I think I should be set for awhile now. I had a small bottle of #1 and #2, and no #3. I’ve been using it more lately and wanted to get some #3 to try to get some scratches out of my Mario Bros. bezel. This stuff isn’t cheap, but I got a good deal on eBay at $60 for all 3.

For those new to Novus, it is designed for cleaning and polishing acrylic. #1 is pretty much a cleaner. You should never use Windex or anything similar on plexiglass, it will damage it over time. I use #1 to clean bezels and marquees, buttons, joystick knobs, etc…

#2 has a tiny bit of grit. You can use it to remove very light scratches. #3 is heavier and will remove slightly deeper scratches. If you have to use #3, you should then follow it with #2 and then #1. If you use #2, you should follow it with #1. If you just use #1, you should follow it with a Sam Adams.

If you are starting a restoration, you should post it on CoinOpSpace.com and take a crack at it.

I’ve decided to enter, and will be restoring my Mappy. Part of the contest rules requires that the restoration information only be posted on CoinOpSpace.com, so I won’t be discussing the actual restoration here. If you are interested in reading along, here’s my entry.

It took a long time, but it was worth it. Here are a few more pics:

I guess I’m off to work on the next game now. I’ll have to decide between Mappy, Donkey Kong, or Pac-Man. I think I may go with Mappy but I’m not sure yet.

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 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:

I had gotten Behr Premium Plus for the yellow at Home Depot, and couldn’t get it to spray well no matter what I did. I thinned it as much as I thought was reasonable, and used some Floetrol. I wasn’t getting a good sized spray pattern at all, but figured I would give it a shot anyway. Here’s what happened:

The damn thing looked like a mutant zebra.

While painting, my 5 gallon pancake compressor kept running out of air. I didn’t have that problem when I did my Moon Patrol for some reason. I had to wait for it to catch up about 4 times before I finished each side. I figured maybe that waiting period caused those stripes, but I really wasn’t sure.

I couldn’t leave it like that, so I decided to get a new compressor. I got a DeWalt 15 gallon compressor. I would have gone bigger, but my garage is so incredibly small I couldn’t afford to lose much more space. This compressor stores air in the tank at 200 psi, which supposedly gives it an equivalent air capacity to a regular 26 gallon compressor. It works great, btw.

OK, with my new compressor ready I hit it with primer again to cover up the stripes. I went over it again with that same Behr paint and though my compressor didn’t quit on me it still came out looking like the pic above. I was pretty discouraged at that point but decided to push on.

I figured maybe it would help to see a bit better, as I didn’t have much light in my garage. I went and got 2 fluorescent fixtures which you can see in the next picture.

At this point, I was pretty low on the yellow paint and figured I would try a better brand to see if it would help. I ended up going to Sherwin Williams down the street and got their “Duration” brand paint, which is a latex enamel. I took the countless layers of paint off, and brought it right down to bare wood. With that paint in my gun, it sprayed about 5000 times better! I didn’t even have to thin it. With that Behr crap (does a Behr crap in the woods??), I’d guess it took me 20+ passes to get one side done. With this paint, it took me about 6 or 7. Oh, and the biggest plus is THE PAINT *ACTUALLY* CAME OUT OF THE GUN! Behold….a stripe-less cabinet:

I am SO glad I’m done painting. I will never buy Behr paint again. I’d rather cover the whole cabinet using Sharpies.

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 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 ordered one white set for my Popeye, and one yellow for my future Donkey Kong should I ever get one. Here are the coin mech stickers, complete with dirty coin door:

I haven’t stuck the larger sticker below the control panel yet, because I plan on restoring the cabinet someday.

If you have a Popeye or a Donkey Kong, you need to go buy these now!

These parts are an exact replica of NOS Defender joystick parts. Here is the old one before I took it apart:

If you look closely at the round hole between the 2 screws in the bottom of the picture, you’ll see the pin that sits in it. See how much room it has to move in there? That is all wear from years of people Defendering like there’s no tomorrow. That hole should be tight around that pin, so it has just enough room to move and no more. I changed these parts, and the joystick is like brand new!

I played a few rounds, and the game is awesome now that you can actually control the ship better. However….Defender totally kicks my ass! I never played it in the arcade, but I was pretty good at the Atari 2600 version. I am dying to get this in the game room now, but there isn’t room until we move everything around.

In 1981, when leg warmers were just starting to get popular, long before Richard Dean Anderson was running around shooting laser beams all over the place, Defender’s baby brother was born. Ladies and gentleman, children of all ages….I give you….

STARGATE

This game was released one year after Defender as its sequel. As if Defender wasn’t hard enough, they supposedly made this one even harder. Those dirty rat bastards.

I got this game from the same location I picked up the skill crane that started all this madness back in October of ‘06. The building was supposed to be demolished to make way for a hotel. I was driving by to get some starbucks, and noticed the building was still there with a “indoor flea market sign” up. I went in to see what was left, and spotted this way way in the back. I almost missed it. The back room was pitch black. I wasn’t going to go back there but I ended up just barely spotting the back of it. This was 2 days ago, and I had no cash. The nice guy that owns the building wanted $50 for it. The game wasn’t working, but $50 is a great deal. I just couldn’t swing it. I told him I would probably come back in a few days after I pay my bills and he said if it was still there I could get it for $35.

So…I swung by this morning after getting more caffeine and picked it up.

It took me forever to drill the lock out of the bottom coin door. I heard change rattling around in there! When I finally wrecked a few drill bits, this is what I found:

$1.50 and an old bottle of white out. Now, $1.50 might actually buy a coffee, as long as I don’t get it from starbucks.

I looked the boards over. No corrosion from the batteries. The original style AA battery holder is in place, with batteries and all, so I got lucky the boards weren’t ruined. I’ll swap them for a lithium battery per Bob Roberts article. I fired it up, and it’s making game sounds. I can’t coin it up, but I don’t know if its just sitting in setup mode or not. The monitor has high voltage, but the screen is all screwy. That’s were I left it. I’ll do a cap kit on it and see what happens.