Pac-Man Restoration #55886

philt80

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Picked up this empty cab for $20 locally. It was converted to a Bally Sente unit running "Rampart". From the looks of the numerous hacks inside, I imagine it has contained several other conversions as well over the years.

It had a thick coat of blue latex over several coats of oil based black.
I first attempted to save the art by stripping, but the numerous layers of paint made that a fruitless task.
Pacman1-1.jpg


Spent several days stripping and sanding(I think I went through six 60 grit sheets on my orbital:
Pacman2.jpg


Though I didn't take a pic at the time, I spent a week doing major body repair replacing both front corners and several gouges. Sanded with 220 grit and applied 3 coats of Krylon white primer sanding between coats with 220 grit. Then applied by 3 coats of Krylon Sun Yellow waiting 24 hours and sanding with 330 grit between coats. Applied 2 coats of Krylon Satin Black to the interior, marquee brackets and coin door frame. Spent the evening installing new t-molding and beginning reassembly:
Pacman3.jpg

The finish looks much better than pictured. I still haven't assembled the dust collection unit in the shop so it's a dust pit at the moment from other ongoing projects.

Still quite a bit of work left on this one... I still need to rebuild the lower bezel support and the monitor supports. Also need to acquire a new bezel and control panel. On the agenda for tomorrow is painting the coin door and installing the new vertical output transistors I picked up today for the monitor.

I'll likely wait 'til Spring to start the search for stencils as the Ohio weather is getting a bit too cold for any painting tasks. :)
 
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Looks GREAT! Making some real progess with that machine! I think a freshly restored pacman cab is the "57 chevy" of classic games.....
 
Looks GREAT! Making some real progess with that machine! I think a freshly restored pacman cab is the "57 chevy" of classic games.....

And because you said this. I have decided to keep my Pacman. Thanks.

Looking good. Keep up the good work.
 
A few updates...

I finished rebuilding the bezel retaining piece that was missing, painted the coin door and brought the cab into the house for the winter. It is currently housed in our mud room, and I decided to build a quick wood control panel and throw Revenge of Doh in it until I get around to fixing the Pac PCB and get my newly acquired control panel(Thanks Takeman!) stripped, painted and CPOed.

I'll likely let the paint cure for the next 3 months in anticipation of warmer weather in Spring to complete the stencil work required.
Not much left to be done with this one....Need a bezel, the proper midway coin door plate and need to finish the few things I've already mentioned, but I'm pretty proud of the progress considering how hacked up this thing was inside when I got it.

Pics:
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Looking very nice. I love the wood CP and making use of the cab while you gather all the parts, awesome. :)
 
Looking very nice. I love the wood CP and making use of the cab while you gather all the parts, awesome. :)

Thanks for that :)
Lacking in updates...I've contracted a nice case of bronchitis after my entire family came down with it this past week, so I haven't made it out to the shop to work on the control panel.
The CPO is on it's way as we speak, so hopefully that will motivate me to get out there this coming week and make some more progress :)
 
Made more progress last week, but am just now getting around to adding new pics...

Picked up this original Pac control panel:
IMG_2814a.jpg

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Patched the extra holes, cleaned up the metal and fasteners. Added 2 coats of krylon grey primer and repainted with 3 coats krylon satin black.

Applied new overlay, installed a WICO 4 way leaf and cleaned up the white P1 & P2 buttons a bit..

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Now to obtain a nice glass bezel and remove the scrap piece of heavily scratched lexan I'm using as a temporary bezel ;)

After that I'll just need to do the stencil work in the Spring and this one should be finished :)
 
Keep going

Nice effort. I would probably recommend decals to start with. I did two cabs with stencils and it was an incredible amount of work for Pacman and definatly not ideal for your first stencil job. There are some really nasty little parts that are hard to do. For the bezel check with Arcade Shop as they may have some old stock on plexi still. I did a reverse print on glass but that was really expensive but results were good.

Michael
 
Looks great!
Can't wait to see it finished!
Thanks MD :)

Nice effort. I would probably recommend decals to start with. I did two cabs with stencils and it was an incredible amount of work for Pacman and definatly not ideal for your first stencil job. There are some really nasty little parts that are hard to do.

Thanks for the suggestions...
I considered vinyl artwork, but I just don't think it captures the "Pac-Man yellow" as well as doing it the hard way. Also the absence of blue "speckling" on vinyl artwork just seems off to me. That said, if I had it to do over again, especially with this cabinet in particular, I probably would have slapped some vinyl on and called it done. It is truly a labor intensive and time consuming process for sure.

The hard part is done...body repairs, prepping, priming and laying down the yellow. I don't mind picking bits of stencil out to make it look as close to factory as possible. I plan to take on the stencils in the Spring when the whether warms. Compared to what I started with, I'm just glad to finally get to actually play it now :)

For the bezel check with Arcade Shop as they may have some old stock on plexi still. I did a reverse print on glass but that was really expensive but results were good.
I actually checked with them...they no longer produce them. (If anyone has an extra from them, please shoot me a PM). I think I'll just have a nice cheap underlay printed using the vectorized bezel art and use 1/8" lexan until I can find a nice enough original tempered glass bezel.
 
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