Asteroids Deluxe Restoration

whitefox

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Donor 5 years: 2016-2019, 2024
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Going to log my first restoration project on my Asteroids Deluxe.

First, some history, because this isn't something I just picked up. I originally bought this game back in the late 80's before I was old enough to drive. Since I'm 42, that was eons ago! It was being sold at a moving sale in a nearby neighborhood for $85. It remained at my parents after I moved out until they sold the house sometime 2005 or so (I don't remember times very well). It was given to a good friend of mine who collected a few arcades at his first residence, and it moved with him to his second home.

Early this year he contacted me asking if I wanted it back, he needed room for a virtual pinball project to sit along side his MAME cabinet. Of course I wanted it back! So in 2015, Asteroids Deluxe came back.

The monitor board had a problem that plagued the game, so instead of just fixing it, I trolled around the forums here and internet and learned a lot about refurbishing it, and here we go.

A few things I'm having done by the Pro's. Mr. Bill did the A/R board. I've sent the monitor chasis to Chad at Arcade Cup for a professional overhaul. I'll take care of the PCB and power and everything else. New power metal block was purchased from takeman, see below for link to his posting on them.

Progress list:
  • Learn how to use bbcode list correctly
  • Removed everything from inside the cabinet
  • Removed old vinyl, sideart
  • Fix exterior wood issues, painted middle cabinet black primer
  • Placed black vinyl and side art vinyl, t-molding
  • Cleaned interior
  • Rebuild & move AC power to new power block

Resources:

Supplies
 

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First Progress Pics

I'm catching up on the progress, I started a couple weeks ago. Overall the cabinet is not in bad shape by any means. Some minor patching needs to be done to the wood. Inside was mostly caked in dust, no critical looking cap's but they're all getting replaced anyway. Big Blue didn't look too shabby!

The cardboard backing is overall decent, it could use some touch-ups though. I am going to look into seeing if a computerized color-matching service can come close to the black paint on it for touchups. This will be a cautious process but curious to see if it will help some of the scrapes and staple holes.

Everything is out of the cabinet and it's now stripped down. Acetoning it tonight. Ordered a new control panel since mine always had a dent in the middle, most likely from someone raging on it. Found one on ebay for $50, well worth it. New buttons from GGG have been ordered, the white haze ones with leaf springs. I intend to put blue lights in them.

New blackight was purchased
New speaker was purchased
Power block rebuild kit purchased from Bob

Using a heat gun to remove the vinyl backing helped a lot. The side art came off easily on the one side, needed it on the other side in some spots. Overall not difficult, thankfully.
 

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Noob discharges a toob

And for fun and some laughs the pro's will probably get from this, here's me being overly cautious doing my first monitor discharge. Had a bit of a time finding a solid spot for the alligator clip. Since the game hadn't been powered for months, it was probably already discharged, but I wasn't taking any chances, so I bought a HV Metered probe and did the duty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs2xuG6DLbM
 
Cool. I bought an AD about a month ago I need to do a small restore on. This is perfect timing! I'll be watching yours.

I'm especially anxious to see your button light mod. I was thinking of doing the same thing after seeing the Space-duel light mods that a couple guys have done here.
 
Cool. I bought an AD about a month ago I need to do a small restore on. This is perfect timing! I'll be watching yours.

I'm especially anxious to see your button light mod. I was thinking of doing the same thing after seeing the Space-duel light mods that a couple guys have done here.

That's what got me interested in doing it, the clear buttons he used really works great with the full color CP that Space Duel has.

I went with these buttons: http://groovygamegear.com/webstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=73&products_id=238

I got them with the True Leaf Pro option and in comparison to the original buttons on Asteroids Deluxe, these Ice 2's are lighter to the touch to push. Which I'm fine with.

Still looking into a nice bright blue LED to put under 'em, but not concerned with that right now, got a lot of work in the meantime. :)
 
You and I are on the exact same page. I was looking at those exact buttons as well.

And if you ask me, the stock buttons are too stiff anyway. So the lighter/softer feel of the GGG buttons are welcomed.

Keep us posted!
 
Plastic Wood Update

So with over a week gone by, here's an update on the wood repair effort. This is my first time repairing a chunk of wood with stuff like this, and it came out just fine!

With some googling on what to use to repair arcade material on an AD cabinet, I found an Amazon review of DAP Plastic Wood with another guy using it to repair his Asteroids Deluxe! How... random is that! Hah. So I bought two.

The photos I attach show the two most heavily damaged areas, not including the big block 'o wood for a door on the back. I had some other minor, smaller areas that were very easily treatable with this plastic wood. Rebuilding the lower corner section with this stuff was the big challenge.

On the can, DAP Plastic Wood says it dries in 15 minutes. Fuck you. Hour and a half even for the smaller applications. I found after some googling that applying it with your fingers is the best way to mold, shape and apply this stuff. Just be sure you have some Acetone on hand to clean your hands afterward, and take off that wedding ring. You can pack it down and layer it pretty easily. I tried using rubber gloves at first but they just got in the way of handling this stuff.

