My Mappy was Crappy

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Permalink Reply by Crowbarz on June 9, 2009 at 4:45pm

add some Gorilla Glue inside those grooves, squeeze the cab. together and the cabinet will be better than it ever was!

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Permalink Reply by Jamie Whitney on June 9, 2009 at 4:53pm

Crowbarz said:

add some Gorilla Glue inside those grooves, squeeze the cab. together and the cabinet will be better than it ever was!

Technically my posting is behind my actual progress. I've been working on the game for a week or so. I've gotten a lot further but haven't had a chance to get it all posted yet. I have it back in one piece now. I'll post more pics hopefully later tonight.

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Permalink Reply by Jamie Whitney on June 9, 2009 at 6:57pm

The control panel was just sitting loosely in place. I started taking it off and noticed a few things:


This control panel has no hinge. I've seen that before on Nintendo cabinets, Defender, etc... However, I've never seen one quite like this. The yellow dotted line shows the groove that the bottom edge of the control panel tucks inside. It has a thin plastic strap screwed to both the cabinet and the control panel to keep them connected.

The green arrows are pointing at a crack that runs the entire length of the wood trim that the control panel sits in. The crack is not noticable from the front and doesn't cause much of a problem. I may deal with this later and glue it...haven't decided yet.

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Permalink Reply by Jamie Whitney on June 9, 2009 at 11:45pm

The New Glue Review

Now for some heavy gluing action. I didn't have clamps big enough so I had an excuse to head to Home Depot to buy two bar clamps. I put wood glue on the exposed edges as needed. Here it is all clamped up:


There is another clamp at the bottom hiding just out of your view. This was very tricky to clamp back together. I had to tip the cabinet backwards in order to get the front to line up with the slot in the left side. Thankfully my wife was around to help tighten the clamps up as I don't have three hands (anymore).

Now, here's my first of probably many more bonehead moves... Check out this pic I took of a cross piece before I glued everything up:


In that pic, I'm holding it in the position I thought it should be in the cabinet. I had no reference as it was just laying at the bottom when I got it. You can also see the same piece in the first pic above after I glued it in place and BEFORE I realized it was UPSIDE DOWN!!

I didn't think it was worth trying to get it out now that everything was glued and clamped up tight, so I improvised. I took the hinge off and moved it to the bottom edge of that piece where it should be. Unfortunately, there was a half circle cut out right where I needed to put my screws for the hinge. You can see that in the pic above. In order to secure the hinge, I nailed a 3/4" x 3/4" block to the back side with my finish nail gun:


It may look a little crappy if you live inside the cabinet, but it was pretty solid. You can see it here from the other side:


The white marks show where my screws need to go. I pre-drilled the holes and screwed the hinge back on to undo my screwup:


Stay tuned for the next exciting installment, in which I screw something else up!!

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Permalink Reply by Parabolic on June 10, 2009 at 12:12am

zork40 said:

I didn't think it was worth trying to get it out now that everything was glued and clamped up tight, so I improvised. I took the hinge off and moved it to the bottom edge of that piece where it should be. Unfortunately, there was a half circle cut out right where I needed to put my screws for the hinge. You can see that in the pic above. In order to secure the hinge, I nailed a 3/4" x 3/4" block to the back side with my finish nail gun:

Just curious - are you going to add the notch for the bezel glass to lay into as well? I know there is a relief cut in there for it to sit flush with the cpanel. thats why the half circle is cut in it - so you can get to the glass to lift it out. May be worth it in the long run to flip it back over. JMO

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Permalink Reply by Jamie Whitney on June 10, 2009 at 12:43am

Parabolic said:

Just curious - are you going to add the notch for the bezel glass to lay into as well? I know there is a relief cut in there for it to sit flush with the cpanel. thats why the half circle is cut in it - so you can get to the glass to lift it out. May be worth it in the long run to flip it back over. JMO

Well, I guess I'll have to take it out and flip it around then. I've never seen inside another one that was actually put together. I thought maybe the notch was to route wires. That's going to be a bitch to get out of there...I'll have to cut it and then put some blocks in place to nail it to. Thanks for the info...that will save me trouble when I go to put the glass back in.

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Permalink Reply by Jamie Whitney on June 10, 2009 at 2:12am

Fixing You.♫..is Easy Cuz Your Beautiful..♫..

Thanks to Parabolic, I now know that the piece I put in backwards doesn't just serve to hold the control panel latch but also gives the bezel a lip to rest against. This only took me about an hour to fix, and wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Apparently I work OK in the wee hours of the morning.

I decided to cut the lip off the right side of that cross piece:


To protect the top visible area above where I was cutting I put two layers of painters tape:


Sawing away....


I only cut one side and was able to get it out:


Here's the area I cut, with the lip still inside the groove:


I was able to pry the lip out of the groove with a screwdriver:


Flipped the hinge around to the way it *should* be:


Notice the holes from where I had it? While it won't be visible I figured I might as well call my friend Elmer over to help me with that:


Here it is slathered in wood filler (apparently made from a cow!?):


While doing this, I figured I should reattach the bottom monitor bracket which was off when I got the cabinet. I put that back on, and cut (2) 3/4" x 3/4" blocks to have something to nail this to. Here it is back in place right side up:


Here you can see one of the blocks I used to secure it:


I guess I should head to bed....I have to get up early in the morning and pretend to work.

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Permalink Reply by Ataricade on June 10, 2009 at 8:03pm

Hey Jamie, good luck with this one! There's really a lot of work to do with it. Do you have the marquee for it? I saw some pop up on ebay last year but none as of late. Darin might even have a spare one of his repros lying around. If you need one I'd shoot him an email, can't hurt.

