Atari's Monte Carlo Restoration

Foot Pedal

A lot has been going on, trying out a different workflow to see if I can speed things along quicker. We'll see. All wires/cables have been bathed & cleaned with trueGreen, then in water with a tiny bit of bleach, then finally just water. Exposed electrical connectors, screws, bolts, etc. have all been cleaned up using this method and maybe some sanding where needed. A helluva lot of photos taken!

Assembling of things is now starting, and here's an easy one, the foot pedal. I was afraid to use naval jelly on the very rusty spring in that it might completely disintegrate. Probably not, but I sanded it up by hand anyway. Hit the top part of the pedal with a brush on a metal grinder. Decided not to paint over it. All the rust is gone so that's the important thing, I can live with the pock marks for now. Once things slow down with my games, I'm going to send stuff out to get chromed, and this pedal will be included. Bottom plate had some minor rust removed and a coat of paint on the bottom. Sanded the wood and applied a new coat of paint where necessary.

Now that I think of it, I'm wondering if I should put a coating of sealer on this to prevent it from getting scuffed up.
 

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Subscribed. The cab I got the parts from was from a bad basement and was literally out in the yard along with all the other shit from the house including the stratovox I restored. Main doors to house had shiny new padlocks and big florescent orange stickers. I bought both games from the sobbing lady who was digging through all the shit looking for photos and other family stuff. But the Monte Carlo cab was fucked over with mold and water damage, drove my truck down the hill and on the lawn (like she cared anyway [emoji14] ) and parted it on site and left it. I used the Monte Carlo board and AR in trade to get a working stratovox board set. This was August of 2014. So there's the history to add to the story.


good day.
 
By the power of grey skull...

This has been finished for a while, was hunting down a replacement fuse holder that matched the others. TheGleek found one in this thread I started. It has a much larger contact on the bottom than these shovel connectors want, but for now it will do, though the search continues.

After stripping it apart, I hit it with a rough sandpaper disc using the metal grinder on the top, then hit the rest of it using a 320 grit disc on an orbital sander, plus some sanding by hand in the nooks. Polished with brasso, all bolts and exposed connectors cleaned up, new big blue.

I hightlighted two areas underneath the block where the two set of wires are the same color. I marked a set with a black marker. On the bottom of big blue, I marked the pcb (only one mark is shown in the photo but I marked both sides in the end, and this marker cleans right off with acetone) as well as the wires coming off the transformer. Same with the second set of orange wires on the fuses. Don't let that mess you up!
 

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Let the beatings begin!

Finally putting the finishing touches on the cabinet. It now has a 90 degree angle on the front edges! Some black vinyl on the insides, a coat of white spray paint on the outside. Wood hardener on the bottom of the cabinet. All of this took several days, especially the layers of plastic wood to rebuild the corners.

Now to install the T-Molding. Let the beatings begin!

The big beater received an upgrade, it's now extra fluffy and soft. And may I introduce Mini-B, for those obnoxious tight corners...

Yeah the cabinet is rough around the edges overall but that's how it will be until someone comes up with reproduced side art. Overall it's not bad by any means.
 

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Sos!

Amazing what an SOS pad does to chrome like this.
 

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I don't know what this piece is called, but a couple of teeth broke off when I removed it. It's pretty common in most of similar and older Atari & Kee game driving games from what I am seeing in manuals, but it's not used in Pole Position.

If anyone knows where I can get another please let me know!
 

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You might try rebuilding the missing prongs with J&B Weld and/or Bondic, it doesn't need to be super strong since it doesn't actually touch anything once it's in place, you could also use either to fill in all the cracks to help re-enforce it. You also might be able to snip appropriately sized replacement pieces from something else and glue them in place too.
 
I don't know what this piece is called, but a couple of teeth broke off when I removed it. It's pretty common in most of similar and older Atari & Kee game driving games from what I am seeing in manuals, but it's not used in Pole Position.

If anyone knows where I can get another please let me know!
That's a light hub. I have one in great shape if you still need a replacement.

Brian
 
Yeah, I figured. Just thought I'd link it to this thread anyway, for anyone else down the road, as it gives context for the part, at least. (I'd never seen one before, as it's definitely different than Pole Position.)
 
I don't know what this piece is called, but a couple of teeth broke off when I removed it. It's pretty common in most of similar and older Atari & Kee game driving games from what I am seeing in manuals, but it's not used in Pole Position.

If anyone knows where I can get another please let me know!

**edit - disregard.. I just read the post where you found one.
I have one that you can have for the cost of shipping / packaging. Shoot me a PM if you're interested.

