Newbie here! Transporting a Rock Ola 470 safely.

Complete? Nah. A little exaggeration on my part I guess. No, the read in and out seems to work fine. As far as I can tell at this point, the only reason the machine doesn't mechanically function (from the point that a song switch is manually flipped on the wobble plate...believe starting at sequence no. 10 , page 37 of the service manual) is because of the binding of the gripper arm gears. If I'm understanding the service manual right, the fact that it's to bound up to move properly is causing slew of issues, from the gripper arm not moving, to the cam not rotating and hitting the microswitch rollers, to the tone arm not moving properly (figured out it needs a height adjustment too from just leafing through the service manual and what I saw last night.).

I had a heck of a time on a Doctor Who pinball machine where I had to disassemble a gearbox and rebuild it...it wasn't my idea of fun, so I'm really not looking to break this thing down into a million pieces. I can tell you that I had the motor loose last night for the gripper arm, and it works great. It's plenty strong, it's something down the line that's binding up, not that motor. The motor for the magazine works fine, and the search motor works great. It's just the binding I want to get resolved first before I start troubleshooting the number pad and other things. Probably counter-intuitive to veterans, but if I do have to call someone, I want to fix what I can and minimize the damage to my wallet by at least trying some obvious stuff first.

I saw on some other threads that people were recommending 3-in-1 MOTOR oil....not the black label, but the blue one. Also, since I come from a background of arcade and pinball, kinda unclear on this, but when you guys say you're letting it soak, you're just spraying this stuff down inside the cabinet or applying the penetrating oil, letting it sit overnight, and then re-oiling at the contact points and on the motor shafts? Sorry if this seems kind of stupid for me to ask...I've never been much of a mechnical guy...don't know a whole lot about motors in general and the service manual of course doesn't say anything about lubrication.

Stupid youtube video won't upload from my phone..I'll have to pull it onto my PC and upload it from there. Also have a question about one other part of the machine, but I don't even know what to call it...it's not referenced in the manual anywhere (even though it's in the drawings).

Word of "Caution"--
Generally speaking "Adjustments", to "coin operated phonographs", need only be made if a part is replaced !--Or, if some "Geppetto" has decided previously, that he would "make adjustments" !
YES -- Use only the "3 in One oil for MOTORS" (SAE 20 wt.)--not the "Household", or, "Multi-purpose" type !
In the case of the gripper, get the oil in all moving parts, then exercise them so it "works in"--be SURE to get it "between" the two gears that sit "side by side", as they tend to stick together. On the WI motor--both ends of the armature shaft--SOME of these have a hole for oil on one, or more ends, with a felt wick in it--load it with oil, and be sure to get a small amount over anything that "moves". Good luck,
Ron Rich

Tone arm doesn't clear the gripper arm when it's on that side of the turntable, so not sure how that would be resolved other than by using the height adjustment washer. As far as working things into the mechs..that ain't gonna happen. I'm just going to have to oil what I can get to and probably let it sit for a while. I've tried moving things by hand, carefully, and nothing associated with that gripper arm will move, even with the motor gear pulled out. I would've already hit everything I could get to with oil, but I knew I didn't have the right stuff and I didn't want to gunk it up any more. I'll be stopping by wally-world tonight to get the motor oil.

The guy I got it from was a dink... he didn't know squat about it, it came from his uncle, he never even plugged it in, just left it sitting in his garage.... and yes, there's some wiring hacks in there that I have seen, so nothing would be surprising to me. I'm used to fixing other people's damage, unfortunately. Manuals are clean and crisp, so I KNOW they haven't ever been seriously used by anyone that needed to reference them during a repair.

Thanks for all the advice guys, really appreciate it, and the fact that Ken Layton is so adamant in referring people to post over here on other forums.

As a fellow newbie, I can tell you that gripper assembly has a lot of moving parts, probably more than you realize right now.

I bought a 440 that was pretty gunked up and behaved similarly to what you describe. Kept oiling and wiggling, oiling and wiggling, but as soon as one thing would work, something else wouldn't. It wasn't until I finally broke down and pulled the entire gripper assembly apart that I discovered an entire aspect I didn't even know existed! The gripper arm and reversing cam slid back and forth smoothly, but until I took it apart I didn't know they were supposed to move in opposite directions - those pieces were completely glued together!

My advice - not only go through the service manual, but look closely at the parts breakdown as well. Visualize how the parts should work together and make sure that they actually do. If the gripper doesn't work correctly, NOTHING will work correctly. My 2 cents

Good Luck!
Nelson

I only had about 30 minutes to work on it yesterday after I got home before I had to go to my second job. Got ahold of some penetrating oil, hit the four or five points I thought it might be binding up. Let it sit for a few minutes, and HUGE improvement. I had it to the point where when it starts the cycle to pick up the record, you only have to slightly push down on the gripper arm to get it to come loose...it then picks up the record, places it on the turntable, and the tone arm moves freely to the record and starts playing. Once it reaches end of the record, the gripper moves smoothly back into position, tone arm moves out of the way correctly, and it's ready for another selection. The only odd part is that while it picks up the record out of the magazine, when it goes to move back off the turntable, it doesn't grab the record. I can only assume at this point that has to do with the sliding part of the gripper arm you're talking about. It's partially working, just gotta figure out this other bit on the return.

