Pole Position Restoration (Survivor) UR05123

kryptronic

Well-known member

Donor 3 years: 2021, 2024-2025
Joined
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Location
York, Pennsylvania
This is a quick survivor style restoration of Atari Pole Position serial number UR05123 (US-made upright). This machine was listed for super cheap ($475) by @64B1T in his current yard sale, which is worth keeping an eye on. The machine looked solid enough, but was dirty and rough. The original MatsuSHITa monitor needed a re-cap at a minimum, and the PCB set was mostly working with just the car, billboard and explosion graphics missing.

I am currently working on an original dedicated Euro/Irish Pole Position II restoration. It's a major project being built from parts from all over the place collected by @JC Arcade, who sold it to me. He gave me multiple control panels, steering wheels, shifters, pedals, harnesses, PCBs, parts, etc. all of which were in good condition, and all extras not needed for the Pole Position II build. I also have a spare Wells Gardner K7000 from a Pac-Man @CharlieG traded me (I put a G07 in it a couple of weeks ago). Since I thought I had all the parts needed to make this Pole Position whole again, and since @64B1T happened to be coming right past my house on his way to the White Rose Gameroom show here in town, and offered to deliver it for FREE, I couldn't pass on it.

The machine showed up exactly as described. Covered in cigarette burns, rust, warehouse dirt and sporting white t-molding and marquee brackets. It was nasty, and the kickplate needed serious help, but it had good bones. I decided to have some fun with this one and try to do it as quickly as possible, and without spending much more money than the cost of the machine. I had to spend an additional $25 for stuff I didn't have, it took 17 days to complete working on it at night and on some weekend days, and waiting for paint to dry.

Pole Position Day One

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Deep, Deep Cleaning and Breakdown

This machine had to be sitting in a warehouse forever. Every bit of it inside and out was covered in dust and rodent mess. It was absolutely covered in dirt and took several passes with various cleaning products like Krud Kutter, LA's Totally Awesome, and KABOOM foaming bubble bathroom cleaner. I scrubbed and scrubbed, vacuumed, and scrubbed some more. All while treating the thing like it was a bio-hazard. In the end it came pretty clean, but it seems you can never quite remove the nicotine yellowing on white Atari vinyl.

During breakdown I verified that the numbers matched on this machine for the cabinet, power supply, monitor and one of the ARII boards. As this was not a fully numbers matching cabinet, the MatsuSHITa monitor was put on the chopping block.

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Control Panel and Dashboard

The control panel was bent pretty badly top to bottom like somebody yanked the steering wheel with enough force to lift the whole cabinet. I took it into the garage and was able to bend it back into shape. Slow and steady. It cleaned up really nicely. It's nice when an original CPO can be saved.

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The dashboard was horrible. It was covered in warehouse dust. Once that was cleaned off cigarette burns galore were revealed. People must have just dropped lit cigarettes down between the dash and monitor bezel as it was burned through, warped and just plain ugly. A few burn marks here or there is patina. This was destruction. It seems these don't come up for sale often, and when they do, they don't look great. A repro is available from Phoenix Arcade, and it looks awesome, but it is priced way too high for this budget build. So I went to work on it.

Only the front and sides (on the outside) needed help. First I used a heat gun to remove as much warp as I could from it then sanded it level. Next I used JB Weld Plastic Bonder, which is designed for this type of work as a filler, and after waiting for it to cure I sanded again. And again. Then I used automotive filler primer on it and sanded some more. Finally I masked it so just the areas I worked on would get paint and sprayed it with Krylon Paint+Primer in satin black (spray can). Some burns are still there at the very top, and some wave still exists in the front. But it's pretty damn good - especially for how it looked.

I also had to do a couple of repairs on the shifter retaining bezel. It was split in two and cracked in three places. Crazy Glue, JB Weld Plastic Bonder and paint fixed that up, too.

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Fixing Up the Cabinet

Next up was the cabinet. It was in really good shape. It doesn't appear to have ever seen water. While the sides are marked up a bit, they look pretty good - actually perfect for this survivor style resto. One of the rear corners was broken on the inside at the t-molding groove and needed to be rebuilt. There was also a small chip out of the bottom front on the right side. Both of those were really easy repairs with Bondo, sanding and some paint.

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The kickplate was a different story. It had a nice chip out of the top corner of the pedal opening, five screws through the front of it which did nothing, a drilled hole with a t-nut behind it at the bottom left (I have no idea what that was for), and a hole for a lockbar. Also, the area between the coin door and speaker was cratered and had a small hole in it. It looks like somebody took a high-healed shoe and put the heal right through it. The operator at the time didn't spend much time or money fixing it. It looks like they took a handful of wood filler, smashed it into the problem area then covered it with black paint minutes later. There was no attempt to make it look good, so I'm thinking it was done quick to get the machine back in service. Or it could have even been done while still in service.

