Change Machine Hell

bteeter

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Kihei, Hawaii
Aloha All,

Ugh! So tonight I went on to my biggest location (16 machines) to update the changer there to accept all bills. The changer is a Rowe BC35 with a MEI upgrade kit. The MEI upgrade has an old MEI 2511 (I believe, might be 2411) validater that was only taking $1's.

I bought the kit from Happ to update the bill validater and did so. It went fine reported green on the LED indicating success. It did in fact work, the validator takes all new bills now... the only problem is the stupid machine does not dispense coins anymore. I've tried every possible dip switch setting on the validator, but it makes no difference.

I also checked every possible connection, and double checked and everything is fine. The machine just eats bills now and does not dispense coin at all. It worked perfectly (albeit only handling $1's) before I updated the MEI now its useless and I have no working change machine on site.

Anyone have experience with the Rowe BC35 with a MEI upgrade kit? Any ideas on how to get this to work?

Thanks - Brian
 
What kind of upgrade kit is in there? You don't just put a mars head in there without some kind of control box for it. I have several genesis kits as well as capital vending. If you can find the control box you have in there (follow the wire harness back from the bill acceptor most likely), and take a pic, I or someone around here may be able to help you out.
 
What kind of upgrade kit is in there? You don't just put a mars head in there without some kind of control box for it. I have several genesis kits as well as capital vending. If you can find the control box you have in there (follow the wire harness back from the bill acceptor most likely), and take a pic, I or someone around here may be able to help you out.

I do not know for sure. I only know it has a MEI Acceptor in it, from about 7 years ago. I will bring a flashlight and my phone up there in the next day or so to try to get a picture.

Thanks for the help!
 
Alright I wanted to follow up in case anyone gets here via search someday and wonders what happened.

I ended up yanking the MEI acceptor out of the machine and plugged in another one I had in a spare parts bin. That was a model 2611-u7 I believe. It worked the first time. The only thing is, although the acceptor takes all modern bills - the machine only ever dispenses $1 in quarters. So I set it to only accept $1s and then brought in another change machine that takes all bills and dispenses correctly.

I guess the 31 year old Rowe was only ever meant to handle $1 bills for change.

Thanks - Brian
 
How do you have the escrow buckets set up?

The capital vending kits I've used that process $1-20 that use the coin acceptor line treat $1 bills as quarters and $5 bills as $1 coins.

Make sure your pay settings are correct for the kit you have.
 
Does the changer still have the Rowe CCC or was it replaced when the kit was installed? If $5's are set to not payout anything on the Rowe CCC it will take the bill but do nothing after that. When the machine had the Rowe acceptor in it (BA25 I think) turning off a bill via dipswitches made the machine reject it. Since the CCC and the Mars BA dont talk to each other the BA has no way of knowing that the machine is set to not payout for a $5.

Also, those kits connected to the test switches and used that to drive the machine to dispense. If the wire that was supposed to be connected to the $5 dump isnt hooked up it wont work.
 
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