Hello all. Hoping someone here who knows these old mechs can set me straight, as I'm stuck.
I have an Aristocrat Consolidated Industries machine out of Las Vegas. There's no model number anywhere on it, only a serial number. It's a quarter machine, and the payout wheel is the part giving me trouble. The wheel turns and the quarters are supposed to drop into pockets, advance around, and feed into the coin tube. That mechanism stopped working, so I disassembled the coin wheel and now can't get it back together correctly.
What I have is four plates that stack on a central hub with one large screw clamping them together. Two of them are lighter scalloped discs with the coin pockets cut around the edge. Two are darker skeletal star or spider plates that sit between the light discs. The stampings I can read are 55 37 and PC55 57 on the plates, and there's a fixed stripper blade on the mech stamped PC55 55. The plate on the mounting area is stamped C55 575 and there's another nearby stamped C55 42. There's a yellow sticker on the mech reading Q slash 334.
The two star plates appear identical and go in as mirror images. They're flat on both faces, no raised boss, shoulder or bevel anywhere I can find. One of them has a small punched hole just above the rectangular center slot. I assumed that was an alignment mark and clocked the two stars to match on it.
Here's where I'm stuck. If I tighten the big clamp screw, the whole stack locks solid and nothing turns at all. If I back the screw off until the wheel turns freely, the two inner star plates slip and rotate independently, so nothing stays in sync. I can't find any drive pin, post, or locating pin on the hub or on either light disc, and I don't recall any pin, washer or shim coming out during disassembly.
So my questions are:
What is the correct stack order and orientation for these four plates, and which faces of the two star plates go together?
What actually drives the star plates? Is there meant to be a pin or a keyed hub that mine is missing or has worn out, and does that small punched hole take a locating pin?
Is the large center screw meant to clamp the stack tight, or is it a retaining screw with the plates driven some other way?
Should there be washers or shims between the plates to set the coin channel width?
I have photographs of the four plates laid out in order and of the mounting hub in the machine, which I'll attach. Any help identifying the correct assembly, or a part number for what might be missing, would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
