Tekken 5 Restoration Rusted to Resurrected

Esom

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About two months ago I picked up a Tekken 5 dedicated cabinet from an arcade that was closing a location in NJ. I was just passing through, but the price was good enough for a short detour and pick-up. I was pretty happy with the condition when I unloaded it into my shop.

That happiness didn't last long.

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While rolling it into the shop I noticed there was a lot of little flakes of paint coming off it. I noticed there was a little rust at the front bottom edges and figured, "eh, that's where they all get moisture, no problem. Paint and move on." Then I opened up the CP to check out the wiring.

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Well, more rust in there. "Ok, basin probably holds moisture too. Can't be helped. A little more paint should be fine," I thought, optimistically.

Next, it had an LCD replacement in it, and that wasn't working, so I had already planned to replace it with a CRT. I popped off the monitor shroud and, you guessed it, more rust.

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By now I'm really questioning the value-to-work ratio of this thing. I could literally blow compressed air on any portion of the body and chunks of paint would fall off revealing massive tracts of rust. Well, no half-assing this one. I always wanted one of these, and this is how it was going to be. I got the entire body apart and began removing paint and rust. Interestingly, when you remove all the metal parts of the body this is what you're left with:

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Even then, those coin doors are also metal, and I probably should have given them a clean up too, but miraculously they're in quite good condition.

So, the first plan of attack was to die-grind off the paint and rust. It worked, but incredibly slowly. The paint they used was hard as nails! So much tougher than any other finish I'm used to. The shroud alone took several hours. I also tried to preserve the stickers. They're fun. The smaller, less damaged parts shined up pretty easily.

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But, once the "easy" stuff was out of the way... the big parts needed attention.

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Yeeeeaaaaaaah, I wasn't going to do all those inside corners with a die grinder. It was time for chemical warfare!

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After taking a bath in Aircraft Stripper, most of the parts came out paint free, and in dire need of a wire brushing.

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Continued in part 2!
 
Well, a quick wire wheeling and hand sanding to 180 got the metal back to a respectable condition

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I didn't really take pictures once I got them to the spray booth, but once the metal was prepared for finish I began with a DTM primer which smoothed all the grooves quite nicely.

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While painting, I returned to the problem of the monitor. @trashedcabs , who had given me invaluable help repairing my Showcase's monitor, came through with a Sanwa 29E31S chassis. Not the original to this machine, but close enough for my purposes. Paired with the flat tube from a WG D9400, we were in business!

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Yeah, I know, that's Tekken 4. That's what I had at hand! Anyway, it was around here that disaster struck!

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The original marquee, stained and probably subjected to the same dungeon dankness as the rest of the machine, shattered when trying to affix it in the header. I ordered a cheap replacement, and as they say, you get what you pay for.

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The replacement is super light and not the greatest print quality. Yeah, the original was yellowed, which probably actually made it look better, but eh, some day I'll get a nicer one... maybe. (Probably not)

With parts coming out of the booth, it was time to tackle the wiring. I'm not sure if the previous owner used a spoon when cutting and splicing wires, but it was a nightmare in there. With my preternatural skills honed over years of untangling children's kite strings and wives' yarn balls, I was able to at least make somewhat logical progress in the JAMMA harness department.

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On to part 3!
 
Well, the parts were all cured a few days after painting and reassembly began!

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You may notice in that second picture, I had to drill new holes for the ever-so-slightly-smaller-than-a-Japanese-29"-monitor monitor I was using. I wish I had taken a picture of my fancy ass jig I made. I am a woodworker by trade, so the urge to make jigs is strong. But I got them really well placed. Almost as if they were meant to be there!

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All put back together, new monitor in place, and underwhelming marquee all lit up! All that was left was the CP! Turns out, the previous owner upgraded from a spoon to a spork when wiring this portion. Yeah, I cut it all out. I put new Sanwa buttons in, still waiting on some Sanwa sticks to arrive, but that will be a quick swap.

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And it's done*! Back up and running, no more rust, and ready to waste your squirreled away data cards you've been hiding for 20 years!

A few tweaks before I'm truly done:
- The base cover I didn't paint because I'm planning to cut a whole new piece
- Print up some replacement stickers for the memory card readers and coin doors
- I used a texture spray for the parts that had a nice texture to begin with. It's a little more sandpaper-y than I had hoped for, so I may give it a quick spritz with a different product down the line.
- Find a better marquee
- Install the Sanwa joysticks when they arrive

Anyhow, I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. With the cost of the cabinet, Aircraft stripper (holy crap that stuff is expensive), paint, primer, all new hardware to replace the rusted bolts, replacement marquee, monitor chassis and buttons, I actually ended up still under budget for a good condition cabinet, so I can't complain too much.

Edit: Oh, speaking of hardware, the weirdest part of this whole project? Finding replacement leveling feet. They're the silliest things. 1/2"-13 threads on a 2 3/8" pad. Yeah, try finding that in a hardware store. I ended up finding them at a local industrial component wholesaler. And the reason I haven't already made the base cover? The threads that hold it in place? Completely alien unknown thread pattern. Not SAE (like every other bolt on the cabinet), not metric... just... who knows? When I do figure that out, I'll make a new cover.
 
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