I’m done painting the cabinet, and put new t-molding on:

As you can see from the pic above, I also put the control panel back in. Next comes the sideart…

I can’t wait to get this working again. It’s been a long time in the making.

I’ve been working on my Baby Pac-Man cabinet for about a week or so. It’s been a struggle, and I learned some things the (very) hard way. Here’s what went down…

I got the cabinet sanded, patched up, and sprayed some Kilz 2 primer on it. I did 2 or 3 coats, sanding after each. It looked pretty good:

Read the rest of this entry…

My Baby Pac-Man has been in the garage since I got it, and it needs to come inside. I left off last year with all the boards working, and the playfield restored and looking like new. All that remains is to prep the cabinet, paint it, slap on some new side art, and put it all back together. Oh, and find a spot in the house for it somehow.

I was more focused on getting some work done on the cabinet, and didn’t take many pictures as I went along. I used a heat gun to get the old side art off. I tried some Goof Off to get the old adhesive off, which worked wonders. I followed that up by sanding the entire cabinet.

Here’s a pic of one side right after I hit it with Bondo:

I have since sanded the Bondo down. I’ll flip it over soon and do the same to the other side. I hope to have some paint on it this weekend!

I’ve been feeling like working on my games much more now, especially with the weather getting warmer. I managed to sneak some time in to give my new Dig Dug a once over (and a “who’s your father” as well!).

I did one thing right, and one thing wrong. First, the bad…

The white at the bottom of the bezel was flaking off big time:

You can see it pretty well inside the box surrounding Dig Dug above. Check it out from the backside:

The rest of the art looked perfect accept for the white, just in that bottom area. I gently scraped at the loose white, and brushed it with a nylon brush and all that flakey white came off right down to the glass:

I sprayed that area with some white, and it looked great from the front. You’ll have to trust me, as I didn’t get a pic and it’s now in a dumpster somewhere. Here’s what it looked like from the back after I sprayed that bottom area:

Now, I was psyched at that point and should have left it. Instead, I decided that I had to do something to keep the remaining flake free white areas from flaking. I had read about using Krylon Triple Thick to prevent flaking art on glass from peeling further, and decided it would be a good idea to hit it with some of that. I masked off the clear area with painters tape, as you can see above. I sprayed on the Krylon Triple Thick and let it dry. When I peeled off the masking tape, it took a lot of the paint immediately adjacent to it with it. I think the Krylon formed a bond with the tape that normal paint wouldn’t. It looked like total crap, and was beyond repair. I ended up getting a replacement from QuarterArcade.com that looks almost like new.

Now, on to the one thing that *did* go right. I put a new (repro) control panel overlay on. Before:

After:

I’m done messing with Dig Dug for awhile, and am going to work on finishing my Baby Pac-Man.

I finally got around to picking up a Dig Dug yesterday:

It played blind. I luckily had an extra GO7 repair kit around. I replaced the flyback, the HOT, all the caps, and a blown fuse and the monitor fired right up.

Its in pretty good shape. It could use a new control panel overlay, and the white paint on the bezel is flaking off. You can see it better in this pic:

If you look around Dig Dug’s head, it looks cloudy. If you click on that pic to zoom in, you’ll see that it is actually peeling paint. It is only affecting the white, and the rest of the paint is stuck solid. I was thinking that I might try to scrape off all the loose white, mask it off, and spray it with some new white to fix it. If it doesn’t come out good I can always get another bezel off eBay.

My Dig Dug license plate sign finally has a game to go with it.

..except this:

I just picked up this PVC DK action figure to use as a topper for my Donkey Kong. I got it at Newbury Comics for $40.

The pen is there to show scale. It’s pretty big, and should look good on top of the cabinet after I build it. I have a Popeye in the garage waiting to be converted to a DK, hopefully this summer.