Solar Quest restoration

Coin Door and Plexi parts

The coin door was a bit dirty and the paint was rusty and chipped in a few places. I took the entire door apart, soaked the rusty parts in metal rescue for an hour or so and then painted them:

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I also soaked the marquee retaining metal and the screws. After a few hours the rust was gone but the paint was also peeling.

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I just buzzed off the rest with my sander so I could repaint them:

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I got the board and the power supply reinstalled. The monitor brackets are also back in. As I mentioned yesterday, everything is screwed in from the inside so I don't have to put the bolts through the new laminate/side art.

Installed the new T-molding and polished the marquee and the bezel with some Novus 2. I went over each three times. The bezel could use a couple more passes but it's nearly done. So here's the progress today:

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Just need to get the monitor installed and connect the control panel. It's getting close.
 

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You might could talk to mrbill2084 I think his has the inner art. Maybe he could get it. Scanned for you?
 
I don't mind let you guys scan it, but I am not going to ship it and I don't have access to equipment to do it.

Appreciate the offer of help, Bill. I asked about this earlier in the thread and animesuperj mentioned he has an original and is working with someone who has made a scan of it. Obviously the fluorescent inks make it a challenge to reproduce.

But my fingers are crossed that we'll see a repro of this piece fairly soon. The game just isn't the same without it.
 
Appreciate the offer of help, Bill. I asked about this earlier in the thread and animesuperj mentioned he has an original and is working with someone who has made a scan of it. Obviously the fluorescent inks make it a challenge to reproduce.

But my fingers are crossed that we'll see a repro of this piece fairly soon. The game just isn't the same without it.

No problem. I almost never read in the restoration section, so if you end up needing mine, pm me.
 
Reassembly

Made some progress the last couple nights. I had already installed the monitor brackets so I finally reinstalled the monitor:

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There's a black bezel that goes around the monitor and mine was is pretty poor shape. I used it as a template and cut a new one (original on the bottom):

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Here's what it looks like installed:

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I also got the control panel installed with newly painted bolts and six new buttons.

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What's left is to reinstall the mirror and put on the back door. But before I do that...I realized this week I forgot to cut a slot for the power cord when I rebuilt the back panel. I'll have to do that before I can put the back door on. But this should be wrapped up Saturday and then it's back to making progress on Space War!
 

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Got the mirror installed and cut a space for the power cord. Had to trim about 1/4" off the back door because my placement of the lower panel wasn't perfect. But it still fits snugly after the cut. As you can see, I still need a lock and some touch up paint:

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Plugged the game in and everything still works. However, since I received it I noticed the monitor was pretty dim. While I was taking the game apart to work on it I realized the monitor has the Amperex M50-102W tube instead of the Sylvania 19VARP4.

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The Amperex tube is notorious for being dim and this one seems to fit the bill. There is a brightness pot on the monitor but it was turned up about 90% when I got it. I turned it up to 100% but the screen is still dim.

So I'm thinking this machine needs a tube swap. There's a drop in replacement available on eBay so I'm going to order one. Never done a tube swap so this will be a learning experience.
 

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Look what arrived today! Opened the door and found this big box on the porch:

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Very well packed:

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It looks so nice I want to order another one immediately!

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Not sure if I'll try to install this tonight or continue working on Space War and save this for the weekend. But it will get done soon. Hopefully these are as easy to replace as I've heard. I'm going to be very careful.
 

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I really need to get a couple new tubes and do that to mine. Luckily the majority of my Cine games are super bright, but I got a few that could use a new tube. Looking forward to the before/after pics!
 
Yes, I've been trying to spread the word on this stuff. I started using it after buying a 2' x 4' piece for the front of my Star Castle. It was so much easier than using contact cement that I started buying 3' x 8' sheets for game sides.

It's not cheap. Regular vertical grade laminate is about $45 for a 3'x8' sheet. The self-adhesive stuff is around $85. So you're talking around $170 plus tax to do both sides of a game instead of $90 (+ cost of cement).

The advantage is that I can do a side in about 30 minutes with no drippy, smelly contact cement. No rollers. No waiting for it to dry (but not too dry). No dowels. It's much easier to work with and looks just as good.

