Our customer from Alabama shipped this Vendo 110 to us to restore. The story was this was his father’s machine, and at some point, his dad removed all the interior parts, bottle stack, shelves, etc, and used the machine to cool meat. What a clever idea! Apparently, he ran a rod all the way through the machine at the top, see the red arrow below. And chilled meat using the cooling system for the coke machine.
So after discussing all the options with the customer, he decided to make it into a cooler. He did consider finding all the interior parts, but they are expensive and impractical given that it limits the types of drinks that it will vend.
As a side note to history, Vendo did make a version of the Vendo 110 that did not even have a coin mechanism on it, it was called an E110 or Vertical 6 Cooler. It was a cooler with shelves – similar to what we converted this one into. See this E110 we restored.
So, in the end, he decided that for us to make this one into a cooler with shelves so that larger bottles and cans could be used in it. I think the customer made a great decision on it.
We did a full restoration on it, including a sandblasting down to the metal, fixing all the dents and holes in the body, new paint and clear coat, new letters, replating the chrome, and even the coin mechanism was restored. Of course, it is just for looks and memories and not functional.
Best of all, he can use cans or bottles of most any size to enjoy the machine for years to come.
Before we started
After the restoration