The kickplate required more Bondo work, sanding, filler primer, sanding, sanding and sanding. Once perfectly smooth, I painted with Rustoleum oil-based paint in satin black thinned at 15% with mineral spirits via my HVLP setup.

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I also had to make a repair to the back of the cabinet where the wood was about to break due to moving the machine too many times. It had grown weak at the handle opening and wanted to split. I put a wood block behind it and glued everything tight and it's fixed now. I then brought the machine inside for new leg levelers and proper black t-molding. FYI: ArcadeShop sells t-molding for Atari machines in 35' lengths. This machine took all but 0.25" of it. Good thing they didn't cut it short.

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Controls and Metal

As I mentioned earlier, @JC Arcade supplied me with piles of extra parts above and beyond all the NOS stuff he collected for the Pole Position II project I'm working on. Piles. I imagine that over the course of 8-10 years he bought mostly every decent looking steering wheel listed here. Shifters galore. Extra pedal parts. Everything - I've got two or three or more of everything here. Thanks, man!

For the steering wheel I had a choice of five. The one with the nicest grip had a bend in it, but there was another that was very clean and almost just as good. For this type of survivor style build, a little patina is nice and contributes to the overall look of the machine. I've got a pic of the gas pedal here. All the controls were dirty and corroded.

While the shifter that came with the machine worked, it took the finger of God to move it. It was completely loaded with dry grease and almost frozen. When I rebuilt it, I used a Dremel on the inner channel to basically make it easier to move the shifter back and forth. I ground out a teardrop shape at either end to reduce the amount of force needed to get the ball bearing out of it's resting place and moving in the channel.

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All the metal needed work as it was all covered in rust. Every nut, bolt and piece of metal on the cabinet. I dissolved the rust on the hardware using Coca-Cola, media blasted the rest of the metal, and painted everything using Krylon Paint+Primer in satin black (spray can).

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I then reassembled everything to make it ready for installation, but didn't take many pics while putting stuff together.

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MatsuSHITa Out, K7000 In

The original MatsuSHITa monitor was in the machine when I got it. It needed a cap kit at the very least and was sporting some pretty serious Game Over burn. I had a Wells Gardner K7000 on hand from a Pac-Man I got in trade from @CharlieG. I ended up putting a newly rebuilt G07 with a @tron guy chassis on it in there and it's been beatiful since. So I decided to shelve the MatsuSHITa and use the K7000.

Charlie did a re-cap on the K7000 before I got it, and was fighting a degauss issue with it that he left to me to deal with. I spent a while degaussing the monitor to no avail, then started adjusting the convergence/purity when that didn't work - thinking the monitor had an issue in the degauss circuit. I dialed it in and it looked beautiful. I got it installed in the Pole Position machine, turned the cabinet 90 degrees, and the purity went to shit.

I spent more time fooling with it and was only ever to get it about 90% good when facing one direction, and it always whacked when I move the machine. I was about to pull the monitor for a closer look, but decided to look at the yoke position before doing so. The yoke had slid back on the neck of the tube about 0.25", and that was enough to basically destroy any chance of getting a good purity adjustment out of it. I repositioned the yoke, tightened it down, and it was good to go. Fully converged with minimal adjustments in under 15 minutes!

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PCB Time: Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!

This machine came with a partially working PCB stack. The PCB stack for this machine consists of a CPU board and a Video board linked together using a small Interconnect board. The video board in this machine was having issues as it would not display any cars, billboards, explosions, or airplanes with banners. Since I had several Pole Position I and II boardsets on hand, but did not know the working condition of any of them, or even what I might have, I decided to start swapping ROMs. I swapped in all the ROMs listed in the manual as "All Cars and Billboards" and none of the changes had any effect.

I then went into the stash from @JC Arcade and identified what was there. There was one complete Pole Position set, one Pole Position CPU board, and three complete Pole Position II sets. All condition unknown. I figured between these, and the mostly working set I had for this machine, I could get something going. One of the Pole Position II sets worked, but the accelerator pedal wouldn't register - which was not a problem with any other boardset. Later when I tried the same boardset, it went straight to garbage on the screen. So it died shortly after getting some juice after having gone without any for a decade.

I've got to thank @Charles Kline at this point because what he has compliled and written on Pole Position PCB repairs is spectacular. Thank you, Charles. I learned that you can test a Pole Position II video board with a Pole Position CPU board (graphics look weird). I also found lots of schematics, reference pics of bad CPU and video output, and info on debugging.

