Most hopper issues are easy to solve. Hopper error codes are general and do not give you specific details as to the issue itself. First you need to find the problem.
Step 1: Remove the Hopper
There are types of hopper connections - one that has a cord that goes from the hopper to the power supply, and the other where the hopper is automatically connected when it is inserted completely into the back of the machine.
If your hopper has a wire going from the hopper to the power supply, that wire can be removed from the power supply or, depending upon the hopper, from a connector on the hopper itself.
Pull the hopper towards you - it is held on by a track and may be tight, just wiggle it slightly left to right while pulling it. Some have a white clip on the front bottom that you will need to push down while pulling the hopper towards you. Others may have a piece of plastic in front of the hopper on the machine. Just lift the hopper over the plastic while pulling it towards you.
If your hopper is connected by a wire, remove the wire from either the hopper itself or the power supply.
Step 2: Remove the Top of the Hopper
Hoppers have two sections that are either screwed or clipped together. The top section is the plastic that the coins fall into. The bottom section is the wheel, plug/connector and sensor. The top part of the hopper can be removed.
If your hopper has screws just remove the screws with a Phillips screwdriver. There should be four screws - two located on the inside of the hopper and two on the outside of the coin area. When the two screws are removed the top will come off and you will be holding the entire bottom area with the wheel exposed.
There are also hopper that have clips holding the top to the bottom. These clips are usually yellow. The most common has two yellow clips on the front corners. Pull the clips toward you.
Step 3: Look for Jammed Coins
Look at the area where the coins exit the hopper and in the holes in the wheel itself for jammed coins. You will see them immediately now that you can view the entire wheel area. Remove the obstruction and test the wheel manually.
Step 4: Lubricate the Wheel
You should be able to turn the hopper wheel clockwise with little resistance. If you have no coins jammed in the machine, try to spin the wheel. If it seems tight, has rust, etc. check again for obstructions. Clean the wheel, the area around it, etc. You may need to give it a quick spray of silicone - do not use WD40 and do not use a lot of spray. A quick spray will do it. Work the wheel for a few minutes to let the lubricant do its work.
Step 5: Clean the Sensor
If the wheel is moving freely and you see no obstructions, look at the area where the coins are paid out from the hopper. Turn the hopper over and you will find a spring loaded arm. When tokens are paid out that arm swings through a sensor, breaking the light and sending a signal to the machine that a token has been paid. Clean the sensor of all dust and dirt with a Q-tip and a little rubbing alcohol.
Step 6: Lubricate the Sensor Arm and Spring
The spring loaded arm that breaks the sensor will sometimes seize up because of dirt or rust. Spray a little silicone spray on the arm itself and the springs. Manually move the arm for a few minutes to work the lubricant into the arm and the spring. You will feel it loosen and you will feel the spring begin to pull the arm back when you pull it forward. When it moves freely and the spring pulls it back into place without hesitation you are done.
Step 7: Manually Test the Hopper
Put a few coins into the wheel and turn the wheel clockwise. You will see the tokens fall into the holes in the wheel and move up toward the payout chute. If everything is cleaned and lubricated you will see the tokens enter the payout chute one at a time and actually shoot out the hopper.
If the wheel is not moving easily clean it again and check for obstructions.
If the coins are entering the payout chute but dropping out and NOT BEING SHOT OUT then clean and lubricate the spring loaded arm, make sure the arm is springing quickly back into place after you move it through the sensor, make sure it is not hitting the sensor but moving THROUGH it and breaking the beam.
Replace the top of the hopper, install the hopper back into the machine, reset the machine using the reset key and test it.
Handicap races were particularly attractive to me for the simple reasons that I'm no longer young and, even if I were, my running success would be limited by a distinct lack of talent. Over the past few years I'd run in handicap race series organised by different clubs and been amazed by both the popularity of these races and the slot depo 10k anger and venom you'd get when people felt unfairly treated.
Among the travesties I witnessed were a couple of five mile races where the winner in the first beat his handicap time by four minutes and followed it up two weeks later beating the target by five minutes. Several people who ran significant PB's in the second race were, understandably, unimpressed with the handicap targets. Even worse was series of twelve (handicapped) races where 10 in a row were won by the same person. No adjustments to runners' targets had been made at any time during the series even though it was clear that some were easy to beat while other people were having a tough time getting remotely close.
The secretary of my current club (Beverley AC) asked me to look into ways of improving the means of calculating handicap targets. In these days where you can find just about anything on the internet I was amazed to find that a Google search for "running handicap" turned up virtually nothing. No software. No discussion forum. No methods. There was plenty of material concerning horse racing and equal amounts for maintaining and recording golf handicaps. But for running it was an information desert.
It seemed to me that any viable method for arriving at targets had to meet a number of criteria...
1. Runners should be able to understand how their target had been arrived at
2. The method should apply equally to all
3. The targets should be verifiable
4. The targets should reflect the runner's current level of ability
And that if these criteria could be met we'd stand a chance of at least pleasing most of the people most of the time.
