Lacrosse vending bypass

[miheather]

I have a Lacrosse 81, I think. Coin mech is gone and vending mech actuator(?) is fried. How can I bypass or disengage the gears and levers etc. that keep all but one of the bottle slots locked? All I want to do is keep everything open so I can open the glass door and pull out whatever I want. I'm sure I am not using the proper nomenclature and terminology, but hopefully someone understands what I'm talking about. Thanks!

[Slapshot42]

Welcome to the Site!

If your coin mechanism is missing that will cause the solenoid to not work as well.

Below is a link how to make a free play switch.  Some people mount a switch or a button and put it on the machine somewhere.  You will see a plug right where the coin mechanism was called the jones plug.  Jumpering a few wires were that plug is will open the solenoid just like when the coin mechanism was there.  If the solenoid is bad, you could replace it.

Here is a good link to help you.

[Slapshot42]

http://soda-machines.com/discussions/index.php/topic,871.0.html

[miheather]

Thanks for the info. That's good stuff too. However, I am trying to forgo the electronics altogether and basically use the machine as a fridge. So all I need to be able to do is stock the machine and rely on gravity to send the bottles to the dispensers and pull them out. I just need to defeat the mechanical linkage that magically knows not to let me take more than one bottle at a time. I would love to do that without disassembling all that stuff also. I figure if I don't ask, someone will come along and say,"Oh, you didn't have to disassemble the whole machine. All you had to do was poke the foznaggle with a humdrum and it works like a charm. Wish you'd have asked!" Know what I mean?

[tkaz]

Do you have any photos of the bottom of the vending stack?  I'm not familiar with Lacrosse machines, but usually there is some form of flapper on the bottom that you can remove that will allow the machine to vend all the time.  I'll do some looking around and see what I can find.

[miheather]

well, would love to, but don't have all night to try and figure out how to post pics other than attaching them and I don't have all night to resize the pics to 405k. I'll give it a shot later when not so busy. Thanks for your help though.