Vectorbeam Space War restoration

Very nice!

I see a Star Trek peeking out in those pictures. How's that been for you? Is it well behaving?
 
Very nice!

I see a Star Trek peeking out in those pictures. How's that been for you? Is it well behaving?

Got that a few months ago (thanks to a tip from Kalan) but haven't done more than look it over so far. It's complete but hasn't worked for 12 years. It will be my next project once Space War is working 100%. I have all the repro art and a Vector Labs multi-game kit for it as well once it's running. But right now I'm assuming the board and monitor are dead. I think I can fix the monitor but no idea how I'm going to repair the board stack as I don't have any working spares to narrow down the problem.

Solar Quest and Space War took a lot of time. Another month and I'll be all about Star Trek.
 
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Bring it on ... :)

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Gamefixer is quite well versed in Star Trek, recently :p

Is that a recommendation? Not familiar with gamefixer.

Bring it on ... :)

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All offers of help will be accepted! I don't have the gear or the experience to repair a Star Trek board stack. If I had a spare working set and a working monitor, maybe I could narrow it down but I have neither. In fact, I think the last working board set on eBay sold for more than I paid for this entire machine.

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Someone offered to help me with the Star Trek boards so I'll be sending them off to him maybe as soon as tomorrow.

Appreciate the tips on those repair threads. I read through them last night and it sounds like a lot of CPU board problems were fixed with a new Z80 and some cap replacements. Still, I don't have a test rig or even a working power supply at this point so I'm going to ship them off.

I'll have plenty to do repairing, repainting, polishing, powder coating, installing the Vector Labs power supply bypass and rebuilding the G08 to keep me busy for several months. I'll start a new restoration thread for it once I get a few weeks into it.
 
Someone offered to help me with the Star Trek boards so I'll be sending them off to him maybe as soon as tomorrow.

Appreciate the tips on those repair threads. I read through them last night and it sounds like a lot of CPU board problems were fixed with a new Z80 and some cap replacements. Still, I don't have a test rig or even a working power supply at this point so I'm going to ship them off.

I'll have plenty to do repairing, repainting, polishing, powder coating, installing the Vector Labs power supply bypass and rebuilding the G08 to keep me busy for several months. I'll start a new restoration thread for it once I get a few weeks into it.

If you'd be so kind, post a link to your new thread here in this thread too.
 
Control Panel Problem

I've been working on Star Trek and will have a restoration post up on that later this week. But today I got back to looking at my Space War control panel. I haven't been eager to put it back together because there's a problem with it. The paint is fine but it looks to me like whoever painted it first had to remove a bunch of rust and the rust left behind lots of little divots or dimples in the metal:

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I've been telling myself for weeks I could live with but bottom line is I can't. It looks terrible and I'm going to notice it every time I see the game so it's going to get repaired. I could fill it myself and spray paint it but I really prefer powder coating, especially for the control panel. The problem is that you can't really powder coat over a filler like bondo because the coating won't adhere to it.

However, today I spoke to Dan, the guy who does all my powder coating and he said they can fill this and coat it one way or another. So the panel is going in tomorrow and will be sand blasted, resurfaced and then coated.

I should have it back early next week and I'll add an after picture then. Then I can finally put this all back together!
 

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I've been working on Star Trek and will have a restoration post up on that later this week. But today I got back to looking at my Space War control panel. I haven't been eager to put it back together because there's a problem with it. The paint is fine but it looks to me like whoever painted it first had to remove a bunch of rust and the rust left behind lots of little divots or dimples in the metal:

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I've been telling myself for weeks I could live with but bottom line is I can't. It looks terrible and I'm going to notice it every time I see the game so it's going to get repaired. I could fill it myself and spray paint it but I really prefer powder coating, especially for the control panel. The problem is that you can't really powder coat over a filler like bondo because the coating won't adhere to it.

However, today I spoke to Dan, the guy who does all my powder coating and he said they can fill this and coat it one way or another. So the panel is going in tomorrow and will be sand blasted, resurfaced and then coated.

I should have it back early next week and I'll add an after picture then. Then I can finally put this all back together!

Looking forward to seeing how it looks, great game!
 
Dropped off the panel at the powder coating shop today and Dan (the owner) immediately pointed out the panel was currently powder coated, not painted as I had assumed. So that's further indication that whoever owned this previously really did spend some money trying to restore it. Unfortunately, they didn't get it right. So a newly powder coated panel with unrepaired rust damage. Why bother?

And that pretty much matches with the rest of this previous restoration effort. For instance, they gave it a nice paint job but didn't bother to mask off the interior so there's lots of overspray inside the cab and even some on the sound board, suggesting they didn't even bother to remove it.

If you're going to spend money painting, powder coating and restoring a game, why not take a little more time and effort to "make it right."

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Dropped off the panel at the powder coating shop today and Dan (the owner) immediately pointed out the panel was currently powder coated, not painted as I had assumed. So that's further indication that whoever owned this previously really did spend some money trying to restore it. Unfortunately, they didn't get it right. So a newly powder coated panel with unrepaired rust damage. Why bother?

And that pretty much matches with the rest of this previous restoration effort. For instance, they gave it a nice paint job but didn't bother to mask off the interior so there's lots of overspray inside the cab and even some on the sound board, suggesting they didn't even bother to remove it.

If you're going to spend money painting, powder coating and restoring a game, why not take a little more time and effort to "Make it right."

So he can still sandblast it and re-powdercoat it and have it come out looking great, right?
 
So he can still sandblast it and re-powdercoat it and have it come out looking great, right?

Yes, he said he would just sand blast it then "block sand" it and finally use satin black to powder coat it back to the same finish. I'm guessing he's going to use some kind of filler but I don't know. He was busy so I didn't have much time to chat when I dropped it off. But he's never done a poor job on anything I've brought him so I'm pretty confident it'll look good.

He's also working on a bunch of Star Trek parts for me right now. Should have those back Friday.

Meanwhile, I still need to polish all the Space War plexi pieces, including the one that sits behind the control panel.
 
i don't think the typical body glaze can handle the temps required for powder coating, i have often wondered how or what one could use to do this and am interested to find out what they use before powder coating to fill the voids
 
Not sure what temps are used here.... but if all the rust is gone and the panel is down to clean metal, filling it with metal would work. Lead, tin?, brazing would work, but the heat required would probably warp the panel.

I am curious though what they do use.... any material that can take the heat, and conduct electricity would be required I would imagine.

I've not pursued powder coating yet, as a couple people I've talked to locally have inquired, the pricing is always crazy for the size of the panel(s).
 
i currently use an automotive powder coating service for most of my lower end kinda stuff , pricing is reasonable, how another group when i want something near perfect and of course pricing is much higher

i have never asked either how they would or even if they could fill in rust pitted metal

i would think the melting point of lead would be too low, maybe brass would work

hopefully the capt' wil let us all know how its done
 
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