I finished my parking meter today. I was able to fix the two issues I was having. Someone had been inside the meter before me and had let the main spring wind down. It should be under tension when the mechanism is on it "stop" but mine was unwound. I was able to remove the gear and winding wheel on the back and manually turn the shaft with a wrench to preload the spring. The issue with the handle and coin mechanism was a broken roll pin that holds the two pieces together. There was no wear to the hole in the shaft and a new roll pin fixed the issue.





Once I got it disassembled I blasted the housings and set out to fix the damage that someone made on top. Apparently people like to make lamps out of these. I think that's what someone was trying to do with this one but instead of drilling a hole in the top, they used a chisel to pound out a hole. There was a fairly large area that needed to be rebuilt. I came up with the idea to fill in the area with JB Weld. It was pretty much trial and error but it actually worked. I made a "form" out of popsicle sticks and hot glue. Then I poured the JB Weld into the form. Once it was cured, I sanded it down to form the shape of the top. I'm really happy with how that part turned out.








Someone had painted over two plexiglass windows on the meter. One was the coin window which displays the last coin that was installed into the meter. The other was the hours of opperation window. I wet sanded the paint off those windows and polished them. Then I made a new hours of opperation plaque to replace the original discolored one.


I bought some new stickers for the two flags and one for the time indicator arch. I also bought a new plaque for the front since the original one was too far gone to make look nice. I tried to find a gray paint that matched what I found on the inside but I wasn't able to. I ended up using a medium gray which looks nice I think, Instead of painting the handle, coin slot and Duncan Miller logo, I decided to polish them instead. I think it looks good. Here is the finished product.