Semi-Restoring a 1943 kit back to a Super Pac-Man Upright.

mhanlen1

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Semi-Restoring a 1943 kit back to a Super Pac-Man Upright.

Ok, last week I started a thread because I needed help identifying a cab and a monitor I bought. So for 1 or 2 of you the first 4 photos may look familiar.

I picked up a converted 1943 cab locally for $130, that had some monitor/video issues. I found out, with some help from a few guys on here, that the cab was originally a Super Pac-Man. Initially I wanted to repaint the cab and apply some new 1943 side art.

It's my second cab ever, and my 1st upright. When I got it home I decided to try and "solve" the video issue by cutting and splicing various wires inside. Because the cab had been crudely JAMMA-tized, there is a bit of strange wiring and left over parts from the super pac days. To make a long story short, I am no longer able to fire up the monitor and marquee light because of my tinkering. I think this has to do with some wires I cut from the power supply. Oh well, the cab seemed to have a serious hum bar anyway. The good news is that I can still hear the game play blind even though I have no power going to the monitor and marquee.

Frustrated with fucking up the cab further, I decided to strip the black paint off the cab. The cab was a pretty solid and mostly plywood and only had a few dings in the bottom. As I began to strip the cab I noticed that Super Pac-Man has painted-on/stenciled artwork. The idea then popped into my head that maybe I should try and restore the original paint, instead of repainting it black and buying some crappy artwork that didn't really fit the cab.

Although I am restoring the exterior, I decided that it would be a good idea to go ahead and buy a multiboard and sell off the 1943 PCB (to help offset the costs). I'm not that great with wiring and troubleshooting yet, so a Plug and Play JAMMA sounds great to me. That and I don't have unlimited space to keep acquiring cabinets.

So it begins, my first upright restoration. I'm determined to follow it though, and want to finish it in a month or two tops. It won't be perfect, I'm sure- but I thought I'd share my experiences here. So far, I've spent the good part of the weekend in the garage tackling the beast.

I case anyone is interested in seeing all the photos I'm taking of the work, here is the link to the entire set on Flickr. There are many more pictures, and the full size original images are located there too.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mhanlen1/sets/72157622516605766/
 

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Online I found that someone had color matched the blue from the cabinet, so it gave me a place to start. As I removed the old paint though combination of a stripping agent and sanding, the artwork underneath was revealed. It was a pretty abrasive process, so it further damaged the artwork underneath. I figured that I could repaint the cab by hand, even if it would be quite of a challenge. After stripping the cab down Friday evening, I went to lowe's and picked up the blue paint, and a bunch of strips to try and match the red and yellow.

So here are a few pictures of the cab after I stripped it down. In the following pictures, no: paint, bondo, or wood filler has been added.
 

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This is the work I completed, by mid morning on Sunday. In the pictures I've crudely cut in around much of the artwork. I have also started to apply wood filler and bondo to the imperfections in the plywood. While some of the blue may look a different shade depending on the photo, it's all the same color.
 

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Nice job so far. You'd make more money by selling the 1943 as a kit rather than just the pcb... since you have the CP, Marquee, Bezel, and PCB. Just a suggestion.




..
 
Nice job so far. You'd make more money by selling the 1943 as a kit rather than just the pcb... since you have the CP, Marquee, Bezel, and PCB. Just a suggestion.


The CP isn't the original 1943. It's a hack job that drilled through the original Super Pac CP and was overlaid with a generic Midway vinyl piece. I will sell the marquee and bezel with the board probably... or maybe trade for a multi and Super Pac marquee and bezel. I also am going to ditch the iso transformer (probably original) in the bottom of the cab in favor of Bob Roberts (or a similar) power supply kit.

Thanks again for the kind words.
 
Why would you get rid of the iso transformer? Are you going to try and run the monitor off of a switcher? If so, that sounds dangerous!! Maybe I'm reading it wrong.
 
I am getting rid of the Iso transformer thats in there but, I am going to replace it with another. The one that's in there is old, and I think it has problems, so I'm not going to use it. I have no idea if it's original or not, but I'd rather go with a newer one that I can trust.
 
good work so far, you'll have to mask off and repaint all the artwork on the cab since there are no stencils available. I need to do that to mine let us know the paint codes if you do it.
 
I've used that paint code for the blue on that game and it matched really well. I don't recall that there are codes for some of the other colors on that cab, though.

I hand painted an entire Joust cabinet rather than stenciling it. Turned out pretty good.
 
good work so far, you'll have to mask off and repaint all the artwork on the cab since there are no stencils available. I need to do that to mine let us know the paint codes if you do it.

I started to mask it off yesterday afternoon... although I took the pictures the night before.

I've used that paint code for the blue on that game and it matched really well. I don't recall that there are codes for some of the other colors on that cab, though.

I hand painted an entire Joust cabinet rather than stenciling it. Turned out pretty good.

