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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!
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