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AMI G-80 Refurbishment


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This machine was built in Grand Rapids Michigan USA back in 1955 & would of spent it's working life in a small diner or truck stop before being sold into private use then shipped to Australia. This jukebox hold 40 records in a toast-rack at the rear of the mechanism with the turn table being able to move left to right to select a record to be played in the front viewing area with a total of 80 selections being both the "A" side & the "B" side of the 45rpm 7 inch records.

 

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Well I acquired this imported AMI G-80 back in 2017, i took a few photo's to document it's condition & as a reference as to what parts i would need before starting the refurbishment of this old jukebox, well as i was checking over the machine i noted that some tech' had started to do some work & stripped out the turn table selection mechanisms solenoid & relay equipment, also they had "badly" attempted to fit a new style of LED lighting to the inner general illumination, by the way this was done i would assume the person had very little skill in electrical engineering & knowledge of electrical insulation / safety. Please see the few photo's.

 

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Once i had a shopping list of parts needed i contacted my jukebox part suppliers in the USA, this took many months to track down the parts due to the age of the machine, but i found them, the next problem is this jukebox being built in the USA it has 117v 60hz power, the 60hz is not the big problem as it is an easy fix to convert the turn table shaft diameter to suit our 50hz using a conversion spring that is screwed onto the shaft, these are bought from many of the aftermarket parts suppliers, but with the limited space within the cabinet fitting a 240v step-down transformer would be difficult & even having a custom made transformer would still leave the turn table at 117v, but early in 2018 i bought a deceased estate of 30 jukeboxes & one of the machines was an Australian built G-80, with the locally built jukeboxes having a very bad design of title strip holders that do not fit the standard size of card & in general the machines just have not lasted the test of time, so this jukebox was a good donor for the 240v parts needed. The next big problem is the power input in both builds of these was some sort of "caravan" socket for an extension cord, then with the Australian machines having the volume control up inside the cabinet behind components that would need be removed to adjust the volume :o so with my back ground in heavy industry & manufacturing i designed a new metal box to house the 240v input, volume control & cancel switch, in doing this i up-graded the 240v input to an ICE style with EMI filter & main power switch. As with "all" AMI machines these are electrically un-safe from the factory, as even with the main switch turned off they still have "Live" power running around to parts of the machine eg. 30v AC transformer & turn table, this has been known to catch unskilled young players out giving them an electrical shock :o to prevent this when working on an AMI jukeboxes i have always re-wired the system to isolate the mains power 100% from all parts of the system, also with these AMI machines they never ran earth wire to any of the metal components, so this has also been addressed by running an earth wire to all :)

 

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So where did i start & what have i done ? well first thing was to remove the mech' from the cabinet to give more space when re-wiring the 240v system & fitting my new custom laser cut metal box & removing the dodgy LED light bar, this LED thing was replaced with the original AMI parts, with a new 240v fluro ballast & 24" fluro tube ( as it should be ) , with my new power box not having the problems of plug/sockets & having the 240v cords directly connected with in the box i have eliminated the contact problem with aging plugs or plugs falling out :) then i finished of the inner roof & lighting with a reproduction translite i made. With the mechanism out i discovered that the previous tech' had tryed badly to repair some damaged wires with some sort of heat shrink compound, well with 60yr old rubber wires this should never been done, as it should only be done in an emergency situation where the cables are to be replaced at the next programmed shut down service, any way with the type of cable used by the factory not being available here in Australia i need to import a roll of this for the three short lengths needed & may be why the tech' tryed to do the dodgy "quick-fix" any way i stripped down the mech' & fully serviced all parts & replaced the 3 cables for control to the mech' along with the old 2pin USA style cable for the turn table motor, on this subject it should be noted that there are a few types available, if you buy from either one of the jukebox parts suppliers in the USA or Europe the 2pin plug/cords are only rated at 170v & not suitable for our 240v supply, so finding a cord with heavy PVC & a 300v rating is recommended :) i have been using these cables for many years & have replaces every plug/cable of this type on all jukeboxes i have ever worked on, electrical safety should be your first high priority when working on any vintage equipment :) The solenoid control equipment i imported was in very good plug & play condition hence easy to service & install, with the Australian built machine being scrapped for it's 240v equipment i serviced the turn table motor & fitted to the now rewired & serviced mechanism.

