Link "Clean Out Pump"

(Photograph courtesy of Rusty King)

Link "Clean Out Pump" installed in a Link coin piano. It basically consisted of a small single-acting bellow with flap valves and a rubber tube nipple to which a rubber hose of any convenient length could be quickly fitted. A factory installed clean out pump is an oddity amongst coin piano manufacturers, but in later years Link made them available as a standard part of its instruments. Normally the pump connecting stick was not connected to the offset pin on the pump pulley. But when needed the pump stick could be easily connected and used to clean dust and lint from the valve atmospheric intake vent brass screens, and paper dust sucked into the tracker bar openings. While a standard accessory, the clean out pumps are often missing on surviving Link coin pianos.

(Photograph courtesy of Rusty King)

Original but yellowed paper instruction label that was glued to the feeder pump's vacuum header or manifold. It refers to a large pallet valve that, when hooked open, dumps the vacuum from the system, so that the clean out pump could more easily suck dust and lint particles out of the bleeds and tracker bar without having to "fight" against an offsetting system wide vacuum created by the feeder pump.

(Photograph courtesy of Jon Fortunato and Dana Johnson)

A convenient Link tracker bar cleanout nozzle is connected to the tube lying on the music shelf in this Style E #3427. The concave cylindrical face has a leather gasket for a good seal when it is held against the tracker bar. The tube goes down the side of the piano and connects to the clean out pump in the bottom.

(Photograph courtesy of Jon Fortunato and Dana Johnson)

Close-up of tracker bar cleaning nozzle.