Coin door restore

luke9511

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Hey all I'm planning on restoring the coin door on my converted pacman and was wondering if anyone could give me some tips on how to do it and what color to choose etc I know about the water and aluminum foil trick any tricks to make removing the old paint less painfull?
 
The quickest way is gonna be to sandblast it - but if you don't have access to a sandblaster, your next best bet is probably a combination of a wire wheel (on a drill) and a sander (orbital or belt, whatever).

If the door is free of dents, you can quickly mow through the larger areas with a sander, then use the wire wheel to get around bends, dents, etc. and any areas the sander can't get to. Then use some steel wool or sandpaper by hand to get to any areas the drill and sander can't reach.

If you can get it powdercoated cheaply, that's gonna be the most authentic. Otherwise, folks here tend to either use the hammered or textured rustoleum spraypaint (on top of a primer, of course).
 
The quickest way is gonna be to sandblast it - but if you don't have access to a sandblaster, your next best bet is probably a combination of a wire wheel (on a drill) and a sander (orbital or belt, whatever).

If the door is free of dents, you can quickly mow through the larger areas with a sander, then use the wire wheel to get around bends, dents, etc. and any areas the sander can't get to. Then use some steel wool or sandpaper by hand to get to any areas the drill and sander can't reach.

If you can get it powdercoated cheaply, that's gonna be the most authentic. Otherwise, folks here tend to either use the hammered or textured rustoleum spraypaint (on top of a primer, of course).

It has dents but I don't plan to fix them as to me it gives it character :)
 
It has dents but I don't plan to fix them as to me it gives it character :)

Well, I only mention the dents since if you are using a sander, it's obviously not gonna do well around the dented areas - so it may just be easier to do the whole thing with a wire wheel.

Another thing i'd mention is to check craigslist - you might be able to find someone who can sandblast it for you cheap. That's the route I took last time around, I had someone blast like 6 or 7 coin doors, a cp, and some other misc brackets...woulda been waaay too much time to do them myself.
 
I use a wire wheel on a drill and it works great. Just be sure to use eye protection and in a place you don't walk barefoot. The little fuckers can spray a stray wire or too from time to time and they hurt like hell if you lance your eye or step on one. hahaha

note, I have only stepped on them. I think its safe to assume that having one in your eye ball would suck. hah
 
Luke has a point to me, honestly. Someone had been trying to pry my Ms. Pac's door open in the past leaving a dent (no lockbar though, yay!!!), but I kind of like it so I repainted it that way. What I'm trying to do is make the spare garage "feel" like an 80's arcade in use that's trapped in time basically.
 
Mine were all in decent shape, so I just scuffed and painted them with rust paint. You can see the odd scratch or small dent through the paint, but I like it that way..kinda rough but new at the same time.
 
Hey all I'm planning on restoring the coin door on my converted pacman and was wondering if anyone could give me some tips on how to do it and what color to choose etc I know about the water and aluminum foil trick any tricks to make removing the old paint less painfull?

Water and foil trick? Never heard of this,what is it? I just spray mine down liberally with Citristrip,let it soak for an hour or two and depending on how bubbled up the paint is I pressure wash the paint right off. It takes off every visible speck of paint leaving bare metal. After that I sand all of the imperfections out of the metal,this leaves lots of fine scratches that act as my primer leaving no reason to spray a primer down before paint. Finally for paint I used Rustoleum textured black. It can easily pass for a powdercoated surface if no one knew it was painted.
 
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