 

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I opted not to use the dodgy Australian power distribution junction box with those crazy round pins for the 240v & instead, i stripped & made a half cast unit from the original USA 117v , with this i stripped the 240v transformer & fitted it to the USA power box, that i rewired to suit Australian electrical safety standards, i also up-graded the DC power system by removing the dangerous selenium diode bridge, as if they let the smoke out it is cancerous ! when rewiring the box i also added a earth/ground point/bolt to the outside of the box so to be able to continue earthing the metal parts to the front of this jukebox.

 

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The Australian made amplifier from the donor jukebox again had many components well past their us by date, so i fully stripped it replacing all the electrolytic capacitors with current production items & used a selection of obsolete out of production polypropylene film capacitors, the i also replaced the resistors that are prone to fail with high end audio grade, to give this jukebox a warm rich sound & long life, i also replaced that dodgy round pin cord with one of the 2pin USA styles to match the "half cast" power supply sockets.

 

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The electrical on the front door also needed attention as someone had done a few repairs & well the fluro ballast needed to be upgraded to a 15w 240v unit, so time to use another of the 2pin cords & run an earth wire to all metal components, the 15w ballast needed to be a special order as very few electrical wholesalers stock these, when doing the rewire i added a high temp' insulation to the wires connected directly to the ballast, this type of "spaghetti" is a woven fiberglass silicon impregnated tube with a 275c Deg' & 1Kv rating, this will help protect those wires from heat stress :) the small globe needed for the coin entry also was changed to a 7w 240v & bought from a local sewing machine shop.

 

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With all of the electrical work done & the fully serviced mech' being re-installed, i then plugged this jukebox into the main power for the first time with all the lighting coming to life, i then dropped a coin to rack up a credit, then made a selection, it is a great feeling to have done all this work & have the machine do as it should & play the very first selection :)

 

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Edited by Pac-Invader
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i thought i should add a few photos of the USA & Australian style of power input sockets

 

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here is the laser cut metal work i had made

 

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i bent these up using a small pan-brake i bought on line

 

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Painted & wired, with NOS 35K Log' pot

 

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the finished unit against the original

 

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And finally installed

 

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This is the sort of contribution I like to see.

Moved you up to full AA Member

 

I think i need to say THANK YOU

 

i need to take a few more photo's of this machine lit up at night & the finished front door rewire work...

i'm open for all questions about this jukebox & details of work

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Today i pulled out the "half-cast" power supply to get a few photo's & better describe what up-grades / mod's were done, so here in the first pic' you can see the Australian power supply on the left with those crazy round pins for mains power, the unit on the right is my hybrid with the more typical 2pin USA style sockets, in the second pic' you will see the dangerous green selenium diode bridge i talked about in my first post,

 

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This next photo is a wide shot of the full unit followed by a closer pic' of the bridge diode & the retro fitted large capacitor, you will please note that the original power supplies never had a capacitor for the 30v DC voltage, by adding this it will help with start-up surge currents needed when either of the mech' motors are actuated, this odd looking capacitor has a stud mounting bolt that i have riveted a small "L" bracket to the chassis for mounting, the bridge of chose is a 10 Amp 1Kv with spade lugs for ease of future replacement, again i used lots of the fiberglass silicon spaghetti even using yellow over the 30v AC feed for the diode :)

 

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In the forth pic' you may note another non standard item across the turn table motor contact relay ( small yellow box left upper corner ) this is a 275v AC 0.022uf safety capacitor, i hear you ask "why" when this is not a factory item ? well as these contacts are closed & opened every time the T.T. motor is powered up to play a record, so this small capacitor is used as a spark arrestor to prevent point burn of the relay contacts :) with all of the new wires fitted i used the old school style solid single strand 0.85mm copper wire with a 600v rating & with some of them i also used more of that spaghetti :)

 

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- - - Updated - - -

 

How about we talk about the reproduction translite, well with these either being very badly damaged or missing here in Australia due to the need to remove it to adjust the volume :o not much is known about what they should be or even look like, so some months ago i did a quick search to see what was available out there in the big world & found in Canada a very thin film to go over a clear plastic sheet & also the colors are not as they should be :( but that is a good thing as we do not want cheap & nasty crap in our 64yr old refurbished jukebox, so what do we do ? well i'm going to tell you & this will work for "all" jukebox translites if you can get the sizes right, over the years i have reproduced many of these & have AutoCAD drawings to help me in future work, you need to find a good local plastics supplier that will have sheets of "Lexan" ( polycarb' ) the original factory item for this G-80 was only 2mm thick & had sagged over it's 64yrs so i opted to go up in size & also my local shop had 3mm off-cuts they could cut to size & saved a few buck's :) the cut size for this translite is 740mm x 370mm well we now have a clear sheet of Lexan, how do we get colors when not wanting to buy a thin film ? again shopping local can help, you may be lucky & have a good quality hobby shop in your town, here you will find in the paint section small spray tins of " Tamiya Color " you need to buy the "Translucent" paint to suit Polycarbonate, NOTE :- do Not buy the "clear" as will not stick to our plastic !! once we have bought the color paint to suit the translite you will need work out the size of the strips & here on the G-80's translite the section are 70mm wide with the outer two yellow strips being narrower.

