A sneak peek at my next game restoration...

smalltownguy2

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MK II in the house. This one will get the full treatment.

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Gas can was considered briefly. In the end, preservation prevailed.
 
snarky comment #2 about how it's technically in the garage, not the house...

But genuine comment on Good luck with your restoration! :D
 
I remember my 3 MKII black cabs I had. The last one, I bought all the parts and then found out it was a Killer Instinct 2 cabinet.
 
I have a Galaxian with that same thick black paint on the side. ugh. I'm probably going to use klean strip or citri-strip to get it down to absolute bare wood.

What method are you using? Are you going to try and preserve the side art?
 
I have a Galaxian with that same thick black paint on the side. ugh. I'm probably going to use klean strip or citri-strip to get it down to absolute bare wood.

What method are you using? Are you going to try and preserve the side art?

If you're going to go straight to bare wood, try something more powerful.

Something like this:

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That stuff will make short work of any vinyl or paint on the wood in mere minutes. It's pretty strong stuff, so make sure you follow the directions on the can.

I'm using Citri-strip to remove the layers of paint. This cabinet has 2 layers, and I'm finding that it takes 1 light brush application to get each layer up. It's a delicate balancing act to wait just the right amount of time to let the Citri-strip lift the layer of paint, but not so long as to allow it to start to eat away at the vinyl artwork underneath. The white areas of the artwork are the most difficult to work with, as there is no ink to act as a "barrier" from the chemicals, so they tend to leech into the white areas pretty quickly. Scraping off the paint is fairly straight forward, but the white areas are more problematic. The easiest method I've found is to use the Citri-strip to get the paint off working around the white areas, then I let it dry for a day. Then I go at it again with a magic eraser and 91% isopropyl alcohol. That usually allows me to clean up the white areas. Work slowly and methodically, wiping up with paper towels as you go, and the white areas will clean up nicely.

Last night I spent some time on the hand, and you can see the results on the white lightning. It's a slow process, and requires patience. But I should be able to recover the artwork for the most part.

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Here's a current progress shot. The areas circled in yellow represent where the citri-strip got ahold of the white too much and I lost those areas when scraping. I'll have to go back and fill in those areas with some white model paint.

The area circled in red is where the previous owner worked on art removal on the palm of the hand and applied too much pressure with the magic eraser and alcohol, resulting in completely removing the halftones. I'll have to try my best to fill in those areas using a micro-tipped sharpie or perhaps some kind of screen. Not too big of a deal to fix.

This cabinet will not be a gorgeous restore. I don't intend it to be. I'd rather do my best to clean up what I have to work with and rescue a survivor. When I'm done it'll be a decent looking $1000 MKII instead of a pristine $2500 machine. I think the world needs more "good enough" restored cabinets, and less of the "it's better than factory fresh" cabs. There's a market for good, clean original cabs.
 

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Some more progress last night. My daughter helped me with scrubbing the white lightning areas. The 91% alcohol and magic eraser process does work really well.

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Nice work! I can tell this process is tedious and takes tremendous patience. I'm sure the "before" and "after" pictures will be drastic.

Thanks for taking the time to document your progress and thanks for the tip on StripFast. Appreciated!
 
This makes me happy since I have a minty MKII which has had zero restore work, but I'll likely never see any ROI on it since I never plan to sell. :D I can't wait to see the outcome of this MKII restore! Good luck!

[$2000] - That's pretty much the going rate for a mint restored MK II these days anyway..
 
Unfortunately, due to my current space restrictions, I've had to relegate 2 of my cabinets to a storage unit and I don't have any good pics at the moment, but here are a couple I happened to find on my phone from when I last moved them.

The photo showing one of the cabs in front of the other (minty one is in the back) was when I had a larger storage unit and the one showing them side by side (minty one on the right) is the smaller unit after I downsized a bunch of stuff. You can see even in these low quality pics the difference in the faded and not faded areas of the artwork between my first MK II and the minty one. In the side by side photo, you'll also notice the minty cab has an MK 4 control panel. This was done for my future plan of having all 5 MK boards in one cab and I was NOT about to drill a hole for the Run button into the original MK II control panel! I also felt since the artwork on the MK 4 control panel doesn't actually say MK 4 anywhere on it, it was "generic" enough to work on a multi MK cabinet while still retaining the MK feel...and the colors match fairly well too. I also like the wider spacing they put between the first and second player.

I took the two inside shots to show how clean the cab is on the inside. It's still has some dust and dirt, but nothing has been cleaned on this. I suppose this cab hasn't had "zero" work done to it because I did replace the t-molding and install a new power supply. The reason for replacing the t-molding was because originally, I thought that it was faded and worn out, but I later learned that the reason it's a different shade than the typical red t-molding you buy is because Mortal Kombat II originally came with "bright red" 3/4" t-molding (restore tip #1)and not just "red!" I regret having thrown away the original stuff. :( However, I did keep the original strip that runs horizontal along the control panel because it's a tad bit wider (7/8" I believe) (restore tip #2) than the rest of the cabinet because it has to cover the extra thickness from the protective Lexan.

Anyway, if I remember correctly, the monitor is a K7000 and as you can see, it has zero burn. As far as the cabinet goes, there is no graffiti, no fading of the artwork and only a handful of very small scratches (probably from me moving it around a few times). As the story goes, I bought this from a guy who was moving and did not want to sell it, but he told me that he got it from an elderly couple that had a small arcade somewhere in a rural area that didn't get much traction and this particular game wasn't played very much. He assumes the clientele in the area wasn't too fond of violent video games. As a result, I became the third owner of this beauty and it basically looks like it was a home used machine.

Let's see some pics!
 

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Both sides had stickers buried in the layers of paint (Tekken 3 or 4, I believe) that needed to be removed.

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Here's the second side, after the first pass of Citri-strip. Most of the paint that's left at this point is stuck to the white areas, and will need to be removed with 91% alcohol and magic erasers.

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A boring update today on this.

Work continues, I've purchased a marquee, CPO and control panel plexi from XL Arcades.

The metal control panel had 2 new holes drilled into it by the previous owner, so those needed to be repaired. I was able to get my local metal guy to weld in some blanks and restore the panel to mostly usable condition. There's some warping from the heat of welding, but I'm pretty sure the panel will straighten out when I bolt on the buttons and put the plexi down. Affixing the artwork will be tricky though.

The control panel had 6 holes that were filled in with bondo from the previous owner; those needed to be re-drilled back out again. Then two additional holes had to be filled with wood dowel blanks glued in and sanded flush.

Right now I'm working on the control panel box. The right side of the box was damaged at some point in the past and a (really shitty) particleboard replacement was fitted. I've since removed it, along with about 18 screws on both sides, and have started the woodworking necessary to replace both sides of the box. The front panel of the box was still in good shape (as well as the artwork on it), so I'm going to re-use it.

I'll get some pics tonight of my current status and update here.
 
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