"rare" vintage hokoku

[mudfud]

finally got home to open it... was packed well & the seller put a board on top to protect the tray, as requested

this machine is very different in the ball flow and electrical.

so far I found a jackpot seesaw at the top middle, just under the window that shows the balls rolling down the upper chute. the balls seem to cascade down the right side across two different bells.

there are 4 leaf switches. 2 for jackpots, but at different points in the jackpot flow... sequential flashing lights maybe?

2 switches are activated by the low ball indicator rod. can't figure out why 2 of them right now.

there are a couple other rods and pivots I will figure out tomorrow when I take the covers off.

one interesting feature, that I have not seen before, is that if the balls back up too far in the bottom tray chute, a rod and lever setup at the bottom right pivots and a blue tulip looking door crosses the ball path, so you can't play until you empty.

more to come tomorrow, when I get into the deep clean.

there are definitely stains on this face. I knew that when I bought it... got to find a way to lessen them. i've been thinking about overlays on those areas? can't bleach them without maybe making it worse.

[luckydog]

it looks in good shape even with the staining

it gives it the vintage look

[hanabi]

It's certainly very interesting with it's different mechanics and I would love to learn more about how it works

I know I could live with the stains for something that unique, but it would be nice if they could be made less noticeable...

[owennewton]

cool pachi!

I have a "B" with 2 switches for the payout, one on the seesaw and the other on a lever so one light comes on, then the other, it pays out as the first goes out then the other one shuts off.

I will get around to filming my vintage pachis in play at some point just to show off the lights at work

[wrkey]

That is a cool machine. good buy there!

That stop lever is cool.

[mudfud]

more on the mechanisms.

it isn't a simple seesaw like a nishijin.

the balls roll down onto a metal shelf that can be seen from the front window. when you get a jackpot, the shelf tips forward and dumps the balls onto a plastic lever that then directs the balls down the right side over the two bells and out.

the vertical rod to the jackpot "shelf" is limited by a tricky seesaw that gets tripped by the ball coming from the jackpot regulator. I think this is an anti-cheat mechanism, so you can't rock the machine and get a free jackpot.

oddly, one of the bells has two melted spots on it... had to come from the factory that way, since it doesn't get hot like that inside the machine.

still tracing the electrical. already cleaned the leaf switches. these are high quality ones. the contacts look to be stainless buttons. the wiring has molex like connectors to take things apart. adding 9 volts soon.

the ball flow is directed by aluminum (not cheap tin) rails, depending on where the ball falls in the center decoration. looks like right or left gives one side tulip and bottom tulip, but center gives bottom two tulips, in series.

oddly, most of my machines say 239 on the stickers. this one's a 251, for whatever that means. (I will post the sticker for you, rusty, when I get to the front cleaning)

I have more to take down carefully. and I am taking lots of pix, since this is a new (and very interesting) machine for me.

also, a video is in progress, since this has such an interesting ball flow.

p.s. hey compirate, those hokoku's on YJA are still there, with their 40 and 50,000 BIN prices.

yikes! I misspelled the name of the machine. it is HOKOKU. can someone fix my title of the thread please, so searches won't miss this one? sorted

[dman]

The two melted spots on the bell you refer to are more than likely indentions worn into the bell from the balls constantly impacting the same spot over and over. One thing you could do is to loosen the screw holding the bell in place and rotate it some so you will have a new surface for the balls to hit. Just an idea though! Nice vintage btw!

[mudfud]

wow. I think you're right about those spots. this machine must have seen a lot of balls! when i reassemble, I will rotate to a fresh spot.

the lighting repair is a bit painful. seems the bulbs are made to be removed from the front, but they're so stuck that I ripped one glass out of the screw base already.

these 3 lights will be good candidates for LEDs. I am guessing now with the 3 jackpot switches that the yellow center flashes first, then the two outer reds, but I don't know why they didn't just wire in parallel.

it's the challenge that makes it fun.

[mudfud]

electrical update

two switches are jackpots, outer red lights (wired parallel) and center yellow light, respectively

one switch is low ball tray

4th switch, also activated by low ball tray lever, goes to the spare red and green lugs in the upper right corner, so it completes the circuit on the central parlor board (this explains why my 9 volt overheated when I attached it to these connectors)

there seem to be shorts at the base of the bulb holders across the top. the rubber insulation at the bottom of the sockets went bad. this explains the little red curved noodle looking pieces I kept finding in the back of the machine.

I considered soldering in new sockets, but if I'm soldering, I might as well go with LEDs. I found an orange LED for the low ball, 2 reds and a yellow for jackpots, and I want to string some green ones, maybe 3, across behind the ball shelf, where there was a piece of white paper stuck to the clear plastic before. these can be ON indicator lights.

if it's not too hard to sneak in the bulbs, I would also like to add a red and some orange LEDs to flash in the clown face and the center flower thing.

of course, I plan to do everything completely reversible, in the chance that someone wants to return it to "stock" someday (ha! not in my lifetime)

will post pix tonight after the massive rewire is complete.

