by Nathan Stout (of AccordingToWhim.com)
This post is very specialized to those who own or work on the coin pusher called Pharaoh’s Treasure. I have written this blog to go over the various features that should be working and how to fix them if I know.
I bought this item at an auction and it is in fairly fantastic condition. It needed some clean up and slight adjustment but over all it was almost ready to go.
There are 4 identical sides to this machine. Each side has a slot to drop a token in. The token falls down into a plinko-type clear acrylic playfield where it bounces down. If the token goes into one of the 3 ‘cups’ it makes the bonus wheel behind the clear playfield spin randomly or right one space or left one space. You get tickets for this (number of tickets you win is on the wheel). The token then drops down onto a typical coin pusher setup. You attempts to get the tokens to push other tokens off the edge where you win more tickets for those tokens.
The firs thing I noticed was that the fake flames were not working. They were laying limply off to the side (there is one on both sides of the coin pusher area. There is a fan underneath the flame pedestal and all 8 of my fans (2 on each side of the machine) were gunked up with dirt. I removed each one from the access panel below and blew them out and used a bottle brush to ‘floss’ in each space since the dirt was so caked on. This worked a charm and now all flames are dancing nicely. I wonder if you there is material that looks even better for the flames than the silk-like material they used? Might be a nice, cheap upgrade.
The next thing to do to get the machine looking nice was the clean the acrylic playfield. From the years of tokens sliding down between the plastic dust has built up making them look foggy. At the top there are 2 arms that swing back and forth and you can see those rub against the acrylic and flaked off, causing the foggy appearance to look even worse. This is a bit more tricky to clean. First you have to remove the two flame pedestals to allow you access to the screws that hold down the playfield. Once removed there are 4 screws to remove. Before you can open the back playfield you have to remove the bonus arm. Just loosen the set screws and lift it out. Now you can swing the whole playfield upwards and peek at the insides of the upper section of the game. I cleaned this area out best I could with paper towels and some compressed air. Next I closed the playfield back and started unscrewing the 13 tiny nuts holding the two pieces of playfield (where the tokens drop down). This is pain unless you can find a bit driver to remove them. Once you do this, you can remove the outer sheet. Then you spray it off and wipe down the back part of the playfield (the part still on the machine). You have to be careful cause of all the bolts that make the token jump all about. Once you clean this out (don’t forget to wipe the area on the backside infront of the wheel) you put it all back together and it looks SO MUCH BETTER.
Next I cleaned off the pusher playfield. This is stainless steel and it shows lots of wear. I cleaned it best I could but I am not going to go to the trouble of removing it to have it buffed back into new condition. I wiped down all the surfaces I could then turned the machine on so I could test the jackpot feature. This is a tiny sarcophagus that your coins push to the edge and once it gets to the very edge you get a bonus and the sarcophagus moves back into starting position. You can push it forward to the edge to see if it activates lights and sounds and moves itself back to the starting position. If it does not, you need to check all connection right below the sarcophagus.
Finally check the drop sensor. This appears to be a common breaking point since it appears all four of mine were broke and repaired. This sensor looks like a tiny disk that is stuck to the underside of the token chute so that when a token drops off the edge, the vibration triggers it to turn on the hopper and activated lights and ticket win. It is a simple device and can be fixed with some soldering. I had to tape the sensors to the chute and I used some hot glue cause the solder didn’t hold well enough.
After this, close up the glass cover and check below. This is actually where I started my checking of the machine. I opened all four sides and unscrewed the hopper box and token collection chute. Once I removed all of them I rolled this giant outside and blew it all out. There was a lot of dust in there. I did some vacuuming first to get rid of the thickest of the dust off the fan motor. While I was doing this first check I found loose tokens… a lot of tokens! Like nearly 300 all in the nooks and crannies of the machine. There are still lots of tokens in there but they are in spaces I can’t get to so I will just leave them there.
All lights and features seem to be working with this unit. There is one light I cannot figure if it is out or if it is activated after some feature. It is the large florescent bulb i the middle of the upper part of the unit.
The only other part of the machine I need to test is the ticket mechanism of each side of the machine. I have ordered a stack of tickets so perhaps I can get that to work. I need to also adjust the dip switches to change the payout of tickets. It seems to reward way more than I want it to for home use.
Once I am all done with the fixes I am going to try to sell it. Perhaps someone will want this guy. It is in great shape and it is pretty fun to play. What I’d like to do is spend some of that money to buy a small one-player quarter pusher (the kind of pusher where you push off coins and they come out of the bottom). A bit of a fun piggy bank, if you will.