Dr@No's fun filled (and often long-winded) restorations

[DRANO]

Making some good progress on these cabs.
The first batch of 4 is set to leave the shop tomorrow so I spent some time assembling today at lunch.
Here's one of mine; slated to be a Donkey Kong with a 60-in-1 JAMMA board.



I also managed to spray 4 playfields last night while my painter worked on the Nintendo cabs.

 

[brad808]

That looks really sexy. Is it just the camera angle or is there something funky going on with the button placement on the cp?

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

[WARLOCK]

Woo hoo! Fantastic work so far Drano! Sweet!

Drano has not yet addressed the special nature of the
control panels or posted photos of them yet I don't think.

Good story, clever thinking. I am sure Drano will post photo's
and explain.

 

[DRANO]

That looks really sexy. Is it just the camera angle or is there something funky going on with the button placement on the cp?

My build will be a 60-in-1 so I'll be needing a 2nd button (which stock DKs don't have of course).
I've got a custom CPO layout based on the original DK art. That should be the only major deviation.

 

[WARLOCK]

So, Drano made 3 control panels for each vid cab.
He did this out of the "excess" wood available.

Some people involved in this project wanted:

1) Original cp
2) Double button cp
3) Full on mame 6 button cp

Drano did all of that with the wood leftovers.

Nothing like this project for a repro "Ninny" cab has even been
attempted to my knowledge, with the precision, accuracy, time
and care that Drano took with his work and his team to put into the project.

I am in "awe" of the quality product he replicated. Seriously amazing work. Astounding!

Thank you sir.

That is all.

 

[DRANO]

Was feeling a bit rough this weekend so didn't get too much done.
I finally started painting the Super Sprint cabinet with a roller and some melamine paint. The whole rattle can experiment was NOT working out well.
Hopefully I can get it back on its feet soon. This thing is taking up valuable shop floorspace!

I did finally try out my new repro bezel and the fit was bang on! Looks fantastic!



The first 3 Nintendo cabinets also got shipped out on Saturday. 9 more to go!

Thinking I'll do some playfield sanding today at lunch.
I'll be carefull not to burn through any more clear today

 

[DRANO]

START YOUR ENGINES: restoring my first vid; 1986 ATARI Super Sprint
Part 5

Well, it's been over a week since I posted anything.
Playfields are coming along nicely.
Should have Pinbot and TZ done within the week. My Special Force requires a bit of airbrush work so just waiting for my back to be 100% again before I crouch over it to cut all the frisket film. Jacks Open had all of its dipped inserts filled with a pipette of clearcoat and I'll be block sanding those flat this week as well.

The remaining 7 Nintendo cabinet scratch builds are being painted tonight!
Final assembly and hardware installation can start tomorrow.

But the real fun has been this Super Sprint project.
Over the long weekend, all the patching, sanding and painting has come together nicely and the lower cab is nearly done!
I hope to have it all back together before leaving for Allentown next Thursday!

Here are a few stages of the restoration.

 

[DRANO]

START YOUR ENGINES: restoring my first vid; 1986 ATARI Super Sprint
Part 6

Well, Super Sprint is pretty well done from a cosmetic point of view.
Wrapped it up last night.
I added some new t-molding, applied all the new decals, plugged it all in and got it working.

I'm still having a few video/monitor issues that may need to be addressed. Hoping it's just RAM... but it's finally done!

 

[tkaye]

great job Drano!

I love it

 

[mwong168]

Sweet job on the restore Drano. I can't wait to spin that wheel around those corners, I think it's been 20+ years since I played one of these.

 

[DRANO]

Sad to say that my ROM issues are not clearing up anytime soon.
I need a couple of 6116 ICs. Should have them sometime after Allentown.
Really want this project to be finished so I can play it

 

[DRANO]

Ughhh
Projects are at a standstill this week.

I needed to vacate some space before my shop foreman started ditching Nintendo cabinets into the wood chipper... so I spent most of last week and this week assembling and wrapping up the remainder of the cabinets and then getting them out the door to their happy new owners.



Also, with the shop super busy, our finishing department is rammed, so I have not been able to get into the spray booth for over a week and a half!
It's nice to be busy, but at the same time, I'm just one coat away from finishing a couple of these playfields.
Can't wait to clear my plate off even further, but now it looks like this won't happen until post Allentown.
Also spent the last couple of nights prepping a few games to bring down to the show.