Justin
 
Board mounts mounted

So I ended up using the set of wooden Pole Position board rails I bought from Arcade Boneyard. I still have no idea if this game used plastic or wooden mounts, but what I can tell from the wooden blocks where the upper corner of the boards screw into is that it uses a double-sided rail in the middle between the main PCB & the A/R II board. Pole Position I guess does not since I got two sets of rails.

I suppose since Monte Carlo is between the older Kee games' Sprint machines and Pole Position I could get away with either plastic or wood mounts. My Asteroids has wooden rails, and Asteroids Deluxe has plastic. That's my effort for a timeline reference.

Sent one of the larger ones off to my friend with a router who cut a groove on the opposite side. Perfect job! Now the hard part, installing them without making anything crooked.

I placed the boards in position and screwed them into their existing corner hole for alignment. Had to move the main board's upper rail upward a tad to adjust for the groove depths holding the bottom part of the A/R board. Drilled new hole in mounting block for the board. Screwed that back in, and aligned everything several times, checking and quadruple checking. :) Finally drew lines under the rails to mark position and depth using a skinny sharpie.

It was a nice hot 86 degree day, the DAP Contact Cement sprayed on the wooden rails and started drying nice and quickly. 10 minutes later it was time to start placing them in the cabinet, and this went smooth. Started with the bottom rail, pressed down firm. Put the upper middle rail in, pressed down firm, then slid the main board into place. No mistakes! It's perfect. Placed the final top rail for the A/R II board, slid that in place and thank god everything's straight! Just the hint of upper gap on both boards.

Pulled the boards out and found some heavy stuff to stack on the wooden rails and let it sit like that for a few hours while I cleaned and organized the garage.

Picked the game back up and retested the board fitment and it's still good. These rails feel nice and solid on the wall, they thankfully shouldn't be going anywhere.

We're close to moving the game upstairs for final assembly. Found one more hole inside the cabinet that I want to deal with first.
 

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Looking good! You are correct, Monte's used wooden rails with the ARII mounted above.

Brian
 
Oh yes, it lives! This is awesome!

And things have been happening, slowly and cautiously and here's the proof. May I present the first power-up of my Monte Carlo restore and hot damn it's a success!

Everything is placed loosely in the cabinet, only a couple screws to hold down the power supply, screwed in the two interlocks and volume control. Everything else is hanging just for the test. First connected up the power block and checked voltages. Then connected up the pcboard & A/R board, as Andrewb mentioned that it needs to be with the game board for a proper load. Next up, connect the isolation transformer and Electrohome G0719.

Nothing Exploded!

I got video! A scrolling video, but wow, success!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOOPakX_0P8

Alright, had to stop the video (I was live-streaming this on facebook) and re-download the manual for the display to know what to adjust. With that fixed, it's time to play a few rounds!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13MMtsoqRL4

Man this is a really fun game. Man this is a really hard game! I love that explosion sound too. Much better than diddling around with it in MAME. I can see why a lot of games dropped the multi-gear shifting thing to only two instead of four, it's a lot of work!

One issue I found out right away was the pedal was acting like a brake. Step on it and you stop, let up on it and you move. I had plugged a shovel connector into the wrong leg on the switch. Oops.

Very excited that this is coming along so well. Still more work to do on repainting metal stuff, touching up the Go Go Go marquee, and tidy up the inside of the cabinet, a bunch of work on the controls, etc. But in the meantime I can enjoy this awesome game. Very happy I took the cabinet from coinopper!
 

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It's interesting to see the evolution of Atari's top-down racers, from Gran Trak on to games like Indy and Sprint with fixed screens to scrolling games like Super Bug and Monte Carlo. Mattel's Auto Racing for the Intellivision came out the same year and was very similar to Monte Carlo. It was a couple of years before I saw a similar game called Rally Speedway for the C-64 and Atari home computers.
 
It's interesting to see the evolution of Atari's top-down racers, from Gran Trak on to games like Indy and Sprint with fixed screens to scrolling games like Super Bug and Monte Carlo. Mattel's Auto Racing for the Intellivision came out the same year and was very similar to Monte Carlo. It was a couple of years before I saw a similar game called Rally Speedway for the C-64 and Atari home computers.

Interesting that you bring this up, I was wondering why this game and Super bug were not made for Atari's 800XL home computer. It certainly had the hardware scrolling capabilities to do it. Maybe using a digital joystick to control the game was problematic.

One thing I will say about the design of this cabinet is that it's ergonomically horrible for a 6'2" person. Steering controls are too low and the screen is at such an odd angle that I've already had neck cramps from playing it for a good while!
 
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