Sega Star Trek upright restoration

CaptainHendry

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Donor 2015-2016
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Location
Huntington Beach, California
Several months ago I picked this up thanks to a tip from my friend Kalan. I was in a movie theater and when I came out I had texts telling me to check out Craigslist immediately as someone had listed a Star Trek dedicated upright for $300!

After a few panicked calls the seller agreed to sell to me. The next day we met at his storage unit about 25 minutes from my house. The story on the game is that a family member had bought this sometime in the 90s and had it in his house for several years. Around 2004 it died and, not knowing how to repair it, he put it in storage where it sat for the next 12 years. I could tell it was complete and for the price that was all that mattered. Here's what it looked like when I got it home:

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As you can see the coin door has a lot of rust and the control panel is a mess:

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Also the side art application is probably the worst I've ever seen:

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I've been wondering how this happened. You can tell from the top edges that the art has sort of slid down the side of the game at some point. Did someone install this using the wet method and then stand it up before it was dry?

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In any case, there's nothing on the outside that can be saved so I ordered new side art and a new cpo which have been sitting in my garage for about 2 months while I worked on Solar Quest and Space War.

Actually, there was one piece that was in great condition. The front needs a little polishing but the back is very clean with almost no damage:

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Board repair

I don't own any spare Sega boards and I don't have the equipment or the experience to fix a 6-board stack without at least narrowing the problem down to a specific board so I could attempt a shotgun fix.

I actually could not get any of the boards out of the cage when I first tried. They seemed really stuck!

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After some persuasion with a screwdriver under the tabs I was able to get the outside boards out. The inner ones were really jammed in there. I think the cage must be a little bent. Eventually I got them all out.

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I mentioned in another restoration thread that I was open to any and all offers of help and Curt from Massachusetts PM'd me to say he'd had some experience working on these and would repair them (for a reasonable fee) so long as I wasn't in a big hurry. That sounded good to me so I sent the boards off thinking he was going to have quite a job on his hands.

When the boards arrived Curt did an initial test. Incredibly, 5 out of 6 were working. Only the universal sound board was dead. So that's good news.

Meanwhile I started to tear down the cabinet. I pulled the monitor and the big power supply/board cage combo:

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All of the metal parts were removed and sent to the powder coater. I got those back today, all except the coin door which had a lot of rust damage on the lower door. That's getting recoated this week but I may wind up having to replace it.

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Here's the cleaned up and coated panel:

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Somewhere along the way I lost one of the coin door flaps. So now I have two games that are missing these flaps. The plastic ones available online don't seem to fit. If anyone has spares on hand or knows where to find metal replacements, please let me know.
 

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Cabinet work

With everything pulled out of the cab I knew I needed to strip off the side art. As it turns out, I was able to strip the entire vinyl sides with the art. I just found a loose edge and pulled. It came off in big pieces:

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It took about 45 minutes to do both sides and the front. Here's the stripped down cab:

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With that done I laid the game on the floor and took a look at the base and corners. The base is two sheets of 3/4" plywood. They seemed okay but the strips of wood that wrapped around them were beat up and had taken on some water. No way I'm going to bondo these. I pried them off with a screwdriver:

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I'll replace these pieces and the rusty screws that were holding the base together. The four leg levelers had a bit of rust so I ordered replacements for those as well.

The front and back corners are mostly there but the wood feels soft, like it's ready to crumble. You can just see the worst damage in that photo above—the inner part of the corner is gone and the remaining bit feels weak. I'm probably going to break off the weak bits, bondo everything and recut the t-molding slots. That's a project for this coming weekend. Then I can try to get this cab off to the painter for some fresh brown paint!
 

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A promising start, for sure!

That game for $300 was an incredible steal, especially because it's the dedicated version. The monitor alone is worth more than that, even not working (if it's complete), not to mention the boards. Hell, an empty cabinet in good shape would be worth way more than that.

The sideart was prone to shrinking I'm told, so I'm not terribly surprised to see that it's retreated from where it used to be.