And, yes, it comes in black. I'll be using a black sheet for the front of the game.

Do you have a link on this stuff? Getting ready to buy some laminate.
 

That's the same brand I used. However, that's the laminate without the adhesive on the back. So if you order that you'll need to buy some contact cement and apply it that way.

Also, I prefer 3'x8' sheets rather than 4x8 because you're paying by the square foot. Next time I order I'm going to see if they'll do 3'x6'. That would work for most games and would be even cheaper and less waste.

If you want to go with the self-adhesive stuff you'll probably have to go in and special order it at Home Depot. I put up a post about it here and there's a bunch of photos showing the steps of using the self-adhesive laminate below that: http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=380556&page=4

The self-adhesive stuff is nearly double the price but much easier to use and very little odor compared to contact cement. Also, the stuff I order is a bit thinner: 0.032 inches vs. 0.039 inches.
 
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The self-adhesive stuff is nearly double the price but much easier to use and very little odor compared to contact cement. Also, the stuff I order is a bit thinner: 0.032 inches vs. 0.039 inches.

Do you find that the T molding is off a little bit due to the thickness of the laminate? Thanks for the writeup, very helpful.
 
Do you find that the T molding is off a little bit due to the thickness of the laminate? Thanks for the writeup, very helpful.

The laminate is very, very thin so it doesn't appear to stick out very much. I generally find that the existing laminate on the inside edge of the cabinet sticks out more because over the years it peels a bit at the edges. I often have to touch this up with paint so it doesn't show.

Here's a pic showing what it looks like on edge (this is from my Star Castle):

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Here's a photo of Space War that shows what you can see looking straight down on the t-molding:

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You can see the edge of the laminate in this pic. It's actually the wood/original laminate on the interior edge that is sticking out more from the t-molding, though it's hard to see because I touched it up with black paint.

I think if you wanted it to be perfect you'd have to disassemble the cab and sand and resurface the interior of the panels as well as the exterior but that would be very time consuming to say the least. You could go with wider t-molding like 13/16th. I think John from John's Arcade did that in one of his videos. However that seems to be thicker and has a slightly wider tongue as well. I've never tried it myself.
 

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Tube Swap

Made some progress this weekend! As mentioned above, my game had the Amperex tube and I found that it was dim even with the brightness pot cranked all the way up. Here's what it looked like, in the dark, at 100% brightness:

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Not only was it dim in complete darkness it also looked somewhat fuzzy. I dropped the monitor, removed the neck board and yoke (one screw) and then disconnected the tube from the chassis by removing the four screws at the corners:

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After I removed the overlay I could see there was some burn in on this tube:

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Here's the replacement:

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However it was about at this point I noticed a serious problem. Two of the four tabs that would hold the new tube to the chassis were seriously bent:

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There was no way the screws would hold this to the chassis like this. But these tabs are thick so what to do?
 

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Tube Swap part 2

I knew I had to bend those tabs back but all I could think of was all the ways this could go very, very bad. I eventually just stuck a screwdriver through the tab and applied pressure until it started to move. I have to tell you, I was really expecting the tab would break off or the tube would explode from the torque on the band. Amazingly, I was able to bend both of them back without any disaster:

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With that done, it was a quick job to attach the new tube to the chassis, replace the yoke and the neck connector and then install the monitor back in the game:

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Time to test my work. I connected a couple of cables and then fired it up. The monitor was immediately brighter even with the lights on. On the old monitor when I turned the brightness pot below about 50% the entire screen went black. But this picture is about 50% (and even when I turned the brightness all the way down I could still faintly see my ship):

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I did spend about 15 minutes adjusting the monitor, which is not easy because of the design of this game. I had to reach through the coin door with my nylon adjustment tool. Eventualy I got it looking pretty good:

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And here it is all back together. It looks great now. Very glad I did the tube swap:

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So this game is now officially at 95%. I'm still missing one coin door flap and my replacement Cinematronics sticker is on order. The big thing still missing is the black light art piece. Fingers crossed the repro will happen. If not I may have to come up with a substitute.
 

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