Jumping on the DK restore bandwagon

Tronic

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I know there are so many Donkey Kong restores going on and this is just another one, but I figured I would post about it since I know everyone likes to look at pictures.

This was a cab I have had in my garage for more than a year. The edges of the cabinet were chipping and so it needed a good amount of touchup on all the corners. I pulled off all the wood that was separating and patched with bondo.

Then sanded...

and sanded some more...

turned the cab so the shadows show the grooves and nicks and...

you guessed it sanded again.

Here it is right before I spray it with automotive primer.
 

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This cabinet came with some extras that obviously weren't original. One of the items were large 1"x2" boards screwed/glued to the inside where the bezel sides would rest.

Does anyone have the measurement from an original cab on what those little strips of wood are for size and location from the front edge of the cab?
 
I wanted to show progress on this that I have made so far and also show how nice of a product OU Flight has with those reproduction DK speaker panels.

I have primed and painted the sides and the front as well as the new speaker panel. I used rustoleum spray enamel color "Harbor Blue"

Most of my effort so far has been repairing frayed and damaged wood pieces.

The first picture is showing inside the control panel looking down behind the front speaker panel, as you can see OU Flight did an excellent job with the front panel and the piece below that as I needed that piece replaced too.

The second pic shows the front speaker panel mounted on and the cabinet is painted.
 

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Working on the base, I decided to replace the bolts that hold the nintendo switching power supply to the cabinet floor.

The original was a metric thread so I searched the web and found a close replacement as far as length. I had to order them from the UK but the threads are exactly the same as the original. Since these were just bolts with allen heads, I put a little gorrila glue to tack them to the floor of the cabinet. This way they wouldn't spin over time if I needed to remove the power supply base.

I Also purchased the metric thread wing nuts just to keep things looking original.

I added a few L brackets to give extra support to the base. I didn't want to be moving it at a later time and have the base fold out from underneath.
 

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Painting done and structural work on the cabinet done.

It's so nice to be at this stage of the restore process. All that's left is to add the artwork and the flat reproduction T-molding.
 

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Finally.... It's mostly finished.

I put the side art on, t-molding, and all the other artwork. I put in new coin mechs and new locks. repainted the coindoor.

I put the monitor brackets on and the monitor and PCB back in the game.

I just need to polish up a few of the bolts that hold the coindoor onto the cabinet, and purchase a marquee light from walmart and wire it in and it will be complete.

At least it's playable now.

I will say that having Donkey Kong be such a popular game to restore (seems like everyone has done one) It was really easy to find and buy new parts for the game. Some of the rarer titles you spend years just getting things around.


Here's the final picture. Same camera but it seemed to come out a little fuzzy.
 

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Yes, from the search that I tried, it is. It's actully a shade lighter than the original but my wife convinced me that I didn't need to be that picky since I wasn't going to be selling it.
I tried Krylon's Spa Blue, but it looked way too dark once it dried.

What I liked about it was, the spray can method worked well for smoothness, at least for me. Plus it was an enamel (not latex) which is what I wanted.
 
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Looks good! Honestly, as far as the color goes, unless someone has it sitting next to a minty cabinet that hasn't had the colors fade over the last 30 years, 99% of people won't know the difference as long as it's close.
 
Looks good! Honestly, as far as the color goes, unless someone has it sitting next to a minty cabinet that hasn't had the colors fade over the last 30 years, 99% of people won't know the difference as long as it's close.

Thanks, I agree. The Harbor Blue was pretty close.
 
How bad were the Tmolding grooves on it? I got one and the grooves are REALLY bad.

T-molding itself was yellowed and busted up pretty bad, but the groove wasn't too bad.

I did have a few places, like the top right corner, where the plywood was separating so I spread it apart and used a thin stick to apply gorrilla glue and then clamped it back together to dry. This made the plywood really stiff again and the T-molding held into the groove like it was a newly cut groove.

Most of the areas that I had to repair were on the outside edges, not the inside groove portion. But one of the other DK restoration posts shows a guy repairing the edge/groove and all with bondo and then recutting the groove with a dremel. Bondo really does hold well.
 
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I know there are so many Donkey Kong restores going on and this is just another one,

Do you know why there are so many DK restores going on?


Because it's the best classic game out there.


Nice job on that one.;)
 
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