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I have a reproduction Mills 25 cent machine that does not pay the jackpot but pays everything else. The jackpot payout is lever activated. I can manually lift the lever to open the jackpot door, but when I force the three jackpot bars on the wheels, the jackpot door does not open. I notice that the very bottom payout slide spring gets caught on the vertical fingers each time the machine is played. Is this normal? Could this be the problem? There is no reserve jackpot mechanism at all.

Reproductions vary widely in quality and reliability depending on who put it together.

From your brief description;
sounds like the part on the mechanism that trips the JP lever is missing or misaligned;
odd that you have no reserve JP (unless it's hand-load) since that has been a standard feature for a long time (you may have a stripped down JP);
it is not normal for a slide spring to get caught on the vertical fingers; probably not the cause of your JP problem unless the spring is preventing the vertical finger from tripping the top slide.

Thank you for the quick response. I didn't think the spring should be caught by the vertical fingers, but wanted to be sure. I am now at a loss as how to keep the vertical fingers from catching the slide spring. I will try moving the spring, if possible, to see if that works. Another issue I had was the reels were not aligned in the windows. They were off to the left. To compensate, I added two washers on the left side of the wheel axel. that pushed the wheels to the right, but not sure if it has any effect on the mechanism as a whole. All of the payouts except the JP function correctly. Any thoughts? Thank You.

My thoughts;
Sounds like whoever made your reproduction machine did not do so well; your JP failing to trip could be due to the mechanism being misaligned (since you mention the reels were askew) or it could be any one of a number of problems.
Just enjoy tinkering with it; there is a lot of printed material and Youtube videos available to guide you on how it's supposed to work.
Reproductions can be good for testing/experimenting/learning how to fix problems.
I have a feeling you will discover more problems with it as you go along; it'll prepare you for your next project machine; have fun!