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Permalink Reply by Jamie Whitney on June 10, 2009 at 11:31pm

Ataricade said:

Hey Jamie, good luck with this one! There's really a lot of work to do with it. Do you have the marquee for it? I saw some pop up on ebay last year but none as of late. Darin might even have a spare one of his repros lying around. If you need one I'd shoot him an email, can't hurt.

Thanks! I do have a new (repro) marquee and CPO from Darin. I got them almost 2 years ago when I first got the game and they've just been sitting around. Can't wait to make use of them.

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Permalink Reply by Jamie Whitney on June 10, 2009 at 11:54pm

Broken Wheel in the Corner Pocket

After getting this glued up and stripping off the kickplate decals, I prepped the front for paint. Not much exciting to see there, and one of the pics above already shows it. So, on to the bottom of this bad boy.

Something wasn't quite right with the bottom of the cabinet. I laid it on its back to scope it out. I put some new leg levers on, but the real issue was some heavy damage. Check out the giant hole where the back left wheel should be!


I stuck my hand inside that hole, and here's what I found:


I decided to cut the corner off the side of the cabinet for two reasons. It was pretty mangled, and cutting it off would give me better access to fix the rest of the problem. Here it is after I cut it with the infrequently used Skill Saw:


and she's out:


You can see pretty well in that picture above how the bottom and back have lips routed into them that fit into grooves in the side of the cabinet. I could have routed out my new pieces but I didn't think it would be necessary. I cut those lips off. I hope it never happens to you.



Here it is, lip-less:


That will allow my 3/4" stock to fit nicely. I had a scrap piece of pine around, and held it in place:


I then put the framing square on top and marked the outside edge:


A couple of cuts later and she fits pretty good (not nailed yet):


Next, I cut the ragged piece of particle board on one side of the wheel hole:


and then the other. For the last remaining cut, I had to drill a hole to get my jigsaw in there:


Now its prepped for some replacement wood:


You'll notice I still have the power supply bolted to the bottom of the cabinet. I should have pulled this out before but its not going anywhere. It will come out and get cleaned up before I finish this. Anyways....

This shows a block I cut for one side of the hole in place. I put some glue on one edge, and drilled some pilot holes to keep it from splitting:


I secured it with some 3" screws, and some finish nails through the back side:


Also in that last picture, the corner is now nailed in place. Here's the other block going in:


Houston, we have wheel:


The bottom edge of the back of the cabinet was frayed in places. I noticed that there was a remnant of a black plastic piece of trim stapled on that bottom corner, and figured it would be good to replace it with something similar to cover over the crap-tastic bottom edge.

I was surprised (well, not really) that I couldn't find something like that at Home Depot in plastic. I opted for a piece of aluminum. Here it is after I cut it up and secured it with some screws:


It will get painted black when I paint the back of the cabinet.

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Permalink Reply by Ataricade on June 11, 2009 at 2:11pm

zork40 said:

Thanks! I do have a new (repro) marquee and CPO from Darin. I got them almost 2 years ago when I first got the game and they've just been sitting around. Can't wait to make use of them.

Ah ok good deal! You were smart to grab those while they were available.

Wow that was some decent damage down there where that wheel was. Looking forward to seeing how that area turns out when you're through.

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Permalink Reply by Jamie Whitney on June 11, 2009 at 3:06pm

Pro tip #73: Remove bolts, then remove coin door

I'm posting this out of sequence, as I did this before I worked on fixing that bottom corner. This is sort of like Back to the Future. I'm like Marty (only a little pudgier), and you can be Doc (or the girl if you prefer). Pretend we hopped in a Delorean, hit 88 mph and shot back into the past one day before my last post. Just do it.

Before I could prep the front of the cabinet for paint, I had to get the coin door off. I had the cabinet lying on its back, and reached in to take the bolts off. The nut for the bottom bolt seemed to be missing. I got the remaining 3 off, and the damn door would not come off.

I couldn't see very well inside the cabinet where the bolt came through because my giant head wouldn't fit through the coin door. It definitely felt as if no nut was on that bottom bolt. I kept playing with the door, trying to get it to come off. I figured maybe the bolt was bent and was causing it to stick in there. I tried to *gently* pry at it a bit to get it out, and ended up ripping the door right off! There actually was a nut on there, and I felt pretty stupid about it. I think they tightened it so much that it was just about embedded in the wood inside and undetectable by my fingers.

I forgot to take a picture of the damage on the outside around the bolt hole. It pushed the wood up and made a bit of a mess. I put a bunch of glue in there, and found a good use for the 2 brackets that control panel sits on. I put one above and below the damaged area and used them with the clamp to squeeze it all back together:


While that was drying, I used the heat gun to get the kickplate stickers off:


I followed that up with some Goof Off and a putty knife to get the adhesive off, which works great.


I would caution against using Goof Off on anything you don't want to damage, but it didn't do anything to the paint on the cabinet - I guess because it is oil based. It did however turn the adhesive into a gooey sludge that I was able to get right off:


I cleaned the slot for the t-molding using a utility knife. I scraped out any old glue that I thought would get in the way. Down near the bottom of the cabinet, I spotted some staples sticking right through the groove:


In that picture, you can only see one leg of the staple sticking out. The other one is sticking right through the groove down inside. This was about an inch or two up from the bottom of the cabinet on both sides, and I believe was fairly common as I've seen it done on other games. I think they used it to hold the t-molding in place at the bottom. That would definitely get in the way of the new molding, so I cut through the staples with my trusty faux dremel:


There were just a couple of small spots on the front of the cabinet that needed to be addressed. I hit them with some bondo, and sanded the whole thing down with my orbital sander:


It is now ready for some paint. At that point, I flipped it onto its right side and worked on fixing the bottom of the cabinet (see the last post).

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