I bought a Solar Quest from a Craigslist seller in Colorado last month (I posted a thread the day the truck arrived: http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=378773 ).
Because this was a CL purchase all I had was a few pics that didn't really show the condition. I knew there was some damage to the front corners but I hadn't actually seen it. The game looked pretty good when it arrived and, as promised, it was working:
The first thing I wanted to do was replace the control panel overlay and do something about the worn panel:
Unfortunately, no one makes a cpo for this game. I found one guy who had posted scans online but he was in Spain. I contacted him and, fortunately for me, his English was pretty good. He asked for a bunch of measurements for the buttons and the exhaust trails which are intended to match the ones on the bezel. I measured in inches and converted everything to centimeters.
Then I planned to address the panel itself. When I removed it I discovered one of the hinges had completely broken off at the factory weld points. Fortunately, there's a welder about a mile from me who I've worked with before. $20 bucks and it took him about 15 minutes (BTW, I was not looking at this when I took the picture.)
I took the repaired panel to my powder coater and left it to be stripped and coated in the black I always use. That took about a week and cost $45. Another week after that my repro cpo was done and on its way to America. (Price was about €32 plus €17 shipping):
However I made a mistake. The repro cpo was big enough for a full wrap of the panel instead of the short version you see above. I could have cut it down but why? I decided to go the full wrap which means I probably could have skipped the powder coating step.
In fact, the adhesive on the cpo didn't seem to stick well to the powder coating. I briefly panicked thinking it was a disaster. The cpo was bubbling and peeling up and then I broke out the 3M spray adhesive. Here's the final result:
The blue color isn't a perfect match with the bezel but the red trails match up pretty well. I'm pretty happy with how it came out.
Because this was a CL purchase all I had was a few pics that didn't really show the condition. I knew there was some damage to the front corners but I hadn't actually seen it. The game looked pretty good when it arrived and, as promised, it was working:
The first thing I wanted to do was replace the control panel overlay and do something about the worn panel:
Unfortunately, no one makes a cpo for this game. I found one guy who had posted scans online but he was in Spain. I contacted him and, fortunately for me, his English was pretty good. He asked for a bunch of measurements for the buttons and the exhaust trails which are intended to match the ones on the bezel. I measured in inches and converted everything to centimeters.
Then I planned to address the panel itself. When I removed it I discovered one of the hinges had completely broken off at the factory weld points. Fortunately, there's a welder about a mile from me who I've worked with before. $20 bucks and it took him about 15 minutes (BTW, I was not looking at this when I took the picture.)
I took the repaired panel to my powder coater and left it to be stripped and coated in the black I always use. That took about a week and cost $45. Another week after that my repro cpo was done and on its way to America. (Price was about €32 plus €17 shipping):
However I made a mistake. The repro cpo was big enough for a full wrap of the panel instead of the short version you see above. I could have cut it down but why? I decided to go the full wrap which means I probably could have skipped the powder coating step.
In fact, the adhesive on the cpo didn't seem to stick well to the powder coating. I briefly panicked thinking it was a disaster. The cpo was bubbling and peeling up and then I broke out the 3M spray adhesive. Here's the final result:
The blue color isn't a perfect match with the bezel but the red trails match up pretty well. I'm pretty happy with how it came out.
