CoinOpCollectorForum.com

Working on a reproduction war eagle for a guy. He bought it at auction and brought it to me for repair. The right side frame is destroyed. Broken in three places at least. The base frame is bent or warped also.The cabinet shows no damage which tells me the seller knew it was broken... So I am looking for the right a-frame and good baseplate for the mechanism(the part that the side frames screw to).. Repro or used would do since the machine is a reproduction right down to the plastic coin slides. Thanks for looking PJ

pj:
First of all, the owner of the repro "War Beagle", should make the auction house take this piece-of-crap back.
They obviously knew what they were selling. Then of coarse, they will push it on to the buyer, for not checking
the machine before hand. If he wasn't at the auction, and bought it online, that's going to be another story.
No matter how much time you put into trying to repair most repros, they will never operate like a good original.

I just got through working on a Fake "Golden Magget" for a customer, that had a jammed, cheap-assed escalator,
that had already been jeri-rigged. There were also other issues, including dirty payout slides, missing springs, etc.
I also recognized this machine as being an early Fake, from the late 70's or early 80's, from a California dealer.

One of our main objectives on this Forum, is to keep the newbies, that are coming into the hobby on a regular
basis, away from all the FAKE machines, before they get burned, and lose interest in collecting.
Bill

You should see how poor this casting is. The guy bought it in person from a auction house he has done business with before. The cabinet has no damage,but the right frame is destroyed. Not sure if you could do this by jumping on the handle when it's jammed or not. Where the the main operating fork bolts to the right frame, the casting is broken into pieces.Also broken where the coin tube bolts to the right frame. He wants it fixed if it can be.. PJ

don't bother with original or fake parts = on the frame , make a jig & weld it back together ; hope for the best. less money spent on this the better. base plate might be another issue.

SLOT DYNASTY wrote:pj:
First of all, the owner of the repro "War Beagle", should make the auction house take this piece-of-crap back.
They obviously knew what they were selling. Then of coarse, they will push it on to the buyer, for not checking
the machine before hand. If he wasn't at the auction, and bought it online, that's going to be another story.
No matter how much time you put into trying to repair most repros, they will never operate like a good original.

I just got through working on a Fake "Golden Magget" for a customer, that had a jammed, cheap-assed escalator,
that had already been jeri-rigged. There were also other issues, including dirty payout slides, missing springs, etc.
I also recognized this machine as being an early Fake, from the late 70's or early 80's, from a California dealer.

One of our main objectives on this Forum, is to keep the newbies, that are coming into the hobby on a regular
basis, away from all the FAKE machines, before they get burned, and lose interest in collecting.
Bill

I agree with the GREAT GURU do not spend a lot of time and money on a repro machine and especially do not put nice original parts into it.

What sucks is that he wants it fixed, and at this point he is so buried in it, he could never sell it and get anywhere close to his money back. He could't scrap it he's got a ton in it.He said he was going to give it to one of his boys for their bar....The question is then..where are all the reproduction parts? .pj

This is getting to sound more like it may be a Royal Bell Repro, from the early 80's out of Colorado.
They did advertise them as remanufactured, and called them the "Golden Eagle". Flier shown below.
If the front castings are brass plated, then it is, unless it's been repainted. They had the tooling to
build the entire mechanism. The A-frame being broken is one thing, but the base plate being in a
warped state is another. Cast iron does not warp easily, unless it's been in a huge fire, or placed in
a furnace. It may be brass. If so, you can hammer it straight. Put a magnet to it, to check.
Sorry to hear that your customer is in to it so deep. Way too many have been snookered by this Junk.

Well I went and checked everything with a magnet. It sticks to nothing! Not the baseplate or side frames. Either side.. I scratched the baseplate and it is silver colored in the scratches, this leads me to believe it is cast aluminum. Same with the sides. That would explain why the castings are so poor looking. the tag inside says it was remanufactured with mills and reproduction parts in 1993. So once again, what happened to all these repro parts? Did these companies use all them up? I would think somebody would have this crap lying around? Thanks pj (he told me over 3k) ouch