New Astro City Refurbishing

So I'm keeping it, and I'll be replacing the screen. But the replacement screen is potentially months away - pre-orders aren't going to open until February, and I have no idea what the price may be. So for now, I want to clean things up. Really go over it properly. Which involves, I think, the following work:

• Refinishing the exterior:
  • Stripping the old paint I added.
  • Scrubbing down anything I find under it to give a clean surface
  • Priming it
  • Painting it
• Replacing decals/stickers:
  • Side banners
  • Insert coin
• Restoring the power supply:
  • The speaker amp doesn't work at all.
  • I could do with building a new loom.
  • I just fixed enough for it to be useful, last time.
• Restoring the display:
  • Recapping would be good.
  • Even if I'm replacing the display in my cabinet, someone will buy it.
  • If I can't be bothered replacing all the caps, I'll at least confirm the ones there are working.
  • I've already ordered a new remote board already.
• Replace the following:
  • Display (when possible)
  • Speakers, likely with a pair intended for in-car use.
  • Coin mechanism to take new-style £1 coins.

It's around quarter to ten, 9:45AM. I've taken the upper-front of the cab, including the speaker bezel, and moved it into the dining room. Takinbg screws out, I'm starting to think I should just replace most of them. The brass screw heads are quite worn, though not unusable. Some are missing. I should measure them with the calipers and replace all of them when I put things back together. The marquees have been stashed in the office in a safe place. The back-sides scratch easily, and fixing up anything other than the black parts is hell, so I'm being careful.

There's a broken bit in the display bezel, right at the top. The washer will prevent that being an issue, but I should probably dig out some epoxy putty and repair it. There's a spare in the loft, but I'm not going to touch that yet. The display bezel is black, in relatively good condition (one small mark) - I never painted it, so I'm not doing anything else with it today.

With everything laid out on a thin painter's sheet, I applied a relatively light coat of the stripper. It does say to use a generous amount, but I'm taking things slowly. Application made with a wide brush. The speaker bezel is plastic, so I'm keeping an eye on that specifically. It isn't a part that'd be difficult to make with my 3D printer, but let's try to minimise the work.

The paint underneath is starting to bubble up. I scraped a bit off the speaker bezel, just to make sure it was only the paint coming up. It was surprising to see the original yellowed plastic I covered up all those years ago, and it made me feel slightly better about my haphazardous paintjob. The bubbling is inconsistent. I'd assumed the thickest layers would be first - specifically the part where the frame mates the control panel. But it's actually the sides. I think I may need to buy more stripper. Still checking every 25 minutes.

I'm using Hempel's Primer Undercoat, in a very Playstation-esque mid-grey. Going by the manual, it should be touch dry in around 5 hours, and ready for recoat in 6 to 96 hours?. Well, whatever, I'm in no rush.

My goal for this weekend is to get a single coat on every part. Then next week I'll sand them down and give them a second coat. The manual implies that two coats is enough for glass reinforced plastic, and I'd be inclined to agree. I actually think it looks quite nice with just the primer, and depending on how it ends up looking and feeling, I could see myself slapping a clear-coat on top of it. I probably wont do that. But I could. And I might.

Once I've finished the priming, it'll be the big job. I think I'll make a point to take a day off work when the weather is fantastic (or as fantastic as English weather can be in February/March). The paint I've decided to go with is Hempel's 10121 Matterhorn White. Which is rgb(244,244,244). Not quite VW Candy White, rgb(220, 219, 212) - apparently the original colour of the cabinet. But it trends closer to pure-white, which seems to be what most people expect anyway.

I've decided I'm going to roll and tip rather than spray. I spent an unfathomable amount of time comparing compressors, airless spray guns, nozzles and other bits-and-bobs. And every time I felt I had a working solution for spraying, I'd do a final check and find out Wagner products are shite, Graco products (like the A30) only take nozzles up to a size 15 (when I need a size 19-21). And then I'm back to the drawing board looking at compressors and comparing CFM.

I'm not a complete idiot - at a point, it's likely whatever I bought could be made to do the job. But at the cost of this stuff I'm inclined to buy once or not at all. I suppose in this case, I've picked the latter.

So - roll and tip. Rolling and tipping. This is how boats are regularly painted - apply with the roller, then lightly stroke with the brush tip. This presumably works to achieve a good even finish because boat paint is normally oil-based. Having applied thick top-coats before (varnish, mostly) - I can see how it works. Of course, I've never done this with paint, and I can only hope it has the same sort of self-levelling you can see with (i.e.) Rustins danish oil.

So let's say I screw up and the paintjob is shite. I'll be trying somewhere inconspicious first - specifically the underside of the cabinet. But lets say I can't get an even finish and it looks really bad. What to do? I'm not thinking much about it now, but here's some ideas:

• Just stick with the primer. It looks pretty good, is matte, so it can be sanded to a uniform finish. Varnish-in-a-can would go on a treat. Downside would be that the primer is grey. Upside would be that grey is cool.
• Figure out spray painting. Resign myself to online-shopping purgatory until I buy something takes paint out of a tub and fires it out of a gun-shaped object. An expense I'd like to avoid.
• Take it to a boat painting place. They have the kit, I can supply the paint. Primer is already done. The problem is finding one - I live on the coast, so there'll be at least one. Probably.
• White gloss spray-in-a-can. It works, it was what I originally used, and that looked fine. Probably less than £150 in total, and I know from the first time I did this to skip straight for the 'premium' plastikote and not bother with the cheaper stuff.

Next update probably when I've had a chance to piss about with the topcoat.

As explained in the last set of notes, I'm using Hempel's Primer Undercoat in med-grey. It has the aesthetic of a Playstation 1, which I actually found charming. How it would have looked with the marquees and side-art installed, I don't know. But the overall appearance was very nice. I think a lot of it is simply the result of matte paint providing a highly uniform finish with minimal effort - you can slap it on with as little care as you like, and it will still look like you did a proper job of it.

It did lead me to consider whether I actually wanted to stick with a factory-standard white. I'm not refurbishing this cabinet to sell, so does it really matter? Is it sacrilegious to take something with history and intentionally cast that history aside? If you asked me that question about fine hardwood furniture, I'd say it is. It really annoys me to see people buying Ercol-made ash furniture and painting it white. But here? It's a big old video game machine. 90% of them have been tinted by smoke, burnt with fag-ends, scratched to bits, and occasionally spilled upon. The authentic candy cabinet is a knocked-about piece of junk.

I ultimately decided that I wanted it to be visually similar to the factory finish, but would keep Hempel's matte Bilge and Locker Paint in the back of my mind, in case it became apparent a high-quality gloss finish with a roller and brush is impossible. Thankfully, that didn't come to pass.

Now that I have the first layer applied, here's my tips for applying Hempel's high gloss paint:

1. Hoover. Cover everything with polythene dust sheets. Wear tight-fitting clothing, ideally synthetic materials. Wear surgical gloves. Be bald. Dust and hair are the enemy.
2. Use disposable equipment. Paint tray covers, a big bag of 4in foam rollers, a stack of unused paintbrushes. Synthetic vs natural hair brushes doesn't matter - just don't buy shite that sheds bristles.
3. Work quickly. Very quickly. You have maybe 30 minutes before the paint you've poured into the roller tray begins to clump. When this happens, you'll end up with nasty little blobs of paint getting in the way while tipping. At that point, just stop. Whatever tools you're using go in the bin. Yeah, it's a waste, but you aren't going to be able to clean oil-based boat-paint off those bristles.
4. Accept the inevitable. The finish will be okay, but it will not be great. You should have taken it to a place with professional spraying services if you wanted that.

I have another layer to go, at which point I think I may be finished. There's no rush, so I'm going to be leaving it a full week, scuffing it down with the aformentioned black finishing pads, wiping that down, and then applying the next coat. The 750ml I started with is maybe 2/3 empty now, so 2x750ml tins seems to be the right amount. £19.80 each, VAT-inclusive.

However it is entirely possible I'll obsess over the final layer on parts like the control panel. The back and sides can be just okay, but the control panel needs to be a little better than that, as it's the key feature.

Rather than reuse the wires that were there, I've opted for new whenever possible, with AMP-UP connectors when possible. Case in point, the display connector:

As a general principle, one side of each wire is bare and terminated into a Wago splicing connector. The other side is either AMP-UP, or some form of spade connector. The intent behind this is to make it trivial to change out components like the display and speakers. Just open up the junction box, lift the lever of Wago connector, remove the old wire, insert the new, press down the lever.

It also helps that it saves on AMP-UP connectors. While I have a pretty good selection of places to purchase those connectors, they still cost a fair whack. And they're a massive pain to deal with when the wire slips out of the female pin (which then remains stuck inside the now-unusable male connector).

I haven't wired the controls. That's a long and boring (meditative?) job. I'm leaving it for a quiet few days off. Prospective work includes replacing the CFL tube with some sort of LED solution, replacing the speakers with something less treble-y. These, I think, are problems to tackle once I'm in a position to replace the CRT. I also need to touch-up the paint on the coin-door hinge, which cracked during re-assembly.

To wit, the next update is really contigent on Arcooda releasing their 27.5” LCD. Cheerio.