Interesting trip to the country today

[BrianS]

Found out through the grapevine that a client of mine has an employee that used to work for the local Coke distributor.  Dropped by to introduce myself and it turned out to be a distant cousin of mine I haven't seen in years.  After talking about the hobby he informed me he used to haul off the old machines for scrap and had a pile out on their farm that had been sitting for years.  Told me I was free to go out and dig through.  I was looking for some round Cornelius badges from the Cornelius 50 chests since they might match the tombstone dispensers I am working on.  So I went out today and most of what was there was not worth anything.  There was a Tombstone dispenser but we had a hail storm that went through a couple weeks ago and it looks like it took a direct hit.  Now has a hole in the top of it.  What I did end up finding was several pancake compressor cooling decks.  Wasn't prepared to haul any of those out, but I grabbed three and squeezed them into the trunk of my car.  Brought them back and rewired the compressors and 2 of them fired up and put frost on the evap coils.  Not sure what I will do with them, but made for a fun day!  One is a Vendo and the other is a Cavalier.  Evap/Cond fans are toast but one compressor is whisper quiet, the other makes a slight gurgle every so often, but they ran for about 30 minutes each without overheating or tripping the overload.  There are a couple more out there and he told me to take whatever I could use.  Any reason to grab some of these?

[Eric]

Ugh... hail.. anything you could use as parts from it.. base? anything?

[Jim]

Cool story!  On your next visit, could you take a few pictures and share...?
Sooo, you have a cousin you didn't even know and stumbled upon him by accident... Interesting! And he is a client as well... This is the stuff stories are written about!
Thanks for sharing!

[MoonDawg]

I would advise you to grab as many pancake compressors as you can find. They were the original equipment used by Vendo, Cavalier, Ideal and probably others...... and I prefer them to the brand new noisy Chinese compressors that are available today.

[BrianS]

Cool story!  On your next visit, could you take a few pictures and share...?
Sooo, you have a cousin you didn't even know and stumbled upon him by accident... Interesting! And he is a client as well... This is the stuff stories are written about!
Thanks for sharing!

I didn't take any pics because it was mostly just a bunch of Cornelius chests and Cornelius portable syrup dispenser units.  There were a ton of compressors but most were the newer mushroom style.  No metal chests or vertical machines.  The Pancake decks were the only thing of interest.  The story isn't quite as interesting as you imply.  I know my cousin, but he is a distant cousin and I had not seen him since high school.  Didn't even recognize him until he introduced himself.  There are a couple more decks sitting out in the sun, may go get them since he is just planning to scrap them some day.  They are literally piled up out in a field.
Here's a couple pics I do have, one of the decks fresh from the field.  Will clean them up next weekend.  The other is the deck showing some frost on the lines, no evap fan wired up.