Defender: black versus silver coin box?

Did they all originally come with the silver coin box, or were some of them black?
The early production run Defenders had silver doors while the later had black. The silver door version is much more uncommon than the black (and have lower serial numbers).
 
The early production run Defenders had silver doors while the later had black. The silver door version is much more uncommon than the black (and have lower serial numbers).

Ah, OK. The Defender that I play on has a black door, and I have a really bombed out, converted, gutted one in the garage that has a silver one. I may have to put the silver one in the good machine! It's really the only part of that poor machine that isn't completely destroyed.
 
Ah, OK. The Defender that I play on has a black door, and I have a really bombed out, converted, gutted one in the garage that has a silver one. I may have to put the silver one in the good machine! It's really the only part of that poor machine that isn't completely destroyed.

The silver door is smaller than the black door so you will have to fill in some of the opening.
 
You will need to cut the coin door hole larger, IIRC. The silvers are slightly larger. I have a silver coin door that I am holding onto while waiting a really good Defender with a black door and I remember measuring it once and it is slightly larger than the black Coin Controls doors.

Any resemblance of the silver coin doors to pinball coin doors is purely due to the fact that they were stolen off the pinball production line before the video game production manager started ordering his own coin doors.

ken

Crap. It looks like I may have the sizes backwards. Damn! Now I'll have to measure them again.....
 
I picked up a Silver Door Defender Cabinet for $25 a couple of months ago that I was going to make a JROK multi-williams but now i may reconsider.

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Wick, I need to get my Defender back from you (you know, the one with the excellent cab and the silver door!!!!). ;)
 
You will need to cut the coin door hole larger, IIRC. The silvers are slightly larger. I have a silver coin door that I am holding onto while waiting a really good Defender with a black door and I remember measuring it once and it is slightly larger than the black Coin Controls doors.

Any resemblance of the silver coin doors to pinball coin doors is purely due to the fact that they were stolen off the pinball production line before the video game production manager started ordering his own coin doors.

ken

Crap. It looks like I may have the sizes backwards. Damn! Now I'll have to measure them again.....

Incorrect sir, I had a silver door cab and the dude kept the silver door so I put a black one in and had to only adjust the height. Had to cut out an inch or so from the top of the opening, side to side was the same size. So to sum it up you will have to add a piece of wood on the bottom or top of the opening being the black doors are larger.
 
Incorrect sir, I had a silver door cab and the dude kept the silver door so I put a black one in and had to only adjust the height. Had to cut out an inch or so from the top of the opening, side to side was the same size. So to sum it up you will have to add a piece of wood on the bottom or top of the opening being the black doors are larger.

Yup, I have tried to put a stainless door in place of a black door and can confirm that it will not work without significant modification.
 
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I think YellowDog is thinking about the Atari Owl Eye door vs the updated "standard" door. The Own Eye door is slightly larger than the standard door so adding one to a standard door model on Asteroids requires a slight cut.
 
I think YellowDog is thinking about the Atari Owl Eye door vs the updated "standard" door. The Own Eye door is slightly larger than the standard door so adding one to a standard door model on Asteroids requires a slight cut.

I have switched regular Asteroids coin doors, with owl eye coin doors with no modification. I know I saw a post here on that subject, and thought I was going to have to make the door hole larger. Nope It was a prefect fit. One cab had a serial around 4000 they other 22000. So one was early series cab the other a later series.
 
Keep the door original. They had to stop using the silver doors because the ran out due to the ridiculously high demand for the game. Every defender or almost every one I saw in the wild had the silver door so I do not consider them rarer than the black door ones. They made more than 80000 defenders and the average pin run would be from 4000 to 10000 so you can see why they had an issue keeping up on the doors.
 
I have switched regular Asteroids coin doors, with owl eye coin doors with no modification. I know I saw a post here on that subject, and thought I was going to have to make the door hole larger. Nope It was a prefect fit. One cab had a serial around 4000 they other 22000. So one was early series cab the other a later series.

Yeah that was me too..

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=116428

Ive had my fare share of issues with coin door retrofits. :) I had to slightly route the lip of my Asteroids' coin door opening to make the owl eye fit .. my S/N is 46728
 
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