What a nice thing to do to help him out. In regards to Alan I just don't understand how he stays in business. He has an amazing collection and he is nice enough when you visit him and show you around, but appears to be a nightmare to do business with. Being about 2.5 hours away from him and sometimes needing some assistance that he advertises has tempted me, but then stories like this help remind me not to go to him.
I agree, very nice of you to help out tkaz. I think he's able to stay in business because he's been around so long. Google various things about these old soda machines and chances are you'll end up on his site for something. I often do when I'm searching for images of machines.