I've disassembled and cleaned the motors before. It's not difficult to do. Rumor has it the same motors are used in old 5.25" disk drives.

$1500 is an amazing deal for that machine. If the physical slot reels don't work, it doesn't affect gameplay at all. The reels are also reflected on the DMD and the mechanical ones can be disabled in settings, but they should be easy to fix and probably don't require replacement.

If I were you, I'd bring the game to expo and put a price of $2-2.5k on it. I bet you'll sell it once people play it and realize how awesome it is. W?D is better than Cactus Canyon, Champion Pub and most other late-model B/W games. Plus, the software is perfect, music is amazing... it's one of my favorite games.. it's a lot like BSD in that the ruleset isn't deep but it's challenging to line up certain game objectives (bumping up jackpot amount during multiball, collecting equipment, then solving cases).

On top of that, this is a very low production machine. Very rare. It's odd to see them for sale at all.