my 35-dollar Tempest..

don't do it. Tempest is not that hard to find. You will spend more restoring it than it will cost you to buy one in decent shape.

Do it! That's the kind of restore I love doing. Yes it will cost more than buying one but so what. It's all in feeling you will have knowing how much work you put into it.
 
This is NOT a $35 Tempest.
If it will ever be a Tempest in the future, it will at a minimum be a $350 Tempest (without considering your time).

However, right now, it is a decent $35 Shinobi in an old Tempest cabinet. Since it's JAMMA, you can shove all kinds of boards in there. A 48-in-1 would be nice.

In my opinion, that would be a better route than trying to bring this corpse back to 80's life.

K

exactly.. rotate the monitor(its already cut for vertcial), and drop in a 48 in 1. Sell that for $500 and pretty much pay for shipping for any tempest in the usa.
 
Do it! That's the kind of restore I love doing. Yes it will cost more than buying one but so what. It's all in feeling you will have knowing how much work you put into it.

yes do it.. I could sell you all the parts.

$350 working monitor
$150 working boardset
$75 wiring harness
$50 transformer
$25 audio reg 2
$25 marquee tray
$50 control panel overlay
$50 control panel & spinner
$50 marquee overlay
$50 tinted glass

plus now add 10+ hours stripping the side art.
 
well the good news is the current monitor powers up in there, but it just shows lines. You can see it on in one of the pics i posted. I tried removing and reconnecting the edge connector on the board but no change. The jamma ideas sound good but this thing is wired up like a 73 pinto in the back. I did not see a test switch or reset button on the Shinobi JAMMA board.

There are some great ideas here to ponder on, greatly appreciated!

Michael Roma, how the hell were you there from va at 7am??! Wow. Did you get to see the guy's games inside?
 
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I wanted to get there early so I could still spend the day off with the family. I left VA at 5:30 and was home by 9AM. He offered to let me come in but I just wanted to get back on the road. I did help him unload a nice looking Robotron from that trailer he had. What games did he have inside?

- Mike
 
Use Citristrip for the sides. You can use the same technique I used to remove the Shinobi art work prior to stripping (i.e. lightly score artwork with razor then use hairdryer to heat it up for peeling). Just go slow and don't let the decal get so hot with the hairdryer that you damage the Tempest art underneath.

See these threads for details:

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=64067
http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=89324

Good luck!!

Citristrip FTW!!! If you put the citri right on the side art it will soften it and it'll peel right off with no effort. It may even leave the black paint underneath it. I dont think the stuff penetrates deep chemically.
 
well i stripped a couple spots today and all i've seen so far are particle board chunks. I envy you guys who always find beautiful sideart under a layer of kmart paint. :(
 
If you want to restore it then do it, its your game. I look at it like restoring a car. Unless it has some proven special history or is some ultra rare model most of the time it costs more to restore than it will ever get if sold. Cars, however, still get restored. It's all about wanting to do it just because that is what you want to do.
 
if you want to see pics, here is the crystal castles I cleaned up. It was painted black on all 3 sides. At some point you stop taking off paint and start taking off art.. I must have spent 15-20 hours cleaning it... It looks nice from a distance, but up close you could see the flaws. Never going to do that again..

front-63.jpg


side1-71.jpg


side2-60.jpg
 
Looks nice to me, for having been all black!

not really. Considering the most mint crystal castles will only cost you $400-$500. After putting all the hours into cleaning it, I think I sold it working for $275..

Now if it was a quantum or something else equally rare where the game was hard to find, then maybe it would be worth it.
 
Well I guess the difference with me is Tempest is basically a Grail of mine, so if I had to put that kind of work into it to get it to look like yours did, I'd be OK with that. But it's looking like there's no side-art under MY black paint, so I guess I'll be needing the paint code for Tempest white! :(
 
For anyone following this thread, and is generally local to me, I'm up for swapping my Evel Knievel pinball project for a Tempest monitor and parts. Lemme know!
 
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