Simpsons restoration

SuperGunGuru

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Donor 2014
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Well in the time that I've been collecting I've never really been one for a full on restoration attempt at least for the cosmetic side of things. I recently picked up a converted Simpsons cab for $100 bucks. Back in the day this game was a big part of my arcade experience and I've always wanted a Konami 4 player cab in the collection. First, I have to give a big shout out to my buddy JoshBrown80 for all his help with this so far. I wouldn't be nearly as far along without it. The original Simpsons side art was there under some marble contact paper (ugh) and black paint. We anxiously peeled away the marble contact paper to see what was there. Unfortunately there was a large piece of artwork missing on one side and someone had sanded the cabinet at one point (maybe trying to take the black off to uncover the Simpsons artwork) and it allowed the stripper I used to seep under and bubble up the artwork in spots. Since the artwork was a lost cause I had little choice but to put on some new artwork if I ever wanted it to look right. Thus began the long task of restoring this cabinet as best I can. Anyway, here are a few pics of what's gone on so far.

Check out the custom cut control panel made by the seller. It looks very nice and I don't want to try and hack it up to use as a Simpsons so I'll have to find a replacement.
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Note the control panel box was painted red before the marble paper was installed. I'm not sure but I'm thinking the seller had done this paint job a while back and frankly it was pretty rough. There were paint runs on the cp box and overspray onto the coin door area and even the speaker grill. Not sure how the speaker grill got overspray on it but oh well.
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A few more pics of the coin door work. We used this paint made for appliances so it's supposed to be more durable. I think the doors turned out great and yes they are supposed to have that orange peel looking texture to them. :)

Before
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After
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Done so far:

Remove old sideart and patch up cabinet to prep for new sideart
Paint coin doors and polish their metal parts
Strip nasty red paint, patch gouges, and repaint the control panel box
New screws and bolts for various cabinet hardware
Paint marquee bracket and control panel hinge
Start the re-wiring process (power and video are hooked up and checked with my JAMMA test PCB aka Pit-Fighter)

To Do:
New Sideart
New t-modling (I've decided to go with yellow even though it's nor factory but it looks very nice on a Simpsons)
Find complete control panel instead of trying to work with the custom made one it came with
Touch up front of cabinet and speaker grill
Finishing wiring
 
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Nice. It will definitely be well worth it when you get it all cleaned up and minty. I really gotta get cracking on my DK Jr. Ever since I finished my first cab, I've been lazy. Thanks for the inspiration. :)
 
Nice. It will definitely be well worth it when you get it all cleaned up and minty. I really gotta get cracking on my DK Jr. Ever since I finished my first cab, I've been lazy. Thanks for the inspiration. :)
Thanks. It's quite a process to clean up or replace almost every part on the cabinet right down to the various bolts and screws. At this point I'm probably looking at using mamemarquees.com sideart and maybe even their CPO and marquee. They are the only option anyways unless I find someone with NOS stuff. I saw someone over at BYOAC restore a Simpsons using mamemarquees stuff and it looked pretty nice. Even though I'm normally a stickler for factory original, I've seen a few people use yellow t-molding on a Simpsons and that's what I plan to do with this one. It really does make the game pop a bit more.
 
Hell Yeah Bill!!

I tell ya..seeing the before comapred to know..its already came quite a way :)
 
simpsons

Glad too see someone else enjoys The Simpsons and this Title. I would love too have one and restore it like your doing.

Actly need it for my Simpsons Collection.
 
Looks good I just got Simpsons 4 player from a namco arcade and for some reason the sides are painted black even though its dedicated can see the blue art in a few spot where the black is flaking off. Beat the game twice its pretty cool but I might have to put nba jam in for awhile as I could play that game all day. Another thought is this cab would work well for a 4 player D&D setup.
 
Looks good I just got Simpsons 4 player from a namco arcade and for some reason the sides are painted black even though its dedicated can see the blue art in a few spot where the black is flaking off. Beat the game twice its pretty cool but I might have to put nba jam in for awhile as I could play that game all day. Another thought is this cab would work well for a 4 player D&D setup.
NBA Jam uses 3 buttons, Simpsons only has 2.

And congrats to the guy starting the Simpsons restoration... one of my favorites from childhood also! I just picked up a second empty Simpsons cabinet and am also doing/building a Simpsons with the nicer parts between the two machines.
 
