Toy Taxi 31' double pull rebuild.......

[Calisurf]

Thanks for the add to the forum. A ton of knowledge here. First time posting here. I'm learning a lot, but a total newbie at this.

I picked up a Toy Taxi crane, "31" which was in-op. I wanted to tinker with it to see if I could make it work.

It seems like it is one of the older models, pre-coast-to-coast and is a double crane. The right side has a second chance for "candy".

The only thing that powers up are the LED lights, there is no powerup of the claw, but there is one LED lit on the PCB. The powersupply has a light, but no fan, so I think that is an issue.

 

I replaced the PowerSupply and still get the same results, but with the new power supply, the FAN is on. So now thinking the PCB may not be working. Fuses are all good as far as i can tell.

 

With that said, the PCB is probably too costly to replace, plus I don't even think I can find one if I wanted to go that route.

Right now, my plan is to just gut the machine and but a claw kit either from Holland Computers, or Alibaba.

I have pretty mixed feelings on where to purchase from. Holland seems to just re-sell the Chinese kits from the information I gather, but there may be some English Instructions, although I have read they are pretty bare minimum.

The Chinese kits are cheaper, but the shipping is really high so at the end of the day, may run just a little cheaper. But with the cost savings, maybe more headaches with instructions.

 

 

So a few questions.

1) am i right to just scratch trying to repair the original stuff. Chances are very high that there are multiple things wrong with this thing. 

2) any experience or ideas on the different claw kits? Holland Versus AliExpress? Recommendations?

3) any recommendation on adjusting the rails for the gantry on a toy taxi. Since there are 2 claws existing, i will need to remove the rails for the second claw, and widen the rails to accomodate for a new kit. 28 inches is the new kit. These don't seem adjustable, and i would need to fabricate something to make it work.

Thinking it's not difficult, but may need to get creative.

Thanks in advance......

[Calisurf]

No replies here. No worries. 

it took a long time for me to narrow down on which kit to purchase for the repair. The old crane was too far gone for me to play swap-tropics on it so went with a full kit replacement. 

I went ahead and made a purchase of a Chinese claw kit. it had everything in the kit. 
PCB, Joystick, button, 53cm gantry, 2 coin acceptors, volt meter, LED strip lights, locks, and speaker. 
PCB had English voice commands which was a plus. 
Most important of all a contact if I had questions which was a good thing since the instructions  while in both Chinese and English was woefully inadequate  

The seller sent me a photo of what the system looked like when put together and I was able to learn the connections from that.

I did end up having to modify the rails  I was hoping the 53 cm gantry would be a fit but it was off just a bit. I was a bit nervous for this part since I only had one shot to make a clean modification. I ended up using the mounting hardware from the second claw to give me some adjustment options.

There is one major downside from this kit which is going to make it almost unusable outside of the home. The background music stays on indefinitely, There are 5 background music choices with no option to disable. It would cause someone to go mad!! I could simply just unplug the speaker but you’d lose the claw effect sounds too. Where is the fun in that?

So far this has been a fun project and learning quite a bit along  the way.

The long stretch goal was to put this into a location to see if I could even make any money off of this. 
Most likely will donate it to the kid’s robotics team who can use it for the occasional fundraiser.

 

[gumball guy]

8 hours ago, Calisurf said:

No replies here. No worries. 

it took a long time for me to narrow down on which kit to purchase for the repair. The old crane was too far gone for me to play swap-tropics on it so went with a full kit replacement. 

I went ahead and made a purchase of a Chinese claw kit. it had everything in the kit. 
PCB, Joystick, button, 53cm gantry, 2 coin acceptors, volt meter, LED strip lights, locks, and speaker. 
PCB had English voice commands which was a plus. 
Most important of all a contact if I had questions which was a good thing since the instructions  while in both Chinese and English was woefully inadequate  

The seller sent me a photo of what the system looked like when put together and I was able to learn the connections from that.

I did end up having to modify the rails  I was hoping the 53 cm gantry would be a fit but it was off just a bit. I was a bit nervous for this part since I only had one shot to make a clean modification. I ended up using the mounting hardware from the second claw to give me some adjustment options.

There is one major downside from this kit which is going to make it almost unusable outside of the home. The background music stays on indefinitely, There are 5 background music choices with no option to disable. It would cause someone to go mad!! I could simply just unplug the speaker but you’d lose the claw effect sounds too. Where is the fun in that?

So far this has been a fun project and learning quite a bit along  the way.

The long stretch goal was to put this into a location to see if I could even make any money off of this. 
Most likely will donate it to the kid’s robotics team who can use it for the occasional fundraiser.

 

You're right about the game music, it can drive people crazy listening to it all day. I used to have a lot of locations that wanted no sound whatsoever coming from the machines and it didn't seem to hurt sales. I am really surprised that there isn't at least a volume control knob on the board or a DIP switch (to shut off the attract music but still allow game play music) since they actually sent a speaker with it.