Dixie 501 crazy machine

[maestro489]

I’ve got two Dixie 501 single price machines in my garage that I had to pull off location because they were “crazy”. They would give the wrong drink, take peoples money and any number of other strange things so I replaced them my question is should I scrape them or should I replace all the electrical and put it back out there?

[AZVendor]

Hard to say since you may have various issues with each.  Most likely bad or gummed up motor switches or gummed up motor brakes that allow motors to coast and then immediately start running when the next credit is put in.  A bad motor switch can cause credits to erase with no vend or to not cancel a credit and allow continued vends from that selection.  Not properly troubleshooting them on location is silly since it forced you to replace both machines.  Why didn't you call a repairman to fix them when you couldn't figure them out?  Afraid to spend money on that and yet you put two more machines out in their place?

[maestro489]

Actually I did have a repairman come out several times on each. The issue seemed to go away for a few weeks and then we were right back where we started

[AngryChris]

It's hard to answer your question as it pertains to what *you* should do because every situation is different.  I don't know your market in relation to the availability of used/refurbished/new machines and what they sell for or how good you are at getting decent accounts.  If you live in one of those small towns where you have trouble even just finding someone to move machines for you, or you have trouble finding vending machines in general, then it might be worth your time and money to just troubleshoot them, fix them, and send them back out.  As AZVendor pointed out, you could have a few problems going on that can cause everything you described and many of those problems can be fixed pretty cheap most of the time. 

If you wanted to try to save the machines, then your best bet (in my opinion) would be to wash all of the motor brakes so nothing sticks and replace all of the motor switches as well.  That would cost you a very small amount so even if it doesn't solve the problem of the machine vending the wrong selection, you aren't out much money.  From there, you need to verify that your coin mechs and bill acceptors work.  You COULD just get them refurbished and pay maybe $50/piece + shipping for that or you could just run dozens of quarters, nickels, dimes, and dollar bills into all of them and see what happens.  It's difficult to say if the problem lies with your bill acceptors/coin mechs or if it's just bad switches/motors causing all of the problems unless you physically test it yourself.  If it's a bad motor, then they can be costly.  You might even consider taking all of the good motors out of the worst machine, switching out any bad motors in the "good" machine, and scrap the worst machine.  You could also do this for the coin mechs and validators.  Just make sure motors are compatible.
 

It sounds like moving machines isn't a problem for you, which leads me to believe that the best overall course of action would be to do what I would do... which is to get rid of those single price machines by whatever methods you choose.  You could sell them dirt cheap (ie. $150-$300) and let the buyer know what the problems are and be done with them, or just scrap them as they are.  I take the decks out of 501's because I can use them in practically any 3-deep dixie anyway.  I also take the validator and coin mech out and any good motors IF I know I can use them.  It might be worth keeping a vend relay too.  Other than that, I can't think of anything worth keeping.  The thing is, a validator, a cooling deck, and a couple motors might save you more money than just selling the machine cheap, which is why I get the valuable parts out and scrap the rest.

So, do what you think is the best move for you but it may not be as complicated as you think to fix the dixie.  If your tech can't fix it and neither can you though, you should just get rid of it.  They are usually pretty easy to diagnose but it just takes some time and know-how.  The only times I had ever struggled with diagnosing a dixie was when I was still very inexperienced and one time when I had a bad motor on a 501T with an SIID board with a bad motor.  Apparently an actual bad motor can make the whole machine say "sold-out" when it's not.  I still don't know why that happened but the machine was poor looking and had other problems anyway so I just took the deck out and scrapped it.

[CajunCandy]

Have a priest come out and sprinkle holy water on them! Get those ghost out of those machines!

ca'jun

[cvending]

Sounds like your repairman  did not repair the machine but only fixed the current problem.