I'm told that the original power supplies were not well designed and were prone to taking out boards when they failed. I have the VectorLabs power board in mine and only use the original power supply now to drive the audio.
 
A promising start, for sure!

That game for $300 was an incredible steal, especially because it's the dedicated version. The monitor alone is worth more than that, even not working (if it's complete), not to mention the boards. Hell, an empty cabinet in good shape would be worth way more than that.

The sideart was prone to shrinking I'm told, so I'm not terribly surprised to see that it's retreated from where it used to be.

I'm told that the original power supplies were not well designed and were prone to taking out boards when they failed. I have the VectorLabs power board in mine and only use the original power supply now to drive the audio.

Yeah, it was a great deal. The last working boardset on ebay sold for $500.

I've read about the power supply so I bought the Vector Labs board as well. I also picked up the VL multigame from a KLOV user so the last step of this will be installing that (but not until everything else is working).
 
Fortunately there are people available now that will fix the boards for you and other resources to fix the G08.

It took me a long while to discover anyone that would work on the boards and even longer to find someone that repaired G08s.

Believe me, it's much more pleasant to own one of these now that these resources are available. :)

You might want to seriously consider buying the VL multi-sound board too because without it you're not going to have game sounds for 3 of the 5 games that the Multi-Sega kit adds. Some people are okay with that I guess but I'm definitely not.

The VL mutli-sound boards have to be custom made based on your order and it can take a long while to arrive so you'll want to factor that into your plans.
 
Fortunately there are people available now that will fix the boards for you and other resources to fix the G08.

It took me a long while to discover anyone that would work on the boards and even longer to find someone that repaired G08s.

Believe me, it's much more pleasant to own one of these now that these resources are available. :)

You might want to seriously consider buying the VL multi-sound board too because without it you're not going to have game sounds for 3 of the 5 games that the Multi-Sega kit adds. Some people are okay with that I guess but I'm definitely not.

The VL mutli-sound boards have to be custom made based on your order and it can take a long while to arrive so you'll want to factor that into your plans.

Ha! Yes, I'm very, very glad there was someone willing to look at these boards for me. Of course it turned out I didn't need to send them off but generally speaking it's great for peace of mind.

I should have mentioned but I already have the complete VL soundboard. I got that and the multigame from the same KLOV user several months ago. Actually paid more for that than I did for the entire game. It has all been sitting in my garage since about June waiting for me to get around to this machine.

On the monitor, I've repaired a 6100 and a 19V2000 (with some helpful advice from KLOV). I rebuilt the Vectorbeam monitor in my Space War (fingers crossed it will work when I get those boards back). So I'm going to try to repair the G08 myself. I've already bought a bunch of replacement caps and transistors for it.

If I can't get it going then I'll look for someone willing to work on it. But I feel like I should at least try to do the stuff I could potentially fix myself. Besides it's part of the fun of this great hobby!
 
Very nice. Looking forward to seeing this thru the entire process (and not just the end result).

If you multigame it, don't forget to also purchase the Biltronix "rotate X-Y" display board. :)
 
Very nice. Looking forward to seeing this thru the entire process (and not just the end result).

If you multigame it, don't forget to also purchase the Biltronix "rotate X-Y" display board. :)

Wow, good point! I would do this one quickly since Bill mentioned that he may not be making more when he sold out!

Op, regarding repairing the G08 yourself, absolutely! It's just nice to know that someone's got your back if you need it.
 
Very nice. Looking forward to seeing this thru the entire process (and not just the end result).

If you multigame it, don't forget to also purchase the Biltronix "rotate X-Y" display board. :)

Yes, I have one on order. I'm really glad to be getting one because Tac/Scan is such a fun game. Played it at Kalan's arcade here in SoCal quite a few times and I'm really looking forward to having it at home. I haven't played the other games (Space Fury, Eliminator, Zektor) much. In fact, I've never played Zektor and only played Eliminator maybe once?
 
Wow, good point! I would do this one quickly since Bill mentioned that he may not be making more when he sold out!

