Jedidentist’s Not-So-Speedy Turbo Restore

Jedidentist

Well-known member

Donor 3 years: 2011-2013
Joined
Nov 17, 2009
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Location
Sudbury, Massachusetts
Howdy folks!

Another lengthy, pic-intensive restoration project of Sega's Turbo. A lot of people think this is a terrible game, but I played it many times at my local ice cream parlor growing up…and can still smell the ice cream even playing it now! The tough part about this restoration was the fact that there aren't any repro parts out there. This might be old hat to most of you, but it was a new to me after restoring Tron, 720, Discs of Tron and Pac-Man. I started off with a decent non-working cab with the 16" monitor that was given to me for free from a local member! Well, I gave him $40 for his trouble and gas for delivering it to me. This is what I received:

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Not in terrible shape, but it was missing the gauges, shift knob, and lower coin door. The wheel was bent, had a melted control panel, non-working "marquee" light, plywood/artwork was peeling and had graffiti, and the inside was a total rust fest with few of the other little lights working. I had no clue if it even played blind because the subwoofer cone was torn and when I tested the power supply it was all sorts of whacked out. And since everything runs off this weird 100V stuff, it wasn't going to be an easy fix.
 
A few weeks later, I scored another Turbo with the 20" monitor off CL for $150. Fortunately, it worked, but just barely…but it also had the gauges and a shift knob! However, there was no sound, and the monitor was all wavy and dim…and that cab was in even worse shape cosmetically! So, I went to work stripping both of them and tried to cobble together a decent working cab. First the stripping:

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Bondoing. I had to try to save the artwork as best as I could because no repros!:

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I also removed the accelerator pedal of both machines and did my best with a wire brush on my drill and naval jelly to strip it all down:

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I completely mangled one of the pedals because they were both pretty rusty and all of the bolts were rusted. Sparks were a flyin' cutting those off!
 
My two control panels:

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I went with the non-bent, but highly rusty wheel:

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I cleaned up the backside with Naval Jelly and a wire wheel brush and the front side with Naval Jelly and a little steel wool. I repainted the gauges and replaced the lights. I managed to pick up a Start button and lower coin door from DP Louie. I stripped and repainted the two coin doors, along with all of the bolts, brackets, fan and accelerator pedal and also replaced the coin reject lights as well as all of them in the high score display.

I swapped the broken subwoofer with another I got from www.parts-express.com It was tough to find one with the correct wattage and resistance…crazy Japanese stuff!

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The "marquee" light was some weird concoction:
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I couldn't get bulbs that were the right size, or the right ballast, or starter, so I just junked it and put in a new one from Home Depot…the voltage that the machine put out was a little low, but still worked:

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So back to body work. I painted the front and all of the inside:

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I sanded down everything on the sides and primed them:

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I took pieces of the peeled off paint/plywood to Home Depot and got the faded white and blue color matched. I matched the other colors by hand, and hand painted those. Since I had to remove a large chunk of the bottom, I had to mask and repaint the entire black line on the bottom. After that, I clear coated it all with satin. The T-molding was good, so I just cleaned that and used some touch up black paint.
 
The last cosmetic thing to do was the marquee. It had some crazy gouges in it. Everyone swore by Novus, so I ordered some and went to work on it…definitely not good enough. So, I went was back and started working with 800 grit sandpaper:

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From there, I wet sanded with 1200, 2000, 2500, 3000, and then went with the Novus system. After doing all of this, I finally got a halfway decent result. It took probably an hour (off and on) to finally get it done.

The last cosmetic thing I had to do was replace the scratched up chrome Sega emblem in the center of the steering wheel. OzTron came to the rescue and whipped me up a repro for free! I printed up a clear label and used some chrome automotive tape (which is great to replace the reflector in the upper black light housing of Tron) to make it:

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At this point I had everything done cosmetically, so I thought I'd try my hand at my first cap kit. Big mistake…spent 3 hours and I went from a wavy, working monitor, to a non-working one with no neck glow. Linolium tried to help me out, but I ended up just sending it out to Chad at Arcadecup.com since it's such a weird monitor. At this point I knew I had a working game, but no sound. I finally got the board back from Chad and hooked it up…and with a little adjusting, it was perfect. Fortunately for me, between the two board sets, I managed to get a set of fully working ones with a working sound board. Unfortunately, the other set doesn't work at all, so don't PM me for them because none of them work.

So, at long last, I present Sega Turbo:

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And into the line up it goes!

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Now I've got the carcass of the other Turbo in my garage that I've got to see if I can unload on Craigslist for free.

Next…JOURNEY!


Derek
 
Awesome, man.

And I love me some Turbo. That sound coming out of the speaker is great!
 
Wow, that looks fantastic! You did a great job, very nice. I can't believe how many friggin' wires are in those cabs, lol. Did Chad tell you what the problem with the monitor was?
 
The subwoofer is actually too powerful...I have to keep it at it's lowest level or else the whole cab shakes.

And yeah, there are a lot of frickin' wires in there! As for my bad cap kit, he said he reflowed the solder on all of them, but there was also an open trace on a coil and the voltage regulator was shot...so it might not have been my cap kitting skills, ;)
 
Very nice job, and inspirational too. Almost makes me want to go and do more on my Turbo project waiting in the carport. But it can wait until spring.
 
I used to play the crap out of this machine at my local 7-11 back in the day...love it! Great job!
 
Man just think of what u could do with a set of Boobies!!!! Only if u were a plastic surgeon instead of a dentist!!!!U turned BLAH into HOORAH!!!!!!!Nice Job..

BTW I need to follow along when u do the Journey!!!!! Mine has a brand new WG mon in it, have some paint that I bought atleast 3 yrs ago a cpo and will need some blue T mold..Holler at me when u get ready!!!
 
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