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Backstory

I've been after a Defender cab for a long time. I'm not paying stupid money for a half arsed classic cab fitted with an LED monitor, even if it's 4:3 aspect ratio and an Elf multi game in it, all going for a modest £4,500 ono. I'd prefer to get a project cab for as little money as possible and see where we go from there.

After looking for a number of years, like busses, 3 come along at once, and rather than have to pick and choose which to get, I went and bought all 3.

One is just a shell, that was advertised on here recently, another is currently sitting in the States awaiting shipping, and the third was basically a load of bits, minus an actual cab.

So if you're reading this you can see that possibly the first and last might just go together and create a single working cab, but . . .

When I seen the cab for sale on here I sort of knew the state it may be in. If it's really bad, I could use the originals as templates and build out a new one from scratch. It did come with a CRT, and coin door and a control panel from another cab, apparently.

The cab from England was delivered this past week, and just as I thought, it was a mess, but I had already thought it might, so no real surprise. What shocked me the most though was how light the wooden panels were. I know when shifting these things they weigh a ton, and seem to get heavier every year as I get older, lol. Everything was broken down into its separate panels, but I was able to lift the 2 side panels with one hand, and a box of the other panels, easily lifted as well.

Pulling one of the panels out revealed why. There was more holes in this thing than Swiss cheese. Unknown if this had previously been treated or not, everything was double bagged and tapped up, just to be sure.

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I did want to get started on this thing, but where to begin.


The control panel

Pulled the control panel out of it's bag and brought outside in the sun. Yup we had sun. Northern Irish sunshine. Big bright ball of flame in the sky along with a freezing northernly wind, just to take the edge off.

This too was covered in not so tiny holes, but, first up was to take a number of photos of the board and connection wires, then go to stripping it down, labelling the cables with what buttons and joystick operations they went to.

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Once removed the control panel overlay was peeled off, revealing the 4 tee nuts and an entire network of undergound railway tunnels, amazing. There didn't seem to be anything wriggling around in there, thankfully, so hopefully they have vacated the space long before. I took a bunch of measurements on both sides of the board as I'm looking to remake the control panel. Interestingly the control panel was bowed, a lot.


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So to the thoughts and questions
  • First up, does it matter if the original is 3/4" or roughly 19mm as apposed to the 18mm you usually get over here in the U.K. or everywhere bar the U.S. I know we are taking just over 1mm of a difference, but does that really matter.
  • Next up is the overlay. As you can see in the image above, the original has a number of button placements out of alignment to the overlay. The OCD side of me wants to fix this, and get everything aligned properly, but the purist in me wants to keep that error. I've looked at a couple of cabs, and another panel I have here, and they are all the same, slightly out of alignment. How do your original control panels line up? Do you care?
  • And lastly, is there anyone who would be interested in a new Defender control panel, and possibly a new overlay in thick shinny plastic like the original to go with it? These would be out of either 18 or 19mm birch ply, depending on feedback from the first question above. No idea of price yet, though seen just the CP go for $125.
I want to be able to offer this as a service so I'll be making a number of jigs and templates as I go along. Don't have a fancy CNC machine, YET, so everything will be hand made.

I'm also looking at making repo buttons and switches as well as the joystick. The switches I'm looking at the possibility of offering 3 types of compression force. light, medium, and heavy. Talking to people in the past, many think the buttons are way too light, or the springs have lost their boing over time. Others like the idea of having the fire and reverse buttons be light, but the hyperspace and smart bomb be heavier so you have to make that decision, and not just tap by accident.

What do you think. If you're interested in the control panel and/or cover let me know and I'll get a list together. I am U.K. based, just just keep that in mind as postage can add up.
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