m_mcgovern
Active member
Sorry in advance for the length and the pics. I hope you enjoy...
This is my second post of what will likely be a long restoration of the Star Wars Cockpit I picked up in July.
For details of the acquisition check out this link here.
My first post on this restore can be found here.
I removed the rest of the 1000 Mile Rally parts -- a 19" raster monitor, transformer & fuse block, and the wiring harness. The op that did the
conversion hacked in a jamma harness, so I'll either need to pick up a Star Wars harness or make my own. I then removed the SW coin door and coin
box. After all that was out, I vacuumed it out and wiped it down with Simple Green.
My next step was to attack the sides. Before attempting to remove the black paint, I needed to remove the Great 1000 Mile Rally decals. I wanted to
find a way to do it that did not harm the artwork underneath. But what is the best way? Apply Goo Gone? Just scrape them? Wallpaper steamer? I
exchanged PMs with pr0k, who suggested dry heat to activate the adhesive and peeling them off.
First the good news...I made another $5 or so when a pile of quarters came falling out of the bottom once I tipped the cockpit onto its side. I can put this towards new sideart if this doesn't work out!
So, I pulled out an old hair dryer and went to town. For the most part, this did the trick. There were two types of decals applied all over. The
larger decals had a rubbery consistancy and got very stretchy with heat applied. The other round decals were more like big stickers. In many cases,
these took a lot more work to pull off as they were constantly tearing.
Unfortunately, in a couple of areas, I ended up ripping the Star Wars artwork underneath. I'm not sure if there was not enough paint or if I left the
hairdryer on a spot too long or didn't get the decal hot enough before peeling. With some practice (and I had plenty of practice since there were
lots of decals to remove), I was able to do much better. In fact, on the second side, I only had one small place where the Star Wars artwork got
damaged. There were a few tricks that I think helped. First, I started to lightly score the big decals so that they could be pulled off in strips.
Second, I didn't continue to work on one decal. After each strip was removed, I would move to another decal.
Here is a picture of the left side with the decals removed:
The bright white areas are where the artwork got damaged.
With that done, it is finally time to go for the black paint removal. Inspired by and using Jake's process outlined here.
I went for it. I picked up some Citrustrip and a scraper from Home Depot. I also had a small bucket of water with a sponge and paper towels for
wiping paint + stripper goo from the scraper. I went slowly since I didn't know what to expect. I applied the Citrustrip in small areas (about 1ft X
1ft) and let it sit for 5 minutes. Then, I carefully scraped off the paint using a plastic scraper. Once I got most of the paint removed from the
1ft X 1ft area, I went back with a wet sponge to clean off the remainder of the paint/stripper goo. All told, it took about four hours to complete
the one side (like I said, I was trying to be overly careful, so I went quite slow).
The results of the process speak for themselves. Here are some after pictures:
A closeup of the Sith Lord himself:
Here is the final result:
A big improvement over this:
Dontcha think? I am pretty stoked so far with how this is turning out.
This is my second post of what will likely be a long restoration of the Star Wars Cockpit I picked up in July.
For details of the acquisition check out this link here.
My first post on this restore can be found here.
I removed the rest of the 1000 Mile Rally parts -- a 19" raster monitor, transformer & fuse block, and the wiring harness. The op that did the
conversion hacked in a jamma harness, so I'll either need to pick up a Star Wars harness or make my own. I then removed the SW coin door and coin
box. After all that was out, I vacuumed it out and wiped it down with Simple Green.
My next step was to attack the sides. Before attempting to remove the black paint, I needed to remove the Great 1000 Mile Rally decals. I wanted to
find a way to do it that did not harm the artwork underneath. But what is the best way? Apply Goo Gone? Just scrape them? Wallpaper steamer? I
exchanged PMs with pr0k, who suggested dry heat to activate the adhesive and peeling them off.
First the good news...I made another $5 or so when a pile of quarters came falling out of the bottom once I tipped the cockpit onto its side. I can put this towards new sideart if this doesn't work out!
So, I pulled out an old hair dryer and went to town. For the most part, this did the trick. There were two types of decals applied all over. The
larger decals had a rubbery consistancy and got very stretchy with heat applied. The other round decals were more like big stickers. In many cases,
these took a lot more work to pull off as they were constantly tearing.
Unfortunately, in a couple of areas, I ended up ripping the Star Wars artwork underneath. I'm not sure if there was not enough paint or if I left the
hairdryer on a spot too long or didn't get the decal hot enough before peeling. With some practice (and I had plenty of practice since there were
lots of decals to remove), I was able to do much better. In fact, on the second side, I only had one small place where the Star Wars artwork got
damaged. There were a few tricks that I think helped. First, I started to lightly score the big decals so that they could be pulled off in strips.
Second, I didn't continue to work on one decal. After each strip was removed, I would move to another decal.
Here is a picture of the left side with the decals removed:
The bright white areas are where the artwork got damaged.
With that done, it is finally time to go for the black paint removal. Inspired by and using Jake's process outlined here.
I went for it. I picked up some Citrustrip and a scraper from Home Depot. I also had a small bucket of water with a sponge and paper towels for
wiping paint + stripper goo from the scraper. I went slowly since I didn't know what to expect. I applied the Citrustrip in small areas (about 1ft X
1ft) and let it sit for 5 minutes. Then, I carefully scraped off the paint using a plastic scraper. Once I got most of the paint removed from the
1ft X 1ft area, I went back with a wet sponge to clean off the remainder of the paint/stripper goo. All told, it took about four hours to complete
the one side (like I said, I was trying to be overly careful, so I went quite slow).
The results of the process speak for themselves. Here are some after pictures:
A closeup of the Sith Lord himself:
Here is the final result:
A big improvement over this:
Dontcha think? I am pretty stoked so far with how this is turning out.

