Quoted from jeffc:Any chance the broken wire piece is still in the bottom of the cabinet somewhere?
Lots of other pieces were present in the cabinet and so I was hoping to find the broken wire, but no luck. The wire from the quarter mech switch was dangling and so was getting mangled whenever the coin door was opened and closed. I suspect that the wire from the nickel mech switch was also dangling and got mangled so much that it broke and likely fell off outside the cabinet.
Thanks too for the image of the catalog! More bad luck for me in that the three switches aren't shown!
I am guessing that the wire just needs to be a tad bit longer to work with a nickel. I tried the quarter mech switch with a nickel mech and the wire doesn't extend far enough for the nickel to move the wire far enough so that the contacts on the blades of the nickel coin switch touch (but the quarter mech switch does work well with a quarter mech). I suspect that the wire of the nickel mech switch is a tad bit longer than the quarter one and have enough wire to bend so that I can try a few different sizes if I can't get a measurement.
This is for a 1958 Contest. It has a quarter slot and switch that can give 3-5 credits (adjustable option) and this works fine, but the nickel switch doesn't work obviously due to the broken wire on the mech switch (and yes, I want to get the damn nickel slot operational again even though I can put it on free play or just use quarters). A previous owner soldered the wires from the nickel switch directly to the replay button (and tied off the replay reel with a piece of string so that it never goes to zero--never saw that before!) to set the machine on free play. The coin mechs were also removed and so I was surprised to learn that "modern" coin mechs work in a 1958 machine (all my previous experience is with earlier Gottliebs that don't use mechs like these or later model machines).