Hey! Happy Black Friday. My wife is out shopping because she is completely insane. I’m home working because I am only partially insane.

This post has lots of pictures. As always, click them to make them bigger. I know you want to, so just do it.

Moon Patrol has been in the garage since I got it. I decided it was about time I bring it inside and finish working on it, which I did a few days ago. I finished putting the t-molding on, which was a lot of fun…especially the part where I put my finger right into the hot glue I was using and melted my flesh. It’s called “HOT” glue for a reason people.

I bought this “Williams Control Panel Molding Trim” from Arcadeshop.com:

Here is the control panel without this beautiful piece of plastic-y goodness:

You have to trim the molding to size. I used this stuff to glue it to the control panel, which worked great:

Here it is after the trim was applied:

I had an issue with the crappy monitor. I had cleaned it up and did a cap kit before, and adjusted all the pots the best I could. Whenever the game was turned on after being cold, the vertical hold seemed off. It wasn’t the typical problem of the screen not syncing and constantly moving like the v-hold on an old TV. This basically would sync and lock the image but the image would be halfway down the screen. Turning the game off right away and back on would fix it every time. I took the control board off:

The backside had some solder joints that looked questionable, and lots of crud (flux?) all over it:

I desoldered and removed all the pots. The old flux won’t cause a problem but I cleaned it up anyway with some 91% isopropyl alcohol, and resoldered the pots back in place:

Doing that seems to have fixed the problem. The image locks in right where it should be from a cold start.

I did a couple of things wrong when doing this work (I know, shocking!). So you might learn from my stupid mistakes, I will include them here as well.

Mistake #1

For those regular readers out there, you know that I’m waiting for a reproduction bezel for this from Rich at ThisOldGame.com. I noticed that the latches inside the control panel didn’t seem very tight. You didn’t get that typical snap that you normally get and the control panel was a little loose. I figured I might as well fix that, so I removed the latches and bent them a bit to bring them a little closer to the inside of the cabinet. That worked perfectly! Except for that fact that I didn’t have a bezel in the game. I put in my old bezel and the latches were now WAY too tight. I had to remove them, bend them back, and it was fine. The original bend I put in the latches was not needed, and I just wasted that time for nothing.

Mistake #2

When I repaired the cabinet, I forgot to fill in a hole that was left behind by a security bar. It was so close to the lower coin door that I just missed it. Someday I may fill it in, but not in the near future. I stuck a bolt in it for now.

Here it is finished, with the exception of a new bezel.

Here is is in it’s new location in the arcade: