Disassembly & Repair:
To get started, I removed the vent covers, metal parts, and the coin door assembly and any other hardware. The next task was to get rid of as much of the crappy black paint that I could. I used a random orbit electric sander for this. As I sanded the old paint away, it revealed the original artwork. Hey! This was Ms Pacman, not Galaga. Oh well. Close enough. I had already purchased new Galaga front and side art decals (they are not cheap), a Galaga expansion pack from Mike's Arcade, and I already had a set of Galaga circuit boards. I wasn't going to switch to Ms Pacman now although I'd be lying if I said I hadn't considered it. After all, it was what the original game was.
There were a lot of big gouges in the wood, splits, and cracks. There were screw holes from old ashtrays and from idiots who rudely ram screws in to hold the back door on instead of spending $5 for a lock. Some kid in some ancient arcade carved "Adam & Cindy" into the side. Hmm, my wife's name is Cindy... so who the hell is this twerp Adam then eh? After all of the sanding, I repaired all of the surface damage by filling all of the holes and scratches with bondo and sanding some more.
Cleaning:
Cleaning? Forget it being the cure-all here. These old stains aren't going anywhere. There's no escaping the inevitable meticulous ritual vacuuming session. The only way to ever make this interior look good again would be to paint it entirely.
Painting & Resurfacing:
Metal Parts:
The metal trim parts, coin door and frame, all had to be hand sanded and spray painted. I also paint hardware such as carriage bolts, support brackets, and whatever else. I don't like to open the back door on a nice looking cab and see old ugly dirty oxidized metal surfaces.
Cabinet:
After removing all of the T-molding and cleaning the cabinet throughly, I decided to paint the entire cabinet inside and out. All of the surfaces around the monitor that were originally black, I painted using Tremclad semi-gloss black and a foam roller. I would've preferred to spray everything but I didn't feel like blowing about a hundred bucks on an air-gun that day. The roller worked well enough. It looked okay when complete.
Now what about that ugly interior? The stains in the wood were pretty bad. I used the kind of white primer that is made to cover grafiti and to act as a barrier between the old stains and the new paint. All hail the uber rare white Galaga! These pictures were taken before all of the white coats were finished. Later, you'll see just how good the interior turned out in the completed project photos.
An unusual change of habit for me, I didn't use any formica laminate on the front or sides of this machine. Instead, I decided to try an oil based black paint called liquid plastic. The idea was that it was supposed to roller on and then smooth itself out like glass. What actually happened was that the foam roller left behind a million gajillion bubbles. The result was a textured surface. As I was painting I was thinking "oh no, this is going to really suck" and "I hope I don't have to take all this crap off later!" When it was all done and dry and I stood back and looked at it, I really liked what I saw. With black, you can get away with anything it seems. Seriously, the texture of the paint job was very appealing in an antique-y sort of way.
After everything was painted and resurfaced, I installed new leather-texture black T-molding and re-installed all of the vent covers. I also installed a new set of casters to make the machine easy to move around the room. Just after this photo was taken, I installed the front and side art decals and the molding along the bottom of the front panel.
Back Door:
I made a new back door from scratch using a sheet of 1/2" thick Russion birch plywood board. I chose this because it was extremely fine grained and true and had 9 layers that would prevent warping. It wasn't laminated so I applied black formica to the outside and painted it white on the inside. I removed some edge material with the router along the bottom edge of the door to make the retaining lip, just the like original door had. I painted the edges black, cut a hole for the lock, installed a double-"D" lock plate, installed the new lock, and the deed was done. A beautiful new back door. Total cost $30.
Continue to Galaga page 3 of 4, control panel
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