Well, it appears all clones were not the same. Strange, isn’t it?
The bezels I received were of the correct shape for my specific clone, but a bit larger. About that larger:
A bit of jigsaw action later, there you are:
This is the side where the coin mechanism is, I had to cut all the extra room needed on one side only as I had not enough clearance next to the coin mech.
On the other side, I could center it and trim both edges:
The cuts are not perfect but I don’t really care because it will be covered by the bezels.
Here’s how they were looking before… I know I want to keep some patina but this is a biit too rusty to my tastes.
After some sanding, polishing and clear coating them, this is what I obtained:
What’s interesting is I revealed what appears to be copper under the old rusty chrome.
I thought it looked amazing and decided no to remove 100% of the chrome.
I will completely strip them, but will paint them back in black.
I’m also planning on using shorter bolts and reverse them because I think the exposed bolts and welding joints look a bit stupid. By reverting them, the bolts will be facing the inside and will almost disappear. It’s not like you’re adjusting the legs height everyday…
There’s nothing better than a very long breaker bar to break some very tight bolds loose!
Now I can work on the lower legs and the aluminium feet separately.
The feet will be polished, and the lower legs sanded and clear coated, to get a nice patina.
The coin mechanism had a rivet in it. Even tho the internals are for 20cents, you couldn’t fit a 20 cents coin anymore. Drill it, throw the rivet away, adjust the mechanism and there you go! The next step is removing the other rivets, clean it up and put some new rivets or bolts. I’m not gonna break into my own machines so nice allen head bolts might look better. We’ll see.
The stripped down, vacuumed upper cab. Not too bad, but could be a bit better.
That’s more like it. Sanding it a bit makes it look like new again. Well, almost, but I won’t do a perfect inside restoration. Purists will say that’s a crime but hey, how often do you open the hood?
The aluminium feet. What’s that felt on one of them? Well, I have a missing foot, and I reckpn it’s been missing for a loooong time seeing they decided to equip it with a bandaid felt foot. I’m still not sure if I’ll try to source the missing foot, replace all of them with pinball feet (they are a bit larger but the thread is the same, once shortened, they would definitely fit), or just put some rubber feet on the 4 legs.
The allen key engaged in one of the picture is my attempt to unscrew the aluminium from the rest of the leg, so I can sand the upper part to get a nice brushed metal finish without scratching the aluminium. It’s so tight I’ve let it sit in WD40 for a week, we’ll see how it goes.
When I said the current wiring was a mess, I really meant it
Yes, not pretty.
So, now that the monitor is fixed, it’s time to take the whole thing apart to clean it, replace broken or missing part, polish it, paint it, improve it / whatever is needed to make it pretty and shiny again!
The power supply looks good. The screw that should be on the other end is actually on the side, with an angle (seriously?)
The grilles are half obstructed and rusty.
The fan will go directly to the bin. On top of being disgusting, it makes more noise than 3 lawn mowers.
Is this the list of the previous games that went into that cab before Gallag?
1. Always discharge your monitor before working on it!
You don’t this kind of high voltage through your body…
2. Don’t trust manuals
I mean, not always. The Sanyo 14-AZZ manual I had found online was very useful, but had errors in the list of capacitors, and missing ones. So, before you blindly replace a capacitor based on what you read in the repair manual, double check the value of the old one. If it’s completely off and the monitor kinda works anyway (and the capacitor has not exploded or leaked), there’s a pretty good chance the old one actually is of the correct type. Double check, search forums, ask around, but don’t trust the manual, especially the first print edition…
3. Repair your monitor
After changing almost all the capacitors (see above why I couldn’t replace them all… urm, this is my next step)… It’s alive!
The image is a bit crooked, but I guess I’ll need to adjust the deflection yoke manually. No fancy geometry menus on a 30 years old screen!