[wrkey]

Looking at the ball tracks and the bell locations, I bet you this is going to be one very loud machine!

[mudfud]

if wiring goes well. i should know about the bells' loudness tonight.

hmmmm. I guess most of my machines are just a single bell, or one bell for top tray and one for overflow to lower tray.

also, I confirmed that dman was right about the balls wearing the pit in the bell. the bell had been rotated once already, that is why there were two spots. it's amazing to me how the steel balls over time molded/formed the cast metal into a pit with a splash rim of metal.

[JACKSJE4]

I see the 'dented' bells frequently in the machines I restore. I just figured that the manufacturer used a soft (cheap?) metal for the bell, and over time the steel balls deformed it.

[mudfud]

well. it's been a very long day with this pachi.

I found out that the bulb holders were actually OK, so i didn't change to LEDs. I like the brighter incandescents for the jackpots anyway.

I did add a red and an orange LED in the center plastic pockets. red for the clown's nose and an orange one for the center of the flower. these are in parallel with the yellow/red stock lights.

took some video of the jackpot shelf working. it's actually pretty smooth and the bells are not tinny like the sanyo's. there is a kinda looong ring as the balls cascade from upper to lower bell. it's not any louder than my sanyo.

only problem that I am having is that the jackpot shelf gets stuck occasionally and pours balls out from the top hopper. this would NOT be good in a parlor. maybe that's why this machine is uncommon? lost too much money?

I have a feeling there may be a rod or pivot point that is binding a bit. more hunting tomorrow.

one other oddity, since the jackpot shelf is on the top, the whole game field is dropped by an inch or so. I'm tall so I noticed the machine felt lower than normal... it is - the bottom metal ring and ball exit are below the tray door. just odd how I have gotten so used to one angle of looking at pachinko machines, and this one was different.

down to the pin polish and detailing, my least favorite parts...

[compirate]

only problem that I am having is that the jackpot shelf gets stuck occasionally and pours balls out from the top hopper. this would NOT be good in a parlor. maybe that's why this machine is uncommon? lost too much money?

I have a feeling there may be a rod or pivot point that is binding a bit. more hunting tomorrow.

You aught to send an email to that guy who's selling the game in Japan and ask if he'd take a picture or two of the jackpot area on his, might still be 'virgin' if you know what I mean. I zoomed way in on it and it looks like there's supposed to be something in those 3 holes on that one part, perhaps some weights? Also, maybe some small part is worn/broken/missing, because I don't know of any machine that would allow balls to flow through the payout system - usually the ball flow into the payout mech is blocked before the payout begins, and flow won't resume until the exit is blocked.

[mudfud]

hey compirate.

I just spent the last hour watching the jackpot work, and it seems that the shelf has a delay in popping back up, about one in 10 jackpots.

the delay in coming back to horizontal allows balls to dribble down the shelf and out the winner's chute.

below are closeups of the area with 3 holes that you noticed. looking closely, they are places that the ball blocking gate on left can be moved to, so you can have smaller jackpots (there are marks on the plastic where you can cut that line up with where the gate could screw on: you can make the jackpots decrease to 10 balls.)

I checked all the rods and pivots, and nothing is binding.

I'm tempted to use a counter weight to pop the shelf back up more quickly. a spring adjusted "just right" would work too.

after spending a lot of time with this mechanism, I do not think that this one held up well in the parlors. it seems strange to me, too, that balls can continue to dribble out if the shelf doesn't swing back up, but there is nothing but the gate on the right side of the shelf to keep the balls from falling out.

also included are a couple pix of the LEDs that I added. noninvasive alterations, then hooked in parallel to the red and yellow jackpot lights. I'm off the radio shed for more bulbs.

[mudfud]

forgot the clown

[compirate]

Put up that video of the jackpot mech working! (and not working )

[Moparformances]

i would like to see one as well

[mudfud]

here's the video of the misfeeds. notice the rock that seemed to solve the problem.

YouTube - pachinko - hokoku misfeeds

now my problem is finding a weight that will fit under the plastic cover. the rod sits within 3 mm of the plastic cover, but there is a bit of space behind the rod.

I will edit down the whole video about this machine. I just wanted to show you the problem that I am dealing with.

[JACKSJE4]

Well done on the video!!!

That is one really cool machine - mechanics like I have never seen!!! I would love to play that one for a while.

Have you fully disassembled and cleaned all working parts? I have found that small issues like the one in your video often go away when I completely disassemble, clean and polish all moving parts (including cams and rocker pieces). Perhaps there is some embedded 'gunk' that is causing the parts to occasionally stick.

Just my two cents worth.

Jeff