Donkey Kong Jr Restoration

wxforecaster

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Well, it finally arrived! Picked up a Donkey Kong Jr. upright on CL yesterday, and I look forward to doing my first, and hopefully quick restore on it.

The Good: The price was right at $250, but it was listed as being in perfect working order. Halfway up to the gentleman's house, he calls me to tell me he went to double check everything and it won't power up. I decided to go there anyway to help him out (he was super nice on the phone and I know he wanted to make this happen). Turns out someone had yanked the cord out of the wall at some point and pulled the neutral wire off the plug. Easy fix (he was pretty happy). However, when we powered it up, the monitor (see below) has some serious issues that hopefully can be cleared up with a cap kit and adjustments. After some back and forth, we settled on $200 including him delivering it in his trailer to my garage.

The Bad: Not much! Will need to replace the two pronged cord (no ground) and repair the monitor, but the game is in really excellent shape. A few things (discussed below), but I'm really happy with this deal.

The Ugly: He had no keys, so we couldn't even look at the monitor. I was going to drill out the lock but another KLOVer is going to bail me out and send me keys so I can preserve the lock.

Summary of Plans to Repair/Restore...once I get a working rear entry key from KLOVer "Buffett"
1.) Apply cap kit and adjust monitor
2.) Acquire second coin door mechanism and wire.
3.) Add lock to coin door
4.) Replace t-molding
5.) Fix marquee light and/or starter
6.) Replace joystick
7.) Replace 2 of 3 buttons which have no spring left in them
8.) Replace severely faded instruction card, sticker and coin sticker
9.) Replace metal trim piece above marquee
10.) Replace side art
11.) Upgrade to Double Donkey Kong -- still not sold on this given the sound issue, especially the DK Mario walking sound which sounds like DK Jr climbing the vines.

I do have some questions embedded below -- please feel free to comment/answer

Evan

dkjr_serial.jpg

Game #11874


dkjr_key.jpg

Are you the keymaster? Lord of the (key) Ring is blocking my access to the monitor.


dkjr_powercord.jpg

Yikes, re-attached the neutral to test the game, but this definitely needs a proper 3-pronged plug.


dkjr_leftside.jpg

Left side has about 90% of the side art, but I can't leave it this way


dkjr_rightside.jpg

Right side has no side art, but looks really nice. Just a few deep gouges.
 
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dkjr_sidewear.jpg

A couple deep gouges on the right side. How do you repair these? Also, there's a lot of paint flaking around the t-molding. The orange paint looks really thick given the vertical gap between the bare wood and existing paint (certainly well more than one coat -- if that even is paint). How do you repair this stuff?


dkjr_monitor.jpg

Definitely not good. A cap kit for sure.


dkjr_control_panel.jpg

Control panel is overall in excellent shape. Two of the buttons have no spring left in them and will need to be replaced. Stickers need to be replaced.


dkjr_joystick.jpg

Ummm, yeh I don't recall seeing that before on a Nintendo. Definitely a nice joystick worth saving for another project, but was to order the original black ball top.


dkjr_instruction_card.jpg

I didn't realize how faded this was until I saw the reproduction on Mikes Arcade. Wow.
 
dkjr_speaker_coinsticker.jpg

Front panel looks good (a couple knicks), but definitely needs a new sticker. I see that MikesArcade has scans for these. I have a nice Canon Pixma printer, but does anyone know what to print this (and the instruction card) on?


dkjr_coin.jpg

Coin door missing a lock, but also the left mechanism is incorrect and not wired.


dkjr_inside_coin.jpg

At 25 cents a pop, someone got very rich off this game :) Notice non-wired, incorrect left coin mech on the right side. Also needs to be rewired.


dkjr_guts.jpg

Inside of the cabinet was really clean. Maybe a quick vacuum but really nothing needs to be done here
 
You might want to try to turn your brightness down on your flyback that could be causing the lines.
 
Nice looking cab at a great price....should be beautiful after restoration.
Congrats on the grab...can't wait to see your "after" pics :)
 
I prefer the clean-up and repair what's necessary restores rather than the top down new cab restore. Nice pick-up. I'll be watching to see how it turns out.
 
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Awesome man- it doesn't look too bad.

A few comments on your questions/pics:

- Deep gouges on Nintendos are a bit tricky to touch up since the finish is super smooth. I'd probably leave it unless you want to sand it down, bondo it and then re-paint the entire cab (or vinyl it).
- Coin sticker can be purchased from Rich at www.thisoldgame.com
- The top marquee holder can be refinished easy. A wire wheel on a drill and then a bit of spray paint. Or, there is someone on here doing powder coating if you want to go all out.

Good luck with it!
 
No, it really doesn't look too bad at all! And I bet the monitor adjustments may get her playable as well, but I'll probably go ahead and cap it anyways since my first attempt two weeks ago went flawlessly.

Figures that stuff is vinyl. Felt way too smooth and looked way too strange to be paint. In that case I'll leave it alone. It looks better than 99% of the Nintendo cabs I've ever seen.

I've got an order in through MikesArcade, but was hoping to save a few bucks on the stickers and print them myself. He's got the files up there, but was wondering if anyone had gone this route for any game and what type of stock to use from a local office box store (staples, office depot, max, etc..)

Thanks for the suggestion on the wire brush. No idea how that piece got so beat when the rest of the machine looks well taken care of. Would a similar approach work on the coin door mechs -- speaking of which is there somewhere I can pick up one to replace the wrong/broken one on the left side?
 
Figures that stuff is vinyl. Felt way too smooth and looked way too strange to be paint. In that case I'll leave it alone. It looks better than 99% of the Nintendo cabs I've ever seen.

This old games sells replacement vinyl.. Thats what I plan on using on
my DK which is up for restore next.

Thanks for the suggestion on the wire brush. No idea how that piece got so beat when the rest of the machine looks well taken care of. Would a similar approach work on the coin door mechs -- speaking of which is there somewhere I can pick up one to replace the wrong/broken one on the left side?

Nerdtendo who posted in this thread sells replacement mechs and refresh
kits for Nintendo coin mechs. Really nice stuff.
 
Figures that stuff is vinyl. Felt way too smooth and looked way too strange to be paint. In that case I'll leave it alone. It looks better than 99% of the Nintendo cabs I've ever seen.

I think the general consensus is that Nintendo used some sort of baked enamel finish. The best Nintendo restores (like Phetishboy's Ninty cabs) are vinyled to get as close as possible to the original. I don't think you need to go that far though.
 
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