The blue paint matches well. Unfortunately since no other paint codes are available, I had to go to Lowes and grab a handful of paint chips to try and get as close to the yellow and red as possible. I think I have two pretty good matches, and I'll post paint codes and pics when I'm done. You can use your own judgement as to how good they look.

I also ordered a drop in replacement power center from Bob Yesterday evening. I hope it fixes my video issue. I really want to get this finished before a big party we're having here next month.
 
Yes I still have the board, marquee, and bezel. I am not ready to sell the board, just yet. I would like to hold on to it until I get the power supply dropped in, and hooked up- at least another week or so. The arcade did have a video issue, when I bought it- and while I thought it was probably a grounding or monitor problem, I can't be 100% sure it wasn't board related. That aside I played half a dozen games and it played just fine and sounded great.

I haven't contacted anyone else about the board yet, or even had thought of a price. I'm also open to trades, but I'm pretty focused on my Super Pac right now- so any trade would be related to parts I need for it. If you'd like shoot me a PM.
 
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My replacement drop-in power supply from Bob Roberts came today. It looks great, and hopefully it's the key to my video problem. I also finished masking off the right side, and began to add my final coats of blue to those areas.

I also still have to mask off the left side, so I can coat it. I actually started coating some of the yellow on the left side, but decided it was important to finish the main areas first before I started heavily on the artwork. I peeled off the tape, and will start the tedious masking process tomorrow or saturday. Anyway, here are a few pictures, in an intermediate stage. Nothing exciting really, but something to look at in case your bored.
 

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So, I went ahead an installed my cap kit today. After capping a Sanyo this thing was a breeze. The board came out the cab without me having to remove the entire monitor. Hot damn. After the hour or two it took me to cap it IO went back to the garage, and put it back together. And I'll be damned... it fixed my problem.

Gone are the horizontal lines, the wavy image and bad geometry. I'm pretty happy.

You'll see that I also have Bob Robert's power supply hooked up in a temporary fashion to get everything powered. And it must be noted that I did hook it up and get an image the other day with Bob's power supply. It was before I installed the cap kit, and it still had the image problem. I just want to make it clear that my video problem wasn't a power supply issue.

I had also deemed it time to remove the masking tape off the front and right side after allowing the coats to dry for several days. I will begin the lettering and fine detail soon, but thought I'd show you how the blue looks after a few coats. Anyway, I'm sure I'll have more pictures in a few days when I begin the next step.

I'm still psyched that I resolved my video issues. It was my second cap kit ever, and it went well. It's smooth sailing from here... hopefully
 

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looking good so far, what paint did you use/paint code for the dark blue on the cab?
 
Well, here are my paint codes. The Blue is a color I found on this website...

http://superpacman.mattrouse.com/?p=21

Since it was a Valspar I copied the label down and took it into Lowe's. They were able to come up with the paint I'm using using that picture above. I also told them that I needed to make a Gallon of it, because the code above is for a quart. It's up to you how much you think you need. I figured I needed at least 2 quarts, which is about the same price as a gallon... so I naturally bought a gallon.

Here's a picture of the blue code, that I lowe's produced. The first set of numbers has partially rubbed off but I believe it read "104."

As far as my other colors, here are the codes for them. Let me stress though that I didn't computer color match the paint on my cab, nor did I find these codes online. I picked up dozens of chips from Lowe's and found the closest match to the colors on my cab. Anyway here they are.

I also plan on putting a satin clear coat over the final paint job to prtect it even further, I plan on finding a satin poly I think. It's not how the cab originally came, but that doesn't matter to me.

Also here's my photo set on Flickr, that has all these photos in their original size, plus more pictures not contained in this thread.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mhanlen1/sets/72157622516605766/
 

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That seems like a monumental task. Its my favorite game, though. I just got a cocktail table for free about a month ago. It gets played more than my Pac or Ms. Pac. All three of them are headed to a haunted maze on Halloween weekend.

As much as I love the cocktail, I still want an upright. I don't think I could take on the task of hand painting the cabinet. Kudos to you for doing it. Great job so far.
 
Well... hand painting with the help of masking tape. Even so, it sure as hell is tedious. Especially the tearing and applying of the tape.



Yesterday and today I started masking off sections of the lettering, and began painting black lines with an oil based paint. Of course, I'm going to have to remove and reapply tape in many stages to hit all the angles of the lettering. I've also began lightly sanding around the edges of the lettering to remove some high edges left from the multiple coats of blue.

It should be noted the the red and yellow paint do not cover underlying colors very well. I have no idea how many coats I'll need to cover some of the daker colors that I'm painting over.

Without stencils, I'm having to use the original artwork as a guide, and can't add a primer coat beforehand. This means I couldn't sand down to the plywood so I could preserve most of the artwork. This leads to some areas being slightly uneven, with areas of darker color bleeding through. Yellow is a bitch of a color to try and paint over darker colors.

Anyway here are a few pictures I took later this afternoon.
 

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