[スーパーレイジーロードの旅!!] ナムコポールポジション

[ataritoobin]

I am happy that i inspired you  

 

I made up a few stickers since my Space Invaders I and II machines are also missing the JAA tags (though I did some research and JAA might have changed their name to JAMMA as early as 1981 making the Pole Position stickers inaccurate - I'll check more into that).

These look too new/clean though.  The originals seem to have been made on pretty flimsy paper.

Test tag applied to Space Invaders: Part II:

[Belike]

Lol, excellent way to make stickers old.

[level42]

I knew tea had to be good for something...

[Superully]

damn cool i-tea

[Etienne MacGyver]

Love the mac gyver factor that you did there with the tea ! 

[level42]

I knew tea had to be good for something...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU_FRqTcAZE

(Tea is written Thee in Dutch and pronounced "Tay")

[ataritoobin]

   

Does anybody happen to have a close up pic of this JAMMA sticker?  I think my Sega Aero City cab (wish I still had it!  ) had this same version of the tag.

Reached out to a couple of collectors in Australia with Namco cockpits to hopefully get a few measurements for the coin door and seat.

I removed the steering wheel by the rear of the control panel so I was able to finish stripping the black paint off towards the center of the CP.  I did a couple of experiments with the Plasti Dip on the steering wheel grip, so we'll see if that turns out to be a viable repair.

The steering wheel appears to have been made by S.S. Ltd.  Didn't find much relevant info on the web about them.

Thankfully I'm just about done stripping paint.  Despite wearing gloves my fingernails were black for about a week while working on this  .

Looks like the original company that made the casters, Tochigiya, is still in business (noted by the "hammer" logo on the casters).  The casters don't seem to be too expensive, but shipping will cost a bit.

[ataritoobin]

De-rusted and re-painted the black trim pieces (two pieces that hold in the rear "window"/marquee and the bezel retainer):

Repaired some wood that was splitting on the base due to the casters/leg levelers being removed  :

Affixed the "Indoor Use Only" tag:

A comparison pic of the pedals:

Heh heh just noticed I put the gas pedal on upside down  

And how it stands today.  I have the CP off so I can experiment with patching up the bad cigarette burns.

[Etienne MacGyver]

I love this kind of pics :



Youre doing a great job!

[strykr]

Great job so far,
And the Tea thing is genius 

[ataritoobin]

I love this kind of pics :
Youre doing a great job!

Great job so far,
And the Tea thing is genius  

Thank you!  

To save others from pulling your hair out, the Dip Switch settings listed in the Namco manual and on the inside of the cabinet aren't even close to correct.  I found this out when I made some changes and the game would lock up on the title screen    Turns out that was the infamous Namco "freeze screen" (which doesn't work like it does on other Namco games...here if you coin up before the title screen you can still play, and it goes through the test mode).

Here are the settings from the Irish Pole Position II manual (the Atari Ireland-built PP games used the Namco PCBs):

[ataritoobin]

The control panel experiment seems to have worked pretty well (I know - worthless without pics!    Will add soon)

I made a mold of the bottom part of the panel to get a good copy of the texture.  I sanded the high points of the burns and tried using a thin layer of casting resin to patch the cigarette burnt parts .  Then I clamped the mold to that and it worked but the resin dried too inconsistently and was a bit messy.

I then tried evening out the "lips" of the burns by sanding, then filling the "pools" with Evercoat body filler (similar to Bondo, but applies thinner and is easier to work with in small areas), applied Vaseline to the mold I'd made and clamped that to the panel and that seemed to work a bit better.  The trick now will probably be to even up the burns first, then do a light skin of the Evercoat and apply the "texture" to that then paint.

[Muerto]

wow, cant wait to see pics of that little trick!

[gyruss]

great work so far!

[ataritoobin]

Thanks!!  

I took a mold of the lower portion of the control panel since it was the least damaged and largest flat area.  I used Liquid Latex by Tap Plastics (I believe a local establishment).  You brush the liquid latex on in layers as it dries.  When you've done about 8 or so layers, let it it dry for 24 hours and your left with an impression of your surface.

Here's a shot of the first coat of the Liquid Latex mold:

To fill the low areas in the burns, I used Evercoat Metal Glaze.

This abstract looking picture shows the patched areas so far.  The filler is blue - hard to tell in this pic due to lighting - but you can see how the texture of it matches the rest of the panel after having the rubber mold clamped to the surface while hardening.  It obviously needs to be evened out a bit, but I think it should turn out pretty decently.  Will just be a lot of baby steps to get the surface even.  

I should note that the Evercoat will be harder than the pliable plastic surface, but in a home environment in the relatively small areas that are covered, this shouldn't be an issue as the CP shouldn't be drastically flexed when attached.