Jennings Governor - JACKPOT, but...

[shortrackskater]

I'm still a novice at slot repair but my Jennings Governor has been playing and paying just fine... until last night.
I have a tradition of NOT checking the jackpot mechanism and like to just hit it naturally. Well last night I got a TIC TAC LEMON. And, KER-CHUNK... the jackpot released. So it works which is great, but should have been the TOE!
I don't think it can be the third reel alignment since it pays properly with all other combinations?

[RameGoom]

Inspect the 3rd. reel strip. Some past owner might have placed a lemon over the original symbol. I've seen this happen on several machines.

I think they do that when installing bugs on the big win symbol. So the bug may have been removed over the years, but the extra symbol remains.

[63mini]

What is the next symbol below the lemon?

[shortrackskater]

No sticker over the lemon and the symbol below is an orange.

I guess the next thing is take the mech out and just duplicate the situation to see if it trips? I wonder if it was hung up on something previously? I never manually tripped the jackpot before.