Return of the Jedidentist!-Pic Heavy ROTJ Restoration

Jedidentist

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Donor 3 years: 2011-2013
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Return of the Jedidentist!-Pic Heavy ROTJ Restoration

So (I hope) this is my last restoration. My basement is full along the wall I'm "allowed" to use, and I just can't bring myself to sell any of my games to make room for another…I've just put too much effort into them all. So, as my last effort, I decided to get Atari's Return of the Jedi. Now, this wasn't a game I initially had any interest in purchasing because I only played it a handful of times in the arcade…mainly because it was hard and I died too quickly. However, what's a Jedidentist without a Return of the Jedi? Plus, the design of the cab grew on me…

So, I patiently waited for one to show up locally and ended up buying one from Dewman, and with some transportation assistance from Wickedbass it showed up at my door:

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Overall, it was a nice machine, but I can't leave well enough alone. It's the little things that I can't live with, like:

Patched bezel
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Peeling/torn vinyl
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Dented vents:
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Pitted metal sides:
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The first place I started with was the electronics. I was told that the game was working, but finicky. I noticed that it would work occasionally, but then not start up again. Several of the PCB connectors were burnt and partially repaired, so I just started out with a full connector repair kit from Bob Roberts (don't laugh at my soldering!):

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While I had my soldering iron hot, I also rebuilt the ARII and re-capped the G07.
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My power brick was also a little rusty:
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A little Naval Jelly and steel wool:
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I'm not so hard core as to powder coat it with the correct gold/brassish color, so I went with some gray primer and some silver I had laying around:
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After trying to get it electrically sound (more on that later), I started with the tear down. Here's a pic with the vinyl all removed and the Bondo process beginning:
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What was nice was that the vinyl stripped off with very little effort and I didn't really need to use a heat gun, except for the small front pieces of the base.

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Keeping these pieces in tact really helped with cutting the vinyl later on. However, it wasn't time yet for that…more Bondo!
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These little corners were real buggers! They're very easily damaged when the game is transported on its back…so put it on it's side when moving it if you can. Fortunately, I'm pretty good with a sander, Dremel, and Dremel Max! After everything was repaired and sanded, I coated everything with 2 coats of polyurethane to help with the vinyl application. I also painted the back of the cab with satin black, as the rear portion of the monitor housing and the back door are painted and not vinyled.
 
Next were the dented vents:
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I spent a lot of time with a very small hammer and pliers trying to make every one perfect, but that's next to impossible. There was also rust and pitting on them, so they got the wire wheel treatment, along with the stripped down blue sides and other metal brackets and coin doors. The priming and painting process in my driveway:
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Before the stripping of the blue sides, I took them to Home Depot and got the paint color matched in a satin finish enamel. I used the Preval disposable spray painting system after thinning, and clear coated everything. Initially, I used a "satin" clear coat, but it made everything look dirty. So, I re-painted and used a clear varnish. A neat thing that happened by accident was that in re-painting over the satin clear coat, I got a slight stippling effect…similar to the original texture of the coin doors and metal sides. It's nice to occasionally have a mistake actually work out for you!

Now with cabinet sound and the electronics seemingly sound, I needed to actually work on the sound. One of the original speakers had been replaced with a car audio speaker:
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Occasionally, I would lose sound out of one of the speakers, so I figured while I was at it, I would just replace both of them. Unfortunately, I couldn't find shielded 6"x9" speakers with the correct resistance (no Bob Roberts doesn't sell them, nor do any other dealers). I ended up finding ones that would work from Partsexpress.com, but they weren't shielded. Now, shielding probably doesn't play a huge role where the speakers are located, but since I had everything torn apart, I figured I might as well build in some shielding. First I tried a method I read about online using aluminum duct work caps:

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Unfortunately, the caps made the speaker too tall, and it wouldn't fit in the cabinet space…in fact the speakers were too tall by themselves, and I needed to cut custom speaker holders out of some MDF I had laying around. In order to fix the shielding problem, I actually lined the entire speaker enclosure with aluminum duct work and steel wool:
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With the speakers installed:
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So now what's left? Oh yeah, that bezel. So I went to my local hobby store looking for black cardboard/poster board. Unfortunately, what they had was too flimsy, so I ended up buying thin foam board. I carefully cut the original bezel and traced it onto 2 pieces of foam board:

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With a little trial and error, I made this:
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One of the problems with the foam board was that even though it was thin, it was still thicker than poster board and wouldn't lay down correctly on the bezel. I had to very carefully bevel the inside lip to get the correct curvature of the screen. I also had a bear of a time getting it to fit with the monitor plexi and had to do some trimming there.