Stay tuned for a thorough cleanup of the Jacks Open cabinet. The playfield is nearing completion and I'm sure the owner will be excited to get this baby back soon.
Should be fun!

 

[DRANO]

START YOUR ENGINES: restoring my first vid; 1986 ATARI Super Sprint
Part 7 - conclusion

Well,
My shop is starting to slow down a little. Hoping to get into the spray booth today or tomorrow to finish up at least two of the playfields I've been working on. That'll be a relief to me as well as the owners

In the meantime, a little package came yesterday.
I found a whack of 6116 RAM chips pretty cheap and grabbed a whole bunch. I figured Super Sprint would need a few news ones after that error message I got a couple of weeks ago.



I swapped the one in section 2B (this is where the game's diagnostics specified).
Nothing happened. In fact, the screen got even more garbled.
I decided, what the heck, let's put in all new ICs. I had plenty.
Again... nothing.

Finally I decided to pull a couple of EPROMs off the CPU board to see if they were corroded. Nothing! I put them back in.

Then I finally decided to just pull off the video board.
If you're not famliar with these sprint series games (I'm not), they have two boards CPU & VIDEO that connect to each other via an edge style connector.
I separated them, cleaned the connection point and re-seated.... and voila! Not fixed, but at least something else.



Now I was getting a communication error instead of RAM :?
After much frustration I pulled both boards out to have a look.
It took just a few second to find the issue.

When I re-seated the EPROM on the CPU I had bent one of the legs :FP: Luckily, not broken!
I straightened it out, carefully seated the chip, reconnected the boards and.....



I heard the sweet sound of the audio test, which meant the game's diagnostics were succesful and then quickly switched it out of test mode to see this screen.
Everything worked great and my weird artifacts were now gone.
Here is a picture of the original issue and the 3 blocks that would run through the image on every screen.



The game is still having one minor issue with the soundsto the right speaker.
I'll be checking connections and volume pots tonight.
Otherwise, I'm happy playing in mono for now

 

[DRANO]

Finally got into the spray booth at lunch.

Twilight Zone is finished. I drilled this playfield for the 3rd magnet mod and touched up a few problem areas. Overall, a pretty easy restore. It had some planking that I was able to seal in quite well.

The Pinbot is the CPR repro I pictured a while back with the sloppy insert art. All have been repaired with insert decals and it has now received its final coat.

Jacks Open is coming home for some airbrushing before final top coats can be done.
My Special Force playfield is on hold while I get these 3 done.

Sent from my SM-G900W8 using Tapatalk

 

[Menace]

Super nice, but bitter sweet for me... the more of these you churn out the more work I have ahead. LOL

D

 

[WARLOCK]

Sweet!
They look great Drano.

I knew when I bought that Pinbot playfield, she would be beautiful one day.
Congrats to Rob (Spiroagnew) once he puts his Pinbot all back together again.

 

[DRANO]

FULL HOUSE: getting through my playfield backlog one EM at a time: Jacks Open
Part 1

So... continuing with my ongoing playfield work.
Here's a couple of shots of the Jacks Open playfield I'm fixing up.

Next time I'll do a better job of capturing one of these from the start. This one has been in progress for some time.
The main issues with these EM playfields is that the inserts tend to bow inwards as a result of the heat given off by the bulbs. This 'cupping' affects ball travel and just makes the game less fun to play IMO. Modern playfield inserts have ribbing (usually in a star pattern). This may seem decorative, but it actually is designed to give inserts more structure to prevent cupping.

Some guys remove the entire insert, sand it smooth and then re-insert it. The reason I don't like this method is that you are essentially weakening the part even further by thinning the plastic. I prefer to fill the cupping in with an eyedropper of clearcoat and then block sand it smooth before applying another coat.
This step was just recently completed on this Jacks Open and now I'm airbrushing a few areas.



In these photos you can see that I masked off the red. It's a massive area and was covered in ground in ball swirls. Magic eraser and alcohol got most of the dirt, but the red and yellow areas really looked dingy. Because of the complexity of the art in the yellow field, trimming and spraying that would have been problematic, but giving the large red area a fresh coat will go a long way towards making this playfield sparkle again.