The top cutaway for the rear door wasn't too bad to do. The real challenge was the bottom corner piece that had a big chunk broken off. I initially took some cardboard and bend it to form a mould for the bottom part. Then, I took a huge blob of the plastic wood and just stuffed it in the corner, filling it up and packing it down nicely. Things looked good, so I let it dry.

I let that chunky blob dry for 4 fucking days. Yes, it took that long for that much of this plastic wood to completely dry in my garage. Now, about that cardboard mould. After letting this sit for 2 hours, I decided to remove the mold, thinking it would just peel off of the plastic wood. Nope.. It took a good chunk of the plastic wood blob with it. Crap.

So after the 4 days of drying, I applied a second layer of plastic wood. I let that sit for probably 3 days, mostly due to me getting sick and other things preventing me from acting on it. I think it tried within 2 days with the nice warm east-coast weather we finally have. Now it was time to sand it down.

Harbor freight provided a hand rubber sanding thing and the sandpaper. Since I layered a good amount of plastic wood well above the wood on the cabinet, I started with the coarse paper and a half-hour later got it down enough to switch to the finer paper. Everything came out nice! I would have to make a second pass with plastic wood since some cracks showed up and I apparently put too much pressure on the very corner and wore that down too low. No problem; a day later and that minor patch job dried right up and more sanding with a pass of coarse paper and then fine. Despite how it looks in the photos, the plastic wood is very even and smooth with the original wood.

To cut the groove for the T-Molding, I simply used a traditional wood saw as the blade was pretty close to the thickness. I simply started off slowly moving in one direction to get a nice groove started, and just sawed very slowly and controlled to dig into the plastic wood. I did a test fit with the old T-Molding and damn, it fits perfectly and straight!

Alright, next up it paint stripper for the remaining sections that have paint. I plan to use black vinyl for the front panel with the change door instead of paint. And I need to find new feet for this thing, the metal pigfuckers on the bottom of this guy destroy floors and they need to go.
 

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The binder in the Plastic Wood contains VOCs (volitile organic carbons), and it takes time for them to bleed out and for it to get hard.

You can accelerate the cure time by adding constant heat to the entire area, either radiant or from a fan unit. That causes the VOCs to liberate faster. No open flames, or POOF. Fire!
 
The binder in the Plastic Wood contains VOCs (volitile organic carbons), and it takes time for them to bleed out and for it to get hard.

You can accelerate the cure time by adding constant heat to the entire area, either radiant or from a fan unit. That causes the VOCs to liberate faster. No open flames, or POOF. Fire!

Thanks to your advice, I tried this with a couple quick-fix corners using an electronic heater in front of each corner. I didn't have to use a lot of the plastic wood, so there's that, but having the heater there definitely helped, so thanks for that!
 
Applying the Side Art

I purchased the side art from Phoenix Arcade. After a lot of fucking searching, googling and so on, I found This Old Game's video on applying side art to be immensely helpful. Thank you for that! Overall I placed the graphic on dry and had no bubbling issues what so ever.

I'm still a noob at wood work. And there's a lot of different and conflicting information on this forum alone on what to do. Yes, I got the original vinyl off the cabinet easily with a heat gun. I used the DAP Plastic Wood based on google searches. Sanding down the sides? I did that. Had to do this after the patch work. Should I have sanded the entire thing? No. It was fine. I think I made it worse. After painting the back side of the cabinet before laying down the black vinyl, I decided against painting the sides for the artwork. Maybe it's because of my lack of skills, but I saw the primer, even with sanding, producing a lot of texture through the vinyl.

I used Acetone, then Rapidtac cleaner on the surface to remove any residual sticky shit. Wiped with a rag, cleaned with a wet rag, then vacuumed.

TOG's video on applying the side art was immensely helpful! I even did the heat-gun side stuff to go under the T-Molding. Overall, the artwork vinyl went on great. My surface could have been improved in a few areas. For the one side, I apparently had some rough edges that I didn't notice. I could have fixed this easily by sanding, but it wasn't apparent beforehand. Also, the one side has some major gouging that I knew was there, but a lot more became obvious through the vinyl once it was placed. It's on the bottom, so I'm not worried, but still.

Getting the vinyl to be perfect over the edge was interestingly difficult. My first attempt on the first side isn't impressive. On the second side, it was much better; I pulled down harder on the vinyl when it was heated and kept re-heating it and going over it a few more times to prevent and remove bubbling and cramping of excess vinyl.

Corners and curves are a pain in the butt. I had to remove a lot more vinyl than I thought to get it smooth and not bunch up in these areas. Two corners on the first side aren't super clean, but on the second side I cut a lot more off in angles to prevent bunching.
 

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Finding the right type of black vinyl for this cabinet was a serious case of mis-information and still is, IMO. The stuff I took off was very thin and well adhered to the cabinet. A lot of the vinyl I was looking at on various arcade sites and links from the forum here was wildly variant in texture and thickness. I really had too many opinions and recommendations and none of them seemed correct.

I decided to follow through on the thickness aspect considering the stuff I took off was incredibly thin. I found this vinyl on amazon that was affordable, in good length, and affordable.