I'll let you know when I get all the guts transferred to the solid cabinet, I haven't exactly decided what to do with it yet. I have some of the parts for it but no pcb, wiring, monitor, etc...
 
Bump for some more work done today. First Josh and I discovered the red overspray by the speaker grills would come off with Simple Green! Woohoo! Next we decided to tackle the monitor which works, but it was pretty dirty and since we took it out to clean, we threw in a cap kit. While doing the cap kit a few of the old caps even hissed a bit when their legs were heated up. This thing hadn't even been touched before so it was neat to be the first guys to work on it and clean it up. I forgot to take any before pics, but the monitor was pretty dirty. I think the after pics speak for themselves. No, it's not a new monitor hehe.

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Our next task for today was repairing the speaker wiring. It had been hacked of course, but luckily I still had a spare 4 pin connector used by many Konami games of that vintage for stereo sound hookup. We wired the speakers up with new wiring and even took the time to bundle them close to how the originals had been. This is an in progress shot as we were soldering on the new wires. The speakers are now re-mounted with freshly painted grills and the spare connector has been wired in.

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Whoa that monitor looks nice and sparkling. After wrestling with a Sanyo, that one looks like an uncomplicated drink of cool water to work on. I loved playing the Simpson's when I was a kid, so keep up the good work.
 
Yeah the monitor turned out really really really good. We have cleaned numerous monitors, but somethin about this one just popped and made it look amazing....so cool!

Our last major hurdle is to redo the front panel of the cab and then it is basically ready for sideart, and wiring the cab as well....it has really came along a lot since what we started with :)

This easily rates up there with one of the most intense restos ive done...
 
Like a kid on Christmas, I anxiously opened a package containing a control panel courtesy of Steve23. A nice surprise on an unusual day off of work. :) Here's a few before pics and you can see the overlay is in pretty good shape other than the small piece missing from the lower right hand corner. Looks like some pop was spilled on this thing at one point and I was able to push on the plexiglass to see the pop is still wet (gross) so hopefully the cpo will clean up really well. The "after" pics will follow hopefully later this evening.

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Okay we took the CP apart and cleaned the hell out of it. I'm going to get some new sticks and buttons, but will keep this overlay in tact for now. Anyway, it's looking A LOT better without that pop on there. The plexi is still scratched up but I put back on temporarily. It will be replaced and I probably should have taken these after pics without the plexi on there, but oh well. You can see a dramatic difference without the paint and pop syrup. The plexi even had some nail polish on top of it, which is what was covering up Bart's head in the post above. Looks like someone else tried to remove it by scraping it based on the scratch on the plexi. Josh realized it appeared to be nail polish and luckily nail polish remover took it off. The nail polish remover also took off some black paint of some kind that had splattered near the top of the cpo. We were careful when applying the nail polish remover directly to uncovered cpo, but it turned out not to harm it and after a little agitating with a toothbrush, the paint came off. Overall I'm very pleased with the results in cleaning up the CP, even though it has that small missing piece, I can live with it for now.

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Not a whole lot of updates this past week, but work is still being done. As Josh said above we are at the last major hurdle which is doing touch up paint on the front panel of the cabinet. So far we've put on 4 coats of semi-gloss black with a rattle can but I haven't seen results that I can live with. I'll probably give it one more sanding and coat of paint, but I think I'm approaching that point where I need to just get a foam roller and try for a smooth surface. At least then it might be easier to get a consistent coat. I know using a rattle can isn't the preferred spray method and maybe even ghetto, but I figured for just black touch up work, it wouldn't be a big deal. If anyone has any tips on getting a rattle can job to look good, I'm all ears. Home Depot sells these cheapo hangle attachments for rattle cans, but I don't know if those would help any.
 
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Okay so a 5th coat tonight got the front pretty good, but with a few light streaks near the top. They don't seem to be horribly obvious, especially if it's not in direct sunlight. Being this close I will probably just live with it is rather than try to be too anal and mess things up. Supposedly it takes 24 hours for things to fully dry so maybe when I leave for work in the morning it will look even better, but for a rattle can, I'm pretty happy and would say it's 90%.

Edit: I need to get to Fastenal Friday and get new carriage bolts for the CP hinge to replace the missing ones and the 2 painted red.
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