Jedidentist and the Temple of Doom! Yet another restoration...

Jedidentist

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Jedidentist and the Temple of Doom! Yet another restoration...

Howdy Folks!

So, I got bored and decided to restore the game that got me into this hobby…Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom! I forget when I actually picked this up…I think it was about 3 years ago this past summer. I was a total noob to the hobby and bought it off eBay and had it shipped out from California. I think I paid around $450 for it, which wasn't too bad, but of course the shipping kills you. Months later I joined here and stumbled across some posts by ENDOFLINE (IIRC) with some pics of his games and recognized his garage from them…turns out he's the one who sold it to me!

EDIT: Ha ha! I was the East Coaster who WAY overpaid for it! ;)
http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=91220

So, the game was in decent condition. It had new vinyl on it, but it wasn't up to Jedidentist standards:

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A lot of the vinyl was installed and covered over the broken t-molding:

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Of all of the games I've purchased, this was in the nicest, condition, so this was always on my back burner for restoring. Additionally, there wasn't a repro CPO so that was another reason not to mess with it. The game played fine, but it had a really floppy joystick (insert crude comment here) and wouldn't re-center:

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It made the game more difficult to play, so that was the first thing I had taken care of a few years ago. Mylstar came to the rescue. He offers (or used to) a rebuild service for the Atari Logo stick with NOS parts. Some people balk at the price (I think it's $90 now, but it used to be a little less expensive), but like Tron plastics, it's WELL worth it. I shipped it from my place on a Wednesday, he had it Friday, called me Friday night that he had it and repaired it, shipped it on Saturday, and I had it Monday. Absolutely fantastic service and the stick frickin' rocks. It's extremely responsive with all NOS parts, including the stick itself. One interesting thing he found is that someone had already attempted to repair it, not with the correct plunger, etc. but with this:

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Pretty ingenious if you ask me.
 
So, this left me with a nicely functioning game for several years…never had a single issue. After awhile, I noticed that the colors on the monitor started to look a little dim, so I did my first cap kit on this machine. Fortunately, that worked out well and I have a brilliant, burn free monitor in it. Months went by and I tinkered with little things while working on other projects, like painting the coin doors and the front speaker grill. More time passed, I got other games and restored them, and poor Indy was left in the corner. Then one day, Phoenix Arcade offered a sale on System 1 side art. Who could pass up a good sale? So I bought that. Then Rich/Rikitiki finally got the original screens from Atariscott for the CPO and printed those off. So now, I had no excuse to start this restoration. I pulled the game out from the lineup and got to work.

The first thing I noticed is that my cats must climb on my games:

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Nice, huh? Frickin' cat puke right into the vent and it got all over the tube neck and chassis. Dumbass cat…fortunately, it cleaned up well, before I stripped the paint and re-painted it.

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I went to work stripping off all of the existing vinyl, which came off quite easily…didn't even need to use heat:

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The black that's still there is paint. That's what I could see through the vinyl. I'm assuming that when this game was on route, someone tore the black vinyl and painted over it. Then, someone just vinyled over the paint and it left the lumps, bumps, and drips seen in the pre-restore pics. Nothing a little Citrustrip couldn't handle:

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After that, it was on to everyone's favorite stage…Bondo! The edges were a little chipped and swollen, so I broke/sawed away all of those parts, used some wood hardener, and then repaired them. For small dents and dings, I've found that glazing putty works well. It's easier to use in thin areas and sands easily. So here's the aftermath:

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The other side looked about the same. I primed it all with black automotive primer, which always brings out other small imperfections. This is where the glazing putty also works very well. Here we are after sanding the primer with 220 grit and fixing the small pits and dents:

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Originally, I was going to try to save the vinyl on the front of the machine because it looked pretty good.
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However, after messing around with it all, it got a little dinged, so I stripped that off:

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Look at that…this cab must've been a Roadblasters at one time in its life.

So what about some new vinyl?

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So now it was time for the System 1 side art installation. I really wanted to do a wet application, but I was out of Rapid Tac and couldn't find any near me and didn't want to order any. I had used it with the System 2 side art on Paperboy and it worked, but I really didn't see much benefit with large art. By the time I had it all wet, it was already starting to dry on one side and it made the application scarier than it needed to be. For smaller pieces, I think it's great, but I didn't like it for larger pieces. So, I went with my tried and true dry installation. It was a little tricky getting the spacing right, but it ended up fine:

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Phoenix Arcade included a nice note stating that due to the paper backing, shipping, and the adhesive, that the art will look crinkly and separate from the backing:

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Have no fear, with good, steady pressure and squeegeeing, it all comes out fine.