One last piece before the vinyl…the yoke. I removed the overlay and wire wheeled it all. The microswitches were still good, so I let sleeping dogs lay.

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I primered, painted, and varnished everything prior to applying the NOS overlay that I purchased.
 
The last major hurdle was applying the black vinyl I got from thisoldgame.com. This was the part I was dreading the most because I'd restored my 720 with vinyl and it's an incredible PITA. What's worse is that at least the 720 vinyl was somewhat precut…for this project I just had a huge roll of black vinyl and that's it. Fortunately, my original vinyl came off so easy and intact, that I could use that as a template. For this portion I moved the game into the basement because the real nasty body work was done. I laid it down on its side and went to work, allowing about 1" extra around my original "templates":

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One issue I had when doing 720 was the front coin door area. It was very difficult to go around the hole without getting a "rippling" effect that continued past the hole. However, after having restored multiple cabs already, I learned one valuable lesson…don't pull on the vinyl too hard. When doing 720, I was pulling it very taught and pushing really hard with my squeegee to ensure that there were no air bubbles. This time, I had tons of vinyl to spare (I ordered almost 20' too much), so I just taped it to the top and gently pushed it down, and it worked perfectly:
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This vinyl is very thin, and stretches easily…which is what causes the ripples. Lesson learned! So after the vinyl was complete, I had this (after trimming the vinyl and adding new T-molding):

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So, after 2 months of being stuck at this stage, I realized that I was missing the instruction decal that went on the monitor bezel! The bezel I had didn't have it, and I never really looked that closely at it until seeing someone else's post here. Fortunately, Rich from www.thisoldgame.com came to the rescue! I guess he had these already scanned and ready to go…I just had to ask.

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For now, this is where I'm at:
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The biggest wait will be the side art. Atariscott has the films, but he and Rich just need to get coordinated to get it reproduced. If I was extremely desperate, I could try to re-apply my existing side art or there's an existing scan out there that can be printed on inkjet, but after going through all of this trouble, I'll wait to get it done right.

Thanks for reading!

Derek
 
Niiiiiiiiiiiice work!! I love your detailed resto threads. Make mine look like Cliff's Notes. Great looking (often overlooked) Atari cab.
 
Your pics of the restoration is an inspiration. I have ROTJ and I was not sure where to start and where to get all of the parts needed to do a restoration of this caliber.

You have inspired me to take a second at restoring my game......

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Thanks guys. The bottom side vinyl pieces and the u-shaped vinyl piece are the absolute worst. I'm also still having sporadic board issues that I can't isolate (not that I'm really experienced enough to do that, but I'm trying). It'll work one day and then not the next. Sometimes garbage comes up, but right now I'm getting a rolling screen that can't be stabilized with the vertical hold. I'm also getting a weird "clipping" sound through the speakers. I really don't know why this game doesn't get more love. It's challenging, and the controls take a bit to get used to, but fair. The sounds and music are great. I guess people just don't like "story" games.
 
Nice restoration and thanks for posting. I don't see a lot of pics of RoTJ games. Very worthy of keeping in a nice collection-
 
Great work. I only played ROTJ once back in the day, because it wasn't exactly like Star Wars arcade (my all time favorite when I was little). I can even picture exactly where it was in the arcade.

I regret that not giving it a second chance. It looks like a good game.
 
For the sideart I would have Rich do a solvent print and laminate it with a slight textured polycarbonite coating or possibly a screen clear. It woud look as good as the original and be as durable as can be to wipe etc. I did that for Space Ace Dedicated art and if printed properly it is would be totally acceptable. I don't see this game getting the love to do a proper screen print. I am sure the instruction print is an ink print. Beautiful work on that cabinet mate!

Cheap Ink = crap, properly done with the right materials and equipment it can be perfect.

The recent Ice Cold Beer project is probably the best example (ink with a a clear screen over it).

Michael
 
Derek, that's amazing! I can't wait to start mine now. As for the side art, I know original is usually the best, but ROTJ is ugly, im kicking around the idea of creating better artwork for it using the same decal shape.
 
Rich will get it done when Scott gets him the films. I'm a patient guy and want it done the right way...I haven't skimped on one yet, so I'm not about to start!
 
It seems no matter how many times or how I say it, your work is just amazing. That is just fantastic and it's actually sad to read that you won't be doing anymore. I think running out of room just means you need a bigger space to fill. Problem solved.
 
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