The Westinghouse WD-12 Soda Machine is a dry cooler, meaning it cools without the use of water. It is very similar to the Westinghouse WE-6 except that machine is a wet box, and because of that, held fewer bottles. Also the WD-12 has the addition of stainless steel details. This Coca-Cola soda cooler has a stainless lid and trim and could hold 140 bottles. The two lids are hinged in the middle so a soda can be removed from either side. The WD-12 was manufactured from the mid-1940s to early 1950s. Pictured here is a machine we restored.

Dimensions: 28 1/2”D x 45 1/8”W x 36 1/4”H
Weight: 255 lbs.

Manufactured by:
Westinghouse Electric Corp.
Monroeville, PA

View the video of this Coca-Cola Westinghouse WD-12 Soda Cooler

This item is not for sale. We show restored items in this blog to encourage discussion, prompt questions and further the hobby of collecting and restoration. We also enjoy sharing the photos of the many items we have restored over the years.

The Vendo 81D may be one of the most sought-after soda machines, also called “drink boxes”, among collectors. It was introduced in 1955 and was made exclusively for the Coca-Cola Company by Vendo. If you find a similar machine embossed with another soda brand such as Royal Crown, Pepsi or 7-Up, then it is not a Vendo 81-D, but rather a VMC-81 made by the Vendorlator Company. They are very similar machines, but made by different companies.

The V-81D pop machine is very similar to its predecessors; both the 81A and 81B, but has a much larger coin door. The V-81D is a “white-top” model, like the V-81B, whereas the V-81A is solid red with a white Coca-Cola logo. And the embossing is larger and positioned more to the right than on the V-81A. The V-81D was manufactured from 1955 to 1958.

The internal workings of the V-81D are still very much like those in the earlier models. It vends 6 to 12 ounce bottles of soda. It has nine shelves and dispenses 81 bottles. There’s space to pre-cool 17 bottles. A fluorescent light illuminates the bottle door allowing you to view the various selections. The larger coin door on the V-81D accommodated a coin mechanism with a coin changer, unlike the small door machines. One feature that makes this machine so popular is the gravity-fed slant-shelf design. This allows you to vend a variety of flavors and sizes of bottles.

We have restored many of these over the years. Follow this link to Retroplanet.com and our Blog About the Vendo 81, 44 and 39 Service Manuals in the PDF Library. There you can download a copy of a Vendo 81 Soda Machine Manual.

Dimensions: 58”H x 27”W x 16”D
Weight: 286 lbs.

View the video of this Coca-Cola Vendo 81D Soda Machine

This item is not for sale. We show restored items in this blog to encourage discussion, prompt questions and further the hobby of collecting and restoration. We also enjoy sharing the photos of the many items we have restored over the years.

The tank was one of the cars in an amusement park ride for kids that went round and round and is most likely from the 1950’s. It sat five children and they all had their own noise making crank machine guns. Safe to say in this politically correct world of today they are not making many kiddie tank amusement rides with guns. One amazing thing about this piece was when we went to restore it we found it 100% complete. None of the chrome accents or trim pieces or even the name tag were missing which was surprising considering all the years of use and that there is so much of it.

We changed the paint scheme when we restored it but it was a pretty straightforward restoration. Take apart, sandblast, bodywork, clean or send out accent pieces for chrome, recover the seats, paint and then put it back together.

The real time consuming part was hand painting all of the camouflage after the base color of paint was laid down but I think all that time was worth it. Hope you like it.

View the video of this restored Patton Tank Kiddie Ride

This item is not for sale. We show restored items in this blog to encourage discussion, prompt questions and further the hobby of collecting and restoration. We also enjoy sharing the photos of the many items we have restored over the years.