The coin box is protected from
vandals by the "vault door". You must use the
"T"
bar and have a special key (different from the upper housing key) to
open the vault door to access the coin box.
The position of the "T"
bar and key when the vault door is locked is shown
HERE.
To unlock the vault door, first rotate the key clockwise about 135 degrees
then, while holding the vault door in one hand to keep it from falling, turn
the "T" bar counterclockwise about 45 degrees as shown
HERE.
Carefully remove the
vault door (leaving "T" bar in place) and set it down on a
soft, non-abrasive surface. Note, the vault door is heavier than it may
look so be careful you don't drop it on your toes!
Here
is a photo of the vault door removed exposing the coin box inside.
The vault door has an interesting
mechanical locking mechanism as see in the following photos:
Next, lets
remove the
coin
box. To do this, simply lift up and
pull
the wire pull-loop on front of coin box to slide coin box out of
phone. To open the lid on the coin box, place finger under the lid's
"tongue" latch as shown
HERE.
Lift tongue latch up to release lid. The open coin box looks like
this.
Now comes an important task you
MUST do in order to get that coin box back into the payphone! When you
removed the coin box from the pay phone, you 'tripped" a mechanism that
prevents you from pushing the coin box back in the phone. You must
"arm" the mechanism once it has been tripped. This is done
with a simple flat-blade screw driver. Before explaining this, view the
following two photos:
You must rotate that screw just
over 90 degrees clockwise to "arm" your coin box so it can be put
back into the phone.
The
coin
relay is the device in the pay phone that determines if your coin
deposit(s) are returned to you via the coin return (line busy, no answer,
etc.) or if the coin(s) are sent to the coin box (completed call). The coin
relay is sometimes missing from
payphones people buy from the general public like on eBay because some people (unfortunately) remove them thinking that is the
only way to "convert" the phones to non-coin use on regular home
phone lines. Thus, this assembly is hard to come by if yours is missing
since the relays are usually thrown away leaving more payphones than coin
relays in the world. Some pay phone resellers also remove the coin relay
unfortunately.
The coin relay has a white
plastic
"hat". The plastic "hat"
protects the
relay
contacts on
top of the coin relay from being shorted out or damaged
from stray coins that might fall down on top of the relay instead of traveling
down the
coin chute.
The coin relay consists of a coil,
resistor, some electrical contacts (leaf-switch), armature and other parts.
