One dirty, greasy, smelly, and overall just plain ugly internal divider board:

At the beginning of this process, I thought the cabinet had a laminate finish ("Blond Toned Honduras Mahogany...." according to the sales brochure), so a friend of mine referred me to a furniture restoration shop which he felt may be able to help me out. That shop was (is!)  Minuteman Services in Rogers, MN (http://minutemanservices.biz/)

Scott Wentzel, the owner, was very nice, and quite knowledgeable, so with a handshake agreement I dropped-off the cabinet and let him have at it!

However, once he got to working on the cabinet we learned that the finish wasn't a laminate after all, but rather a faux/painted-on finish! And not only was my original finish absolutely "gone", there was nothing currently available that would even closely resemble the original. Also, there was considerable work that had to be done in order to prep it for it's eventual finish.

(Much hand-wringing and "hemming and hawing" on my part here...)

Eventually Scott convinced me that the proper procedure to follow was to find someone to re-apply a finish resembling, as closely as possible, the original. (And for that I now owe him a debt of gratitude! Thanks, Scott!)

I asked Scott if  he could seal-up the cabinet as well, as the same "smell" permeated from it as I recall form my youth. Thankfully this wasn't difficult for him, and I must say there is absolutely no smell to the cabinet whatsoever! 

So here's what I picked-up from him (a perfect substrate for the future faux finish):

Thank you so much, Scott!

New chrome!

A few posts back I posted a "teaser" picture of sorts, taken when we went to pick-up the new/re-chromed pieces.

Without further ado, here are the results:

You may notice that one piece is missing on the LH side, as during 6 months in storage some "bubbling" appeared, and I took it back, along with a few additional pieces for plating, to JR Custom Plating (http://www.jrcustomplating.com/) before this picture was taken. Thankfully Johnny agreed to re-work this piece....

Close-up of the upper parts:

Some of the mid-section parts:

And the lower parts:

Here I've mocked-up the front/lower grille, and despite my left toe sneaking into the shot, I'm quite pleased with the results!

However, I can't say that I'm all too happy about the hole in the grille (close-up here) that occurred during polishing...

Thankfully I recently purchased a "spare/parts" 1452 in Michigan which has a grille that, while dented in several spots, may ("may") be straightened and cleaned (and Johnny at JR Custom Plating is stepping-up to "Do Right" on this for me). In the meantime, I'll forge ahead with this one.

Sadly, looking at this chrome reminds me that my wife and I were the victims of a Hit and Run accident on the way home from picking it up, but that's a tale for another time.