And I'm glad I got a good amount of it because it's easy to create a crease while unraveling or placing this crap, which of course ruins the whole thing. And it's stupid mistakes or bad luck that causes it. In any case, I had a lot of extra material to eat through to re-do my failure.

In preparing placement of this black vinyl, I followed a few suggestions that say to sand, prime, sand, prime, spray adhesive and apply. On my cabinet, I should have avoided this procedure.

I didn't have a lot of roughness on this cabinet, it was pretty smooth. Painting and sanding only added a lot more texture to the wood. While I don't claim to be a wood working expert by any means, I have done enough to know how to yield a smooth surface. But it sure didn't get there on this attempt. A lot of the black vinyl bring up shit that shouldn't be there. Now, the bottom part of the cabinet was in pretty bad shape, even after plastic wood & wood glue resurfacing (which covered up smoothly with the vinyl), there were just a lot of natural pitting that exists.

And getting 24" wide vinyl to lay in right on something that's just shy of 24", well that was fun. I ended up just leaving the excess vinyl on and using the squeegee to run it over the edge for the T-Molding to cover up.

In the end, I should have gone with a little thicker vinyl that would hopefully have smoothed over the imperfections in the wood.

Applying the T-Molding, which I purchased from Quartercade, went mostly easy. The first issue was my fault using a rubber mallet that was beat to shit as I used it to threaten my Fiero into running. I taped a towel around it to prevent it from putting marks (scuff marks, not divets) into the molding. Things went well until the second side, I had a weird issue at one point where the molding started to angle off and raise above the edge of the cabinet. Come on, what the hell! So I backed it off and forced it in straight by hand before hammering it in. Took a few tries but I got it right, then things went easily on its way. Always has to be something.

FWIW, I used straight-razer blades as I use them to shave to trim all the vinyl. They're superior in sharpness to an exacto blade and very bendable as well! Check out featherlights, it's pretty hard to beat the sharpness of those without going to a straight razer, but of course that would be idiotic to use on situations other than your face :D
 

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The important stuff

Some of the critical components have finished arriving, the most recent is the display chasis that I had sent to Chad at Arcade Cup and the board looks wonderful!

mrbill08 recapped the A/R board and just as impressive the board looks fantastic!

Today I swapped over the AC power components to the new block I purchased from Takeman using a new Big Blue from The Real Bob Roberts. I bought his refurbish kit which included new clips and a fuse holder, however I decided to just clean up my existing fuse bay because the clips on the new one were smaller and didn't hold the originals in as well. I saw no reason to replace the clips on the cables themselves. Thankfully it had no corrosion.

Any O-Ring terminal and other exposed terminals got cleaned in a simple deoxidization solution consisting of white vinegar and salt, brushed, then dipped in a water and backing power solution. This works incredibly well, I discovered this trick on this youtube video.

Unfortunately I broke a tab off of the mounted fuse casing, it looks like Bob has one of these so off to order a new one. You have to bend out the two tabs to slide it through the hole. I didn't think that only the nearer-tab had to be bent, the one at the bottom shouldn't have been as it could have probably been angled out. I felt it weakened once I bent it, and even more so when bending back into place. Oh well.

Lots of photos were taken to prevent fucking up reassembly. I bought a big bag of mixed colored twist-ties that helped in keeping track of things.

My old power-block is available if anyone desires it, you pay shipping.
 

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Cleaned!

On Sunday I did the duty of finally cleaning out the cabinet's interior. Started off vacuuming, then with a damp cloth and lots of water & some soap, scrubbed the heck out of the interior. It really wasn't that bad, but as the cabinet is considerably old, the little bit of dust was really caked in this. Cleaned up pretty nicely.

Since the kick panel is black formica (something I will have to repair the bottom of once I learn how to do this), I used Barkeeper's Friend powder to give it a good cleaning. This stuff works wonders on our shitty formica in the kitchen (another project I'll be starting later this year). Did a great job here as well.

Got the cable harness all squakye clean too. Attached photo shows the left side cleaned and the right side dirty.

Then my wife and I moved it out of the garage and back upstairs. That was a pain in the ass but hey we got it up there.

To clean the tube I just protected the bulb end and sprayed on Invisible Glass. The tube wasn't very dirty thankfully, and it cleaned right up with the use of Progo microfiber cloths.
 

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Not to venture far off-topic, but is that a Fiero I see in the corner?

Yep, '86 2m4 SE, another project of mine. Waiting for a new starter motor from rock auto, just bled the brakes and well, it's a fiero so always something. :)
 
Nice work so far, and a great story. I'm sure you won't be disappointed with the end results, it's a great game to have around.

I restored one of these years ago and it was a total piece of crap when I started, it had both water and termite damage. On the plus side, I think I gave $75 for it.

SVoqLZegnehDTvEp6
 
Sounds & Lights

This weekend involved cleaning up the sound & light board, and getting everything into the cabinet to start testing it's working condition.

This post is just to showcase the before and after of the speaker & light board that sits atop the cabinet. It was simply filthy with caked-on dust. I replaced the speaker with something modern for a little more oomf. All connectors were deoxidized and cleaned as well. Used the spray-on glass cleaner on the bulbs.
 

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