Jungle king to elevator action

kcfreeloader

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Several months ago i bought an Elevator Action that was a typical Jungle King conversion. The exterior was a bit rough. A few deep scratches, license plaque screwed to the side and a ?!#$@ lock bar. So i stripped it down and started work.

I purchased an HVLP turbine sprayer from harbor freight (a model they discontinued about 10 minutes after i bought it)

I first started by spraying a coat of primer. Man that sprayer is loud! Seems to work okay though. It ran quite a bit. After that i started messing with the viscosity cup it came with. That seemed to help a lot.

Next i started with the old rustoleum satin black thinned with mineral spirits on the kick panel and the inside of the machine.

First coat went on but was a little uneven, so i sanded for the next coat.

That's when the hard problems started.

I kept getting these little divot like areas where the paint didn't take.
I was always putting my paint through a strainer, so impurities shouldn't have been a problem.
I tried adding acetone to thin the paint instead of mineral spirits.
I tried prepping after sanding many different ways, including wiping off the dust with denatured alcohol, wiping off the dust with mineral spirits, wiping of the dust with acetone, wiping off with a dry rag. I varied the times after wiping from pretty short to a day, and still kept popping up with the problem. Some time in the middle of that i got a good coat on the insides of the machine, but not on the kick panel. The second to last time on the kick panel was a dry wipe, and resulted in a mostly flawless finish. So i lightly sanded one more time, wiped dry and it lay down rather nice.

I used my vinyl cutter to make a coin door stencil and started to work on that. I had no color reference, so i kind of guessed from other pictures i have seen of EAs. In the end i borrowed a portable color analyzer from a local paint place and matched my colors to the marquee. Specifically the brown area, and the guys tanish coat. My paint guy recommended a Benjamin Moore DTM (direct to metal) paint. He said even though it was a paint made for metal, it would put on a very tough coat.

I thinned it down and sprayed on the coin door stencil area. All i can say is WOW!!! It sprays sooooooo much nicer then the rustoleum! It was easy to build up without running. It even covered the black in one coat and looks to be completely opaque. My only misgivings are that the color has a bit more pink to it then i envisioned. Hopefully that won't be so noticeable when i put the brown on.

Here are the pictures so far. For the before, just imagine the typical rough jungle king cab.

2011-05-27_07-24-02_92.jpg

2011-05-26_20-38-07_611.jpg
 
Thanks phet. Your machine looks sweet!
My coin door stencil was made off the scan i did on my machine. It actually had those curled areas under the coin door. I wish they showed. I guess i could put the coin door on with wing nuts, and then i could stop people and bore them with long stories about the restore and then take off the coin door and show them the curls! :)
 
I should add that the DTM paint i have is the Alkyd oil based version as opposed to the acrylic water base version. It's around $20 a quart but seems to go really far. They have different bases, but luckily a few of my colors i got for project had the same base (i bought 5 colors total). My supplier was able to break some of them into half quarts. He added japan drier, but it still seems to take a very long time to dry, especially as thick as i shot it. We've had a lot of rain recently, and the humidity is high, so that effects it as well. The can says 16 hours for a recoat. The can also says not to be thinned, but my supplier said thinning with mineral spirits was okay. The thinning does not seem to have effected it either.
 
Lookin' sweet so far. I used to hate the generic manufacturer cabs but now I've seen yours, Phet's and some others they are really growing on me.
 
Lookin' sweet so far. I used to hate the generic manufacturer cabs but now I've seen yours, Phet's and some others they are really growing on me.

It's grown on me too. I never liked the generic nature of the Taito cabinet, but I've grown to like the stripey artwork and the many color combinations. This color combo in particular looks fantastic...
 
Thanks guys! The stripes are kind of a neat pattern. It is a generic cab, but since i have only one Tatio it looks unique in my arcade. Although i saw a picture showing like 4 of em in a row, that were all different colors, and i thought that looked pretty neat. The other bad thing about the Taito cab, is man they are cheap! They are like 1/2 mdf. You so much look at the thing and it breaks apart.
 
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