Reversing Rally- Star Wars Cockpit restore, part1

m_mcgovern

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This is the first part of a long restoration of the Star Wars Cockpit I recently picked up. For details of the acquisition check out

this link

My first order of business was to pull out the 1000 Mile Rally 2 controls & boards and get a better look at the condition of the backglass.

Despite having to deal with 25 yrs of dust and dirt, I do like the initial opening up of an arcade machine as it ofen has a real "Indiana Jones" moment. These machines are like time capsules and you never know what kind of historical items you may find. In this case, it looks like this machine was either once in an Atlantic City, NJ arcade or was there as part of a Flyers season ticket holder party:

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I've also found what appear to be casualties of the conversion. Could these be yoke springs?

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And, I am happy to report that this is my first game with a cash back bonus:

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After pulling out the Rally pieces, I removed the steering wheel from the control panel. In the process, the wood piece that the bottom of the control panel is screwed into fell off!
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I'll need to repair that later. Here is a picture of the Rally'ed control panel before:

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I pulled off the speedometer stickers and cleaned the panel with Simple Green. It didn't come out too bad, all things considered. The overlay is missing a few chunks. There is, of course, the hole for the pushbutton installed as part of the conversion, and a smaller hole near the upper left of the yoke opening for a screw that was holding the steering wheel optical encoder in place.

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Next, I moved onto the backglass. Here is what I started with:

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First, I pulled off the Rally decals and then used Safest Stripper and a plastic scraper to get most of the black paint off. I removed the rest with a sponge and water. And, what I had afterwards was better than I hoped for -- a backglass that appears to be in pristine shape
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!

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Next order of business will be to remove the raster monitor (a Philips re-badged WG 7900, tube MVA48ABK05X), the switching power supply, and give it a good overall cleaning before moving onto to removing the black paint from the cabinet sides.
 
I pulled off the speedometer stickers and cleaned the panel with Simple Green. It didn't come out too bad, all things considered. The overlay is missing a few chunks. There is, of course, the hole for the pushbutton installed as part of the conversion, and a smaller hole near the upper left of the yoke opening for a screw that was holding the steering wheel optical encoder in place.
2682554050_02bf0f1f61.jpg

Well, on the bright side, you now have an excuse to have an easily accessible button to switch games when you install a SW/ESB kit
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Yes, I think that is my plan...do you know where I'll be able to get one?
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I'm toying with either putting a normal round green button in there to make it a bit less obvious, or go over the edge the other way and put in a square light up button to make it look more "movie-authentic".
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