The next issue I had was this nice bit of artwork on the marquee holder:

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Fortunately, this was nothing that couldn't be fixed with some 220 grit sandpaper, steel wool, pumice on a rag wheel and lathe, and some other plastic polishing compounds:

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My power supply wasn't in too bad of shape:

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I removed everything, gave it a good scrubbing and everything looked fine. In the past I've painted them, but there was only a few spots of corrosion that cleaned up with steel wool just fine, so I figured I'd just leave it original. I also cleaned up the isolation transformer, wires, fuse holder, etc. and re-installed them. I had previously removed and cleaned all of the other aluminum backing and painted the floor of the cab due to some staining that I couldn't sand out:
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If you look closely, you'll notice that I don't have a fan in my game:

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However, there also aren't any holes indicating that there was previously a fan…so I didn't install one. I figure that if this game has survived 27 years without one, it should be fine for 27 more.
 
The next step was the CPO. Rich made a beautiful reproduction:

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(Dumbass Photobucket keeps rotating this pic)

I did the typical heat gun to remove the old one, Goo Gone, and wire brush wheel in a plug in drill…battery powered ones poop out too easily. Installation hit a little snag when separating the backing from the CPO resulted in a pull of the art from the overlay. Rich came to the rescue with another one that went on without an issue. I used a little heat to make the bend and taped it down for a few days (not that you need to do that).

At one point in time, I tried to polish my dark orange buttons with some dental materials I had. They came out okay and were just shiny, but still a little dingy. I ended up finding out that Bob Roberts carries dark orange buttons, but they're longer ones than the original.

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Unfortunately, I discovered this too late and didn't order leaf switches with spacers. So, I improvised and hacked up two old leaf switches that I had laying around to make new spacers:

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So here's the final installation:

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And back into the line-up!

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I think that's about it for video game restorations (other than some side art installation for my ROTJ once that gets made). We'll see if I can delve into some pinball restorations…maybe something to pair up with this game ;)

Thanks for reading!

Derek
 
Yikes! I also forgot to throw a shout out to Joeycuda who made me a nice and minty cardboard bezel for this baby. Can't recommend him enough!
 
phe·nom·e·nal/fəˈnämənəl/

Adjective:
  • Very remarkable; extraordinary.
  • Perceptible by the senses or through immediate experience.


Love the Indy Lego key chain too!
 
Thanks guys. I always try to do something different for my key chains. SW has a Lego Darth Vader on it, ROTJ has a Lego Stormtrooper, Journey has a $5 casino chip with the Journey logo on it, both Trons have Prok's keychains, Pac Man has a little Pac Man I got from England, NBA Jam has a Seattle Supersonics keychain, Turbo has a metal Indy car on it I got from China, 720 has Tony Hawk and Steve Caballero mini-skateboard keychains...I just need to figure out something for Paperboy!
 
as always.... great restore thread! i totally forgot that i sold this game to you bro. it looks sooooo much better than the work i did to it (im not much of a restorer :) )

next we gotsta get you a custom williams indie pin to go next to it! it would fit perfectly in your gameroom.

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I noticed the lack of a fan right off. Now I'm tempted to remove mine since a little fan noise reduction and power draw reduction is always nice. My game room is climate controlled so it never runs in a hot environment so maybe if it works for you, it'll work for me.

VERY nice work! My cpo is already quite nice so there's no need to replace mine but my cab is otherwise pretty so-so. I've repainted the speaker grill but that's about it. Sandwich it between 2 other games and who cares how the side art looks. ;) It sure is nice to see a fully restored one though!
 
nice thread,

i love to look at the pics of your restores........great job!

chad
 
as always.... great restore thread! i totally forgot that i sold this game to you bro. it looks sooooo much better than the work i did to it (im not much of a restorer :) )

next we gotsta get you a custom williams indie pin to go next to it! it would fit perfectly in your gameroom.

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I actually played that a few times when I was out there in May. It was a little wonky, but I had to play it anyway. Honestly, that's probably the next game on my list. I've got to make sure my house refinancing goes through, get my practice partnership settled, and attic insulation taken care of and we should be good to go. Hopefully by Christmas or the new year!
 
BTW, there was nothing wrong with what you did...that's why i kept it the way it was for so long. I just got bored and needed something to do! Rich's CPO repro put me over the top, even though the original one was probable better than 90% of the ones out there...some small cracks in the bend and a little cup missing above the player 1 button. That being said, there's a reason why I'm a dentist...I wasn't voted class perfectionist for nothing! ;)

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