Now comes the most tedious part : removing the paint and rust from all the metal parts. 
Fortunately, I now have a new young apprentice... Darth Nuno Jr.   





 



Usual treatments to restore all these metal parts that have suffered greatly from years spent outdoors...





There you go, this is the best I could do. But as you can see, the rust has really taken hold in some spots.





That's strange, at first I thought the corner of this door was damaged   



But no, this cut is present on all four corners of this door. I've never seen such cuts on a coin door before :



Below is the piece that required the most time to work on (the grille that hides the speakers) :

For the third time in 10 years, I'm having trouble with the computer running the game! 
I'm sick of using PCs, especially since the game is now emulable on Raspberry. 
I've already completely replaced the computer once, then the graphics card, then the power supply, reinstalled Windows... In short, nothing but hassles that I no longer want in my game room. 

So I've made up my mind...I'm diving back into this arcade cabinet... It's May 1st, and Darth Nuno Jr is getting impatient.   



Fortunately, in the game room, there's plenty to keep him busy! 



So I'm now using the Raspberry to jamma Jr / Arpicade to play the game.
Many thanks to Dylon from Arpicade to provided me all the stuff needed    ...a ready easy and effective solution to play FFJr 



Back in business   



 

good start! 
For the control panel, there will be a bit of filling with metal putty, removing dust and repaint but it?ll do the trick.
The CPO isn't specific to the European version, so a repro will work just fine. However, you'll need a Wico joystick with a red ball, which is fairly easy to find. Same for buttons.

Thanks for your feedback. It's really great that Funworld has persevered in repairing this game and that, despite the difficulties, they continue to want to keep it running. 

You're absolutely right to make the most of it while you can, despite the technical issues.