I'd heard about any number of "methods" used for arriving at targets some involving little more than a group of guys in a huddle (the handicap committee) trying to estimate (guess?) people's finishing times and others based on runners' PB's for an arbitrary distance - usually 10K. The problem with the PB approach being not least when do you regard an individual time as being no longer relevant? Then what do you replace it with?
Most handicapping methods also used the Riegel formula as a means of adjusting times from a race of one distance to another distance. This is a formula devised by Peter Riegel from research into the performances of elite and semi-elite athletes. It takes the form t2 = t1 * (d2 / d1)^1.06 and, in plain English, says that if the distance run is doubled then the speed declines by 6%. This formula is widely used by the various running calculators available on the internet. A much more complex formula (the Cameron formula) tends to give quite similar results even though the reasoning is very different. The predictions only begin to vary from the Riegel formula when you, say, predict a marathon time using a much shorter race, like 10K, as the base time. Under these circumstances the Cameron formula predicts slower times.
Another problem with trying to use PB's as a basis for calculating future targets is that you can guarantee that they would have been run under a variety of different conditions. Some hot, some cold. Some windy, others still. Some round in a circuit others point to point where the effects of wind and elevation change would be even more marked (viz Boston Marathon which loses nearly 900 feet between start & finish)
I came up with a simple hypothesis - what if we took into account, for each runner, their last 3 recent races then used the Riegel formula (or a variant) to adjust each race to an equivalent 10K distance. Then, if there was also a way to factor out the effects of elevation changes on the course, in effect producing a "flat 10K" time we'd have all runners on approximately the same basis. Taking the average of the 3 most recent races as the base time for the target in the next race you'd then adjust the base time first for distance then for any known elevation in the course for the target race.
The hypothesis was easily tested by using sample data from past seasons and initial calculations with a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet were encouraging. The elevation change calculations were based on some work reported by Dr Tim Noakes (the author of the monster work Lore of Running) which proved the notion that, on a course that goes up as much as it goes down, most runners definitely loose time when compared with a course that's completely flat (ie you don't get back on the downhill all the time you lost going up). So, for meaningful time comparisons you have to have some compensation when all runner's base times are not sourced from exactly the same races.
Trying to apply the system to a live situation several things became apparent...
1. For many runners the system worked well
2. A spreadsheet could be made to work but it was very easy to make significant mistakes that affected the accuracy of the results and were hard to prevent or even spot. This is a common feature on many spreadsheets.
3. Even with a spreadsheet the system needed a lot of work to maintain once you had more than a few runners. Beverley AC had 160 members at least half of whom were active in a 10 race handicap series.
4. You can't just take into account races in the handicap series - if you want an accurate assessment of a runner's current capability you need to log all races run by each individual
5. There were some runners and circumstances where, to be fair to everyone, you had to make adjustments. The challenge being to come up with a way of doing it that wasn't arbitrary or open to criticism if someone were to challenge what you'd done.
The special circumstances that needed another look were...
Runners who hadn't run a race for a while, say, six months or more.
Runners picking up an injury or short term illness
Runners turning in a performance way out of the norm
New runners with no race history
Most clubs running a series of handicap races work out the series results with some kind of points system. We used to operate a sliding scale that went something like 4 minutes under target got you 10 points, three minutes under scored 9 points and so on. Using the program to do the work we've now modified that so the scoring goes better than 4% under gets you 10 points, 3% under earns 9 points etc. This percentage system balances out much better between long and short races and also between the high flyers and average runners. In the past it's been harder for the fast guys to do at all well in a handicap competition partly because they tend to be very consistent (therefore it's harder to beat the target by much) and also because it's easier to be 2 minutes under target if you run 10 K in 55 minutes that it is if you're a regular 35 minute finisher.
We came up with the following solutions...
1. Where a runner is new or hasn't run a race for a while we don't try to predict a time. For the first race we simply assume that the target time is equal to the time run and award points from the middle of the table (ie six points using our system). If the next race they run isn't wildly out from the target based on just one race then we let the target stand otherwise it's six points again until a sensible average base time is established.
2. For runners with a short term injury or illness it's normally simplest to just exclude the bad result if the race they run is true to previous form.
3. If the drop off in performance is greater and looks like lasting longer then we treat the runner like a new entrant and establish a new performance standard for that runner.
Sometimes runners put in a performance that's way off what's expected. If it's way better then it feeds back into their average for the next race and they, effectively, pay a penalty approximating to a third of the improvement (assuming the averaging is over 3 races). Conversely sometimes you'll get someone who runs a race but doesn't try to run a good time. "Who would do such a thing?" you might ask. Well someone who's in training for an important event and just using the race as another training run - it happens quite often. In these circumstances it's just a matter of asking the runner why the time was so slow then excluding it from the next calculation on the basis of it being unrepresentative of current form.