Cloak & Dagger Restoration

HeadHuntaz

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Growing up I fell in love with Cloak & Dagger because every time my mom went to Piggly Wiggly (it was a grocery store in Decatur, GA) they had it, and it was the only arcade machine they had...It was the Defender conversion. So I chose to rebuild the defender conversion instead of opting for the crystal castles cabinet version. With the help of my buddy Bob we set out to tackle this super long process but it is coming together nicely...So let's start with my parts list...

1. Cloak & Dagger PCB
2. Interconnect PCB
3. Jamma Harness and switching power supply
4. Art Kit from ThisOldGame! (CPO, Glass Marquee, Side Art, Kickplate)
5. Metal Control Panel (for a Defender-style cab--thanks AndrewB)
6. Mark Spaeth Cloak & Dagger to Jamma board (Thanks Dan!)
7. NOS 8-way Green Top Wico joysticks (Arcadefixit.com)
8. Cherry Light up Buttons and Atari medium cone (Arcadefixit.com)
9. Defender cabinet (w/ working monitor)
















And my best friend...
 
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So we first took the donor Defender that was originally a P.O.W. conversion and proceeded to sand the cabinet down and primer it. Cabinet was very solid but had a ton of bumps and bruises from the years of being moved around and stored...

My buddy Bob use to paint cars back in the day. So we used the hvlp gun and auto primer, the primer is 2K urethane primer by the way. He said it was needed it because of all the nicks and scratches that we fixed with the filler and to make sure the sides came out really straight and smooth before paint.

Original cab:


Took off lock bar, coin door and peeled off the painted over side art


Bondo and sanding (one of many runs of sanding)


Bondo on bottom of cab to make those edges nice and crisp



2K urethane primer -- after sanding




Ready for Paint finally....
 
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Next up was finding the most important parts...the pcb and making it work without the original Defender "guts"...Jay (JackFlack) walked me through what I needed and that I needed to find a jamma adapter and a interconnect pcb (he also informed me that a Pole Position interconnect pcb would work). So I looked through some old KLOV posts and a while back a guy posted an untested Cloak & Dagger pcb for $70, so I contacted him and he still had and mailed it right out. This is wear my buddy Dan comes in and saves the day...he hooked me up with a C&D jamma adapter that made this whole thing work. Hooked everything up to test the board andddddd it worked!!!!! (sort of!!) Sent the board off to E Mosh and he said it had a bad RAM. Now the PCB is working perfectly...

Initial PCB test
 
With the insides handled next up was the coin door. I used tin foil to remove the rust spots and then we used metal polish (Weenol) and buffing wheel on a drill. Finally used automotive wax to give it a layer of protection. The pain was getting in all the grooves with an old toothbrush!

Coin Door looked like hell


I used tin foil to remove the rust spots and then we used metal polish (Weenol) and buffing wheel on a drill. Finally used automotive wax to give it a layer of protection.


Took out the Quarter plastics and polished the parts there..


Here is what it looked like after everything..


BUT I really wasn't happy with the Quarter plastics so reached out to pinball resources and ordered 3 new ones..


Wrapped up by Polishing the side frame pieces and they came out nicely as well... (original condition on right....and finished one on Left)

 
Next up is the control panel that I purchased from AndrewB...first had to strip it and remove years of gunk and paint...Let me first say that Dan once again informed me that there was a special metal control panel that came with the conversion kits...my dumb ass was going to use the original wooden Defender panel...LOL


Here is what I was going to use...lol! Can you imagine the pain in the ass it would have been to fill and fix this CP? Thank god for KLOV members...


Original panel I purchased and looked nice except for all the cig burns


Got the old overlay off and used Citristrip to remove everything


Sanded the remaining crap off the panel to the bare metal...


Primer and Paint later it's ready for the new beautiful ThisOldGame CPO




And here is the fully populated panel (well almost...waiting for cherry buttons to arrive)
 
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Next we FINALLY painted the cabinet white and cut a new backdoor





And a new back door...


Cleaned out the bottom of the cabinet and cleaned power block...



Have to paint the Black parts of the cabinet and apply the art from Rich....


More to come...
 
Ok, here we go another weekend of Cloak & Dagger restore....

Black paint was sprayed on and it's time to put the side art and kickplate on...Rich has a great tutorial on Youtube of him applying art to a Food Fight....Made this process so much easier...

Cabinet before art applied...




Side art from ThisOldGame.com being applied...


Tucked art into T-molding groove...


Awwww beautiful!!!

 
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After the art needed to re-wire and tidy up the inside of the cabinet...

"Light up" cherry buttons arrived and were put onto control panel. Cannot wait to see these blinking...they cost a lil bit but you can get them at



Coin Door re-assembled and put onto cabinet


Monitor and Monitor shroud installed...


Switcher installed


It's coming together....
 
More tidy work...Had to create something to hold the pcb in place, and I think it turned out really nice...





Mounted to cabinet



Used these to organize the wire clutter and also used zip ties...
 
Looks amazing, great work! Planning to do a C&D restore myself one of these days
 
Well, first hiccup encountered....While trying to wire the board up, the Ignite button is causing the game to pause. Anyone familiar with this....






So sending PCB back to have looked at again....
 
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