Taking your time with this will pay off in the long run, on the flip side you are not going to paint mark a centre line from here mark the strip sizes, removing the protective film from our "to be painted side" you can then use that "blue" low tack masking tape, here i started with the Red strips & then also the Blue as they have separation a strip between them & i could mask up to paint the red & as it was touch dry after a few hours, i could swap to cove it & paint the blue, you will then need leave this for a few days, once fully dry you can mask up over the fresh colors to apply the next two colors, again leave for a few days before you fit to the jukebox :)

 

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- - - Updated - - -

 

In one of my early photo's in the first post you may note a round blue can looking thing to the left of the fluro' ballast, again i hear you ask "what is it & why" when not factory ? This blue can in fact is a "power factor" correction capacitor, & was not used in days gone by with small wattage fluro's as the cost of electricity was low & well these machine were on site with electricity not being coin out of your pocket, so what do we do to fix this power factor problem, typically as a rule of thumb from my apprentice days we would use 2uf per every 20w of fluro lighting, & here in this G-80 we to have a 18w & 15w fluro in the jukebox with a total wattage of 33w, so i have used a 3.5uf 250v AC MPP 50hz capacitor across the AC input lines, this will be more than enough to bring back our power factor to within the Australian electrical standards :)

This type of capacitor should be retro fitted to "all" jukeboxes & arcade machines that use fluro's / ballasts !!

 

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- - - Updated - - -

 

To the end of my first post i talked about the electrical on the front door but did not give details & photo's, but as this machine is still a work in progress it's still waiting for the chrome to come back & final assembly, so to kill sometime today i got to fitting the fluro ballast & some of the wiring. In my first photo here you will note i have done the Active ( Red spaghetti ) connection but stopped to take the photo of "how" i do this type connections with the Neutral, you will see three wires twisted/joined & soldered with 7mm of "dual wall" heat shrink, this addition of heat shrink is an old school thing to add mechanical strength to the wires as they go in to the crimp lug. So i hear you ask "what are you talking about Willis" mechanical strength ?

When using these crimp lugs & if you do not use the heat shrink you open the door to failure / brakeage of the copper strands due to vibrations, but when you add this heat shrink with the sticky stuff ( when heated ) it transfers the stress to the PVC of the wire :) this is a quick & easy preventive measure to do, as once you have twisted your wires you then slip over 6 to 8mm of tube & do your solder joint, the heat from this will shrink your tube, once done you can then trim wires to length & crimp the blind lug :)

In the second photo here i have finish the fitting of the fluro ballast & also finished of the wire with some spiral cable twist to keep the wire neat :)

As the AMI machines never ran an earth wires i have to bring the electrical safety into the 21st century :) please note that i have removed the paint from the top corner hole of the fluro ballast & used a third screw, well the Australian electrical standards require a separate earth screw & not to use any mounting fixings, but this cannot always be done when working on vintage equipment as you can see i have used one of the screws for mounting the lower front doors chrome, here i have also finished off the eyelet lugs with some yellow/green heat shrink :)

 

Oop's looks like i hit my limit on up-loading pic's.. any body got a site i can use to host my pic's ??

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  • 3 weeks later...
Thanks for the thread, your attention to detail is amazing

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Aussie Arcade

 

i see a Seeburg 222 in your photo :)

you should see the work i do when re-building those amplifiers :)

i need to find a photo hosting site to up-load pic's to play "show & tell"

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i see a Seeburg 222 in your photo :)

you should see the work i do when re-building those amplifiers :)

i need to find a photo hosting site to up-load pic's to play "show & tell"

 

I restored my seeburg 222 probably not the best amp to rebuild on my first attempt.

https://www.aussiearcade.com/showthread.php/74501-Seeburg-222-restoration

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