Crystal Castles Restore

Area69

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I've started what I thought would be a simple restore on a Crystal Castles. I picked this up two weeks ago from a local collector and just wanted to show it a little love.

My plan of attack (since this is a working game) was to give the cabinet a good clean up, replace the CPO, and marquee artwork, and overhaul the trackball. At this time, I don't have plans to replace the cabinet artwork, although sometime in the future this could be a priority.

Here are a few before pics.

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If you are looking close, you'll see that all four bottom corners are mashed up and cruddy. I need to replace the back door and upper and lower panels, and repair a split in the front upper section above the coin door. Also the center glass piece for the large Atari logo is missing, so I'll need to source a new speaker overlay.

I started by replacing wood in three of the corners and filling in the gaps with bondo. I had to guess at the exact shape of the back corners due to the total lack of remaining wood.

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I removed the steel front corner protectors, and was actually able to save one of the original front bottom corners. It sucks to have the artwork damaged, but at least the cabinet isn't leaving flaky bits all around.
 
The slats on the back door were really bugging me. I didn't like the condition of the wood on the back of the cabinet. It was very soft and needed some attention. In the end I decided to just use the pieces to make new copies out of plywood. I made these with the help of a router and a tracing bit.

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I made a new back door, and finally stopped being cheap and purchased a new routing bit to "notch" the top and bottom like the original.
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It's really frustrating to me all the little things operators seemed to do with cabinet doors. It seems they either throw them away or add some huge piece of lock or bracket. I like to get the doors looking, at least close to original in shape, and add a simple cam lock.

Anyway, I had the split in the front of the cabinet, just below the control panel, to deal with. This looked to me to be a weak stress point, and I couldn't see just putting Bondo on it and leaving it to crack again. I decided to brace it with a section of steel. Lowe's carries short pieces of steel. I made this piece to fit and pre-drilled the holes.

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It worked very nicely, the cabinet is now solid, and even more grossly overweight than imaginable.
 
I know most of you have done this little task, but I wanted to add it for posterity.

The trackball was total crap. When I took it apart, there was an incredible amount of crud in there. I soaked it for an hour in Pinesol and scrubbed it clean. The bearings and rollers were completely toast, so I tossed those and added a new set that I had ordered from Bob Roberts.

The original red and lighted trackball on this cabinet was replaced with a dull black ball. I ordered a new red ball in the hopes of restoring this lovely bit of bling. However the ball I received was more orange than red. I'm thinking maybe a bright red LED will help with the color.

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From some of the earlier post on this subject, I knew the marquee and cpo were going to be a real PITA. After pealing away the CPO, I was left with a very thick and impossible layer of smelly adhesive. After trying in vain to remove it with different solvents and a wire brush I resorted to buying an angle grinder and a wire cup. I'm totally glad I went this route. The grinder is relatively cheap for the amount of work it saves, and I'll be using it on many, many future projects.

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I managed to prime and paint the control panel, I like to let the paint cure for as long as possible before applying the CPO.

The marquee was a nasty piece of work too, but the artwork came off much easier. The wood was a little sticky and crumbly, so I sanded it down and gave it a good coat of Kilz sanding sealer. I scrubbed the glass piece clean and glued it back in the frame using silicone adhesive.

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That's it for now, a lot of sweat and frustration condensed down to a few minutes of reading.
 
At this point in time, I'm at a total loss over what to do about the missing speaker overlay. I can have a new piece of glass cut to fit the square behind the missing Atari logo, but as far as I know, nobody sells the overlay.
 
That's looking great! After all of that, new side art will be a piece of cake. I'm sure you'll find a speaker overlay around here somewhere.
 
Very nice work so far!

The "red" trackball in my CC is the same color as yours. It looks fine lighted up, but the red LED is a neat idea. :cool:
 
I applied the artwork for the marquee and control panel this weekend. The control panel was a breeze, the marquee, not so much. Anyway here are a few pics of the new improved stuff. The bulb for the trackball got replaced with a bright red LED from radio shack. I cleaned up the harness for the control panel, many of the connectors had been hacked, so they are now all soldered and clean. The buttons are original and got a good novus cleaning and new springs.

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Please help me to find a speaker panel overlay for this project. I don't mind if its inkjet or whatever. I just need someone willing or able to print this out.
 
Ive started working on these and hope to have them finsihed real soon.

in the meantime go for broke and tap into the track ball and install some trans red buttons for even more red glowing goodness :D

 
Ive started working on these and hope to have them finsihed real soon.

in the meantime go for broke and tap into the track ball and install some trans red buttons for even more red glowing goodness :D


Looking good. For what it's worth I'm in for a speaker overlay once you have them finished and available for purchase. :)
 
I was looking for a replacement speaker overlay forever and found this guy:

artworkdoctor.com He had a speaker overlay and shipped it for $40. It's not perfect (check out the black around the Atari logo) and it looks like I'll have to cut out the speaker holes, but it's much better than my current sticker. Don't know if that helps or not. Here's a pic.
 

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