I'm also experimenting with some new techniques on this project. The middle inserts within the pruple circles had a lot of wear around them. I primed any bare wood with a brush and some purple paint prior to my first coat of clear... but this was more to cover up the wood. The paint was not an exact match.
Now, I need to correct the purple and re-apply the black ring. The problem is that there is a lot of very small text inside the purple field. This makes trimming a mask very tedious and it may never look right.
Instead, I've scanned and corrected the areas on my computer and then printed them on waterslide decal paper. This stuff is very thin and delicate and it almost disappears in the clearcoat layer. If this works, I will be able to keep the text looking perfect while fully repairing the purple area... and no masking and airbrushing! That's a huge bonus.

I also have to replace the Gottlieb maker's mark that got covered over by my red airbrushing... so this will be a waterslide application as well.

Stay tuned for the results.

 

[DRANO]

HOLE IN (ONE HOUR): a quick touch-up guide for early drilled cabs

I traded away a very nice Grand Lizard+cash earlier this month for a SUPER nice Centaur!
I had seen this game on a recent visit to Montreal. It seems to be that all the nice classic Williams games are in Ontario, while all the classic Bally pins ended up in QC.
In any case, it was a beauty and I was fortunate to be able to pry it out of la belle provence. The game has a new CPR playfield, new plastics, targets, perfect glass and even the cabinet was exceptional. The only real knock on the cabinet was that it was drilled for a security bar

The game arrived a couple of days ago and, before moving it down into my gameroom, I figured I'd take a crack at fixing up the damage. Here are a few pics of the process I followed.

Firstly, these older stenciled cabinets are awesome to work on. The art is simple and uses primary colours. If this were a modern pin with complex art and I didn't want to restore it, I would most likely just insert a black carriage bolt into the hole and leave it alone.
In the case of Centaur, it doesn't get any more basic. Black with silver and a few small red accents. Silver sharpie pens are a great match for the silver BTW.

In the case of my game the OP had banged a T-nut into the holes... causing even more damage. Here are a couple of shots of the two sides.





Notice the small deep dimple at the bottom of each pic. This must have been casued by the locking bar used. We'll repair those too.

 

[DRANO]

I like to contain my work area and prevent damage to anything around it.
In order to do this I usually mask off with some painter's tape.





I didn't bother masking the small dimple below these areas since there were so small and I did not anticipate a lot of sanding. You can see them filled in below with a light wood toned filler.

For this application I used an epoxy-based product similar to PC Lumber. It comes in a stick, you cut what you need and then mash it together with your fingers until evenly blended... then just press it in. It smells like rotten eggs though



One key pointer. This stuff is thick and cures quickly. I find that, once I've pressed it into place, I like to wet it a bit and use a putty knife to smooth it. It'll save work later and help fill in gaps better.

 

[DRANO]

Next, I sand with a tiny block.
Basically a small 1" square piece of wood with some 240 grit sandpaper glued to it.
I may alternate with sanding with my thumb too and then finishing with some 400 grit.
All of this is done with the tape in place. Once you peel the tape you will see an obvious line, I lightly sand it again and then wipe the area clean with some water and a rag. You shouldn't damage the art with a light sanding.





Once you're happy with the surface, and it doesnt have to be perfect, we apply some paint. These are 30+ year old games after all; they are not meant to look new.

I experiemented with a couple of different paint pens. I have a lacquer pen and a hybrid acrylic. The acrylic seemed to produce the best results so I used that.
The colour is too dark at first so I blot it with a paper towel or rub it with my fingers.
After a few minutes, do this again and build up the black until the tone matches the rest of the cab and the wood filler is covered.





After the black was done, I went in with my silver Sharpie and re-drew the missing art.
In the above close-up pics the lighting is harsh and you can see the repair area... but once you view the cab as whole, it is hard to see where the work was done.



And that's how I do a quick drilled cab repair on an older pin. The epoxy dries in under 15 min, so you could probably do this in under an hour.
Thanks for following along. As always, feel free to post any questions. I'm happy to help.

Adriano


PS.
If anyone has a spare stock metal Bally shooter rod, let me know.