Op, regarding repairing the G08 yourself, absolutely! It's just nice to know that someone's got your back if you need it.

Agreed! Don't think I would ever buy a machine that wasn't working if not for KLOV and having in the back of my mind that someone out there knows how to fix just about everything (and is probably willing to share).
 
Awesome. That game is a steal at $300, working or not. The side art on mine looked just like that, I think as it ages the glue softens and the entire decal slumped. Luckily the repro art looks pretty good for that game.

If you haven't already you should check out "Mongo's G80 mods", they should help keep this notoriously fragile game working once you get it working.

http://www.biltronix.com/pdf_files/Simple_Sega_G80_Vector_Mods.pdf

There are two mods listed for the monitor, the other is for the boardset (which can be accomplished with the vector labs PS replacement mentioned earlier). FWIW, I do not do the mod that moves the transistors... the purpose of the heat sink is to channel heat away from the top surface and into the area with the vanes, so sticking the transistors right in the area where the heat builds up seems counterproductive to trying to keep them cooler. But the restrapping of the transformer makes a lot of sense to me, lowering the voltage going into the monitor to lessen the possibility of overloading those finnicky circuits. Some have reported that this mod has picture quality effects but I had no such issues.

Good luck!
 
Sanding and Bondo

This cab is not in bad shape but it did have a couple of dinged up corners. The one on the front right was the worst.

I started by sanding down the side of the game to remove the left over adhesive and get a good surface for paint. I used 60 grit and then 120.

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Then I added the bondo:

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I flipped the game and sanded the front and then added more bondo:

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And more bondo:

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It's raining today so I'm giving it extra time to dry before sanding. Meanwhile I also needed to rebuild the base...
 

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Base Wrap

After pulling the pieces that surround the base I had to make new ones. I don't own a table saw so I had to cut these by hand. Even working carefully the pieces didn't come out perfectly straight. I put each piece in place and sanded down the high spots to make sure they didn't overhang the base:

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Once I had them straight, I had to cut the bevel. The sides are not the same length as the front and back pieces so this had to be done carefully.

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Finally got the pieces cut:

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I decided to go ahead and paint them black.

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These can't go on until I recut the T-molding slots where I've added bondo. Otherwise there's not enough clearance for the bit.
 

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I got the 2nd side sanded and re-cut the t-molding slot. Then I was able to attach the wooden pieces that surround the base. You can see it's not quite perfect but it's very close.

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I also put on the new leg levelers I bought last week. These are bit longer than the ones that came with the game so it's about 1cm higher. Not sure it matters except that this cab is really, really heavy when assembled. I'm a little worried they'll bend if they aren't screwed in farther:

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The base is done. I have a little more sanding to do and then this is ready for paint. I'm a big proponent of using laminate but there is no color that is an exact match for the stock brown, so I'm stuck with paint for this machine. I'm not going to paint it myself though. I don't have the equipment or a place to do it. Fortunately, there's a painter about a mile from me who will do it. I plan to bring him the cab this week.
 

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Off to Paint

With all the bondo and sanding done the cabinet was ready for paint.

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There's a professional shop near me that has done a bunch of painting and staining work for my house (doors and trim). I asked them to do it and, since my wife had the mini-van, they even offered to come pick it up.

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I gave them a back door to use for paint matching. I should have this back next week if all goes as planned. Then it will be time for side art. Meanwhile, I need to get to work on the control panel.
 

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Coin Door

Got my coin door back from powder coating last night. Once again, Dan at Primo did a great job. Here's how it looked when I got it:

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And here's how it looks now after a couple applications of powder:

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I also had all of the small parts for the door powder coated so the outside is ready to go. Unfortunately everything on the inside is a mess. You can see some of the rust on these mechs. The parts were just filthy.

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I decided to disassemble everything and soak them in rust remover for about 2 hours. (Yes, that's a planter box. It works great for soaking longer parts like marquee retainers.)

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Then I dried everything and it's looking much better.

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However the coin box was still a mess...
 

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