I felt like I was gambling here. What are the chances that out of 5.5 boardsets, I might end up with a working Pole Position or Pole Position II set? I knew I had a working Pole Position CPU board, and a recently working but now dead Pole Position II set. I marked all the boards and carefully, in order, and while taking notes I tried all the various combinations. In the end I was able to pair a fully working Pole Position set (CPU from this machine, Video from the pile) which went into the machine, and verified I had one working Pole Position II video board. Everything else has a problem somewhere, but all boot up.

One interesting thing to note is that if you get a 'RBN.1' error on screen, you likely have a working CPU board, but your interconnect is bad. I ran into this and swapped the interconnect with a new one and that's how I found a working set. I assume the error code is short for 'Ribbon' as the interconnect acts like a ribbon cable would to tie the boards together. I also have a 'VEM.1' error showing on boot for one Pole Position II CPU board. Neither 'RBN.1' or 'VEM.1' appear to be documented errors anywhere here on KLOV, so I figured I'd note them here. 'RBN.1' does show up in one other post, but somebody replied telling the OP that their contrast must be bad and they were likely reading 'RAM.1' or 'ROM.1'. I don't thing that was the case there, as 'RBN.1' is an error that can be reproduced with a bad interconnect.

At some point I'll need to dig in and repair a Pole Position II stack for my Euro/Irish dedicated project, but for now I've got the game I needed, and it's showing cars, billboards and everything else!

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On the Road Again

The machine is back on the road again and going into the lineup. Somewhere. I wasn't planning on picking this up, but it was such a good deal and I had mostly everything here for it. I did have to spend $25 with @Mylstar at arcadefixit.com for a NOS shifter spacer, and grip tape for the pedal. There's a great selection of Pole Position parts on arcadefixit.com - check it out.

The wiring in the cabinet was a bit of a mess. I found several disconnected or cut field grounds. Globs of solder on controls, wire nuts, stuff not hooked up, etc. The kickplate speaker wasn't working because the connections to the pot on the service panel were cut. The speaker and volume pot worked fine. Why? I don't know. Stuff like that all over the cab needed to be sorted out. I also did a (reversable) ballast-bypass LED light mod for the marquee lighting. I'm sure I'm missing small stuff, but that's the major stuff.

This was a survivor style restoration meant to retain the machine's patina as much as possible. No reproduction parts were used. All the artwork and glass is 100% original to the machine. The marquee and bezel are in excellent collector quality shape. The side art shows wear, but is presentable. Everything has been cleaned and painted, but not overly-restored to the point where it all looks new.

As far as future plans for this machine: It's currently running on quarters as free play sucks on Pole Position with it's auto-start feature. I'm going to get Steph at hobby roms to burn a nice free play set for it. The Atari style coin vault is missing as well, so I'm on the lookout for one of those. Other than those two items, this machine is good to go.

Thanks again to @64B1T for a screaming deal on a great project!

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Jeez! That thing came out looking incredible! It's hard to believe it's the same cabinet. I'm truly thrilled you did such an excellent job piecing it back together. That is far and away past what I would have ever done. Wow, just wow, man! Beautiful.
 
Jeez! That thing came out looking incredible! It's hard to believe it's the same cabinet. I'm truly thrilled you did such an excellent job piecing it back together. That is far and away past what I would have ever done. Wow, just wow, man! Beautiful.

Thank you very much. You made this restore happen.
 
Nice job and great documentation on the process. I've done pretty much the same thing to two empty PP cabs that I drove way too far for.
 
I'm so ashamed! 😫😅

I didn't mean it like that. You traded me a project Pac-Man that I knew up front needed some work to take it over the line. It's great now. Not to sidetrack this thread with Pac stuff, but... The G07 I put in it came out of a Pac-Man, and had very minor burn. Paired with the G07 chassis @tron guy did, it looks fantastic. There's something about Pac-Man running on a fresh G07 that just looks right. The new shielded speaker got installed, I cleaned up all the controls to remove all the squeaks, and put the HSS kit on it that saves the scores and runs Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man, Pac-Man Plus and Pengo. It's totally dialed in now, and I've played it nearly every night for the past few weeks. I'm leaning towards leaving the cabinet the way you did it showing all that glorious patina. Thanks again doing that trade.

As far as the K7000 I used for this Pole Position build, it took a bit to figure out. I spent a few hours trying to degauss and converge/purify it. Once I identified the yoke had slid back a bit and repositioned it, I was minutes away from having it looking great. All your work on the board was spot-on. It was a good learning experience for me. I wanted to use the K7000 for this Pole Position build because it had minor burn from a similar racing game. I don't know which one, but you really have to look to see it with the game on or off.
 
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