I'm pretty happy with how it's going so far. Unlike on a 80's/90's pinball machine, it's far more clear what's going on since the electronics are very limited, and the documentation is WAY WAY WAY better than anything ever put out by a pinball manufacturer, thank god!

My advise is to quit using "penetrating oil" ! Use ONLY 20 wt, ND oil !
The gripper is still not well enough lubricated--If you want it to KEEP working---You MUST work the 20 wt. oil in, or dis-mantle and clean it, re-grease it, with graphite grease.
As it selects, hold down on the gripper bow, lightly till it will pick-up a record on "it's own". Also do the same on the removal of a record, from the TT--both sides. This may take up to an hour, of picking-up records--but if you keep adding the correct oil, the graphite grease in the gripper will combine, with the oil, and provide the proper lubrication. Once you have it to the point of working well, re-oil it, and play at least 100 selections !
Ron Rich

I'll be taking that advice, Rich. I only had time to stop at one store yesterday and they didn't have the 3-in-1 motor oil (WTH, WALMART?!?! Come on! ) so did some quick research on my phone and bought a quick stopgap. My wife's going out for the correct oil today so we can make sure it STAYS working. At least at this point I can work on it without it tearing the gear teeth (or the gripper arm motor mount) up, which is worth any extra work it may take for me to clean up or otherwise flush out the penetrating oil. If I can ever get the video of what it was doing uploaded, it was pretty bad, IMO.

Guarantee it will probably get 100 plays pretty quick soon as we get it working. I'll probably throw a party at that point LOL.

Lowes, Granger, both stock it as the 3 in One item-also most ACE and other good hardware stores. I think Home Depot, does too- It can be found in quart containers at any GOOD, "Auto parts" store ( not the "chains"--usually).
Ron Rich

This is probably not the "PC" way to fix it, but I never power-up those Rock-Ola's until I have the gripper running smooth in both directions. I just turn the motor by hand using the gnarled knob - it usually leads to blisters on the thumb and forefinger, but no pain, no gain, right?

Guys,
If "really frozen", I use a hair drier to "loosen them up", while adding, MORE oil --I don't like "blisters"--
Ron Rich

Shoot, hairdryer would've been a good idea. Well, my wife got the oil, so there's that. I did try using the motor 'nub' to turn everything prior to having it disconnected but it was too locked up. Oh, and it was tearing up my fingers.

The pain came from moving it. I'm still hurting.

Well, between the penetrating oil sitting for a while, and the motor oil, the gripper arm is working perfectly now, as is the tone arm. I think I found out why the control pad doesn't work, there's a white 43561 relay missing off the credit unit. Whoops! Figured that was just another auxiliary plug for some other add-in module, then noticed last night it wasn't the normal kind of connector for that so I looked in the parts manual and sure enough.

But good news is that the system works from the wobble switch being tripped all the way to putting the record back in the magazine and moving onto the next song. Was able to trip several songs A and B sides and it handles them. Already found a place to order the relay I need so keeping my fingers crossed that once it comes in might be able to make some progress on the control pad and write-in system... I am getting tired of my kids asking for "Monster Mash" already LOL.

Got my white relays in. No dice. With the relay plugged in, can select 1st digit, can select 2nd digit, lock-in solenoid activates. If you pick 3rd digit as an incorrect number it lights the "please reset" indicator and the reset button will work. If you make a valid selection for the third digit, the button locks down and.........nothing happens.

From looking at the service manual, I've tried swapping around the red relay cubes to see if that made any difference, didn't. I didn't have a whole lot of time to work on the issue. I can't turn the gears by hand at all for the write-in motor, it's under the turntable and I didn't have time to get in there and look at it closely, just posting to see what ideas can be bounced around, and not sure how I'm gonna get under there.

I did fix one other problem though, the speakers kept cutting out. After jiggling the hair-thin tone arm wires around enough, couldn't find a short there. Tapped on the amp box and the sound went off. Hrm. Opened it up, started jiggling wires, pressing on fuses, found the issue to be with the header pins and connector for the speakers that connects to the leftmost PCB. Removed it, solder suckered off the huge amounts of solder that had been put on there by prior "repair"....solder joints were obviously cracked internally. I plan to fully repin these header pins and crimp a new molex-type high current connector for them, as the old pins are REALLY short and don't extend a viable amount out of the back of the PCB to make a good clean solder joint. Someone clipped them REALLY short, but for right now, it's a solid connection again and works.

That write-in motor always seems to gum-up on those Rock-Ola's. It is easy to remove, just three screws from the top - next to the counter. Unplug the wire and it should just drop out. You need to get this motor to turn by hand before replacing it.

Yeah, given how siezed up the gripper arm was, I won't be surprised to find that it's similar here either. Thanks for the tip on the mount locations, prob saved me a lot of grief with that.