Randy's Refurbishment - A Blast City Restauration

[ninn]

If you are looking for Candy, my first cab, take a sharp turn here

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Hi Guys!

Finally, the time had come to get another cab [ and restauration thread]

I opted for a blast city, - the first one I was seeing, to be precise.
It was delivered 1 week ago.

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With the help of two strong men, it was in my flat in no time - no disassembly required.
After figuring out where to switch it on, and what the safety switch is for, I was able to fire it up for the first time:



My girl called it a chav when she first saw it. And the name should rhyme to "Candy". So, He was named "Randy the Chav".
"Randy the Chav" got lots of little flaws, but he is in working condition. And the monitor is quite good, with very little convergence errors.

But, to be honest, Randy is a dirty one. He is a lot more dirty than expected.
Which is kinda ok, since I wanted to have him partly because of the renovation-fun. I think you just own something once you can repair (or clean) it.

Well ... no more talking, here are the things that need to be done

To-Do-List "Randy":

• Clean with warm water
• Clean with bleach
• Clean inside
• dust psu
• rust removal on CP hinge
• polish bezel
• fix chipped paint, touch up
• touch up yellowed doors
• fix stickers
• install 3 cam locks, locking latches
• adjust coinmech for 20cent
• build ampup-2-jst kick harness adapter
• rework cracks beneath CP
• get fluorescent lamp working
• clean/polish marquee
• polish whole cab
• adjust monitor / convergence
• Replace coinslot
• Change buttons and balls to fit better wish color scheme
• Bend speaker grill to original form
• clean coin basket and coin counters

The goal is to clean it and bring him back to life, without adding too much unnecessary makeup - just threat him like a old oil painting or alike

I will keep that thread up to date.



ninn


p.s.:
Here is a preview of things to come - not for the pussies with weak stomaches:

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grime everywhere ...

[geotrig]

prety dirty ninn ,looking forward to it .....no robots to help push it in

[emphatic]

Really looking forward to see you work your magic, ninn.

[Paulie]

Nice one, I'm really looking forward to seeing how this progresses too

[crunchywasp]

Randy the Chav

Looks ace. I'm looking forward to seeing your restoration too, however, like geotrig I'm a little concerned about the lack of robot support this time round

[ninn]

They are around, no worries.
They just take their time to get grown to that thing...

But I just captured cubebot while seducing the red ball top.

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[ninn]

This weekend, I wanted to start to clean Randy with warm water and some dish liquid as a first step.
I discovered soon, that a bowl of water and dish liquid would become a dirty, black soup in no time.



So the technique used was:
wash it, remove excess dirt with paper towel, rinse sponge, repeat.

To be honest, I expected a cleaner cab ... Well .. I could have had a personal look before buying. Or the seller should have told me... nevermind now.



After a rough first wash of the cab, I removed the control Panel and took it to the raccoon in the bathroom to do its job.

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Turned out pretty white, and the marquee became crystal clear too!

I found out that the Marquee, which I thought was just plain cardboard, was actually a Virtua Fighter marquee from the backside..

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Which is nice, because this looks miles better than plain cardboard and was for free.
Will help me bridge time until I order from Spectre.


I replaced the coinslot with the spare one I got from my Astro. I want a silver one, but the plastic replacement is a least not yellow.

[TheRedKnight]

Nice work!

Oh, you use the same brand of organic ballwash as I do.

[emphatic]

Nice work. I'd like a trained raccoon as well.

[geotrig]

lol i thought ninn was mixing his words up again "raccoon".
i need one of those

[ninn]

today, I cleaned off the rust on the CP hinge.

It looked like that, crusty and ugly:




Unscrewed it, put it to the workbench
and brushed it hard with a scratch brush





... got it greased with WD40, ...





... and put it back into Randy.



Took me 30 minutes, no sweat involed.
Hell of a difference!
shiny. easy fix.

Got some bonus points for adjusting the screws so that the Controlpanel now shuts supersnug.

[crunchywasp]

Looks miles better already, nice work so far

But I just captured cubebot while seducing the red ball top.

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[Paulie]

what a difference the raccoon has made to the control panel you've done a great job on the hinge too.

It's amazing how filthy some cabs get, but there's nothing more satisfying that giving them a scrub and exposing the white from underneath all of the grime.

[Chempop]

Looking good ninn! I love how well blasts clean up. Have you thought about what kinda marquee you'll want, or if the cab will be primarily for verts of horis? Going with boring green/pink butts and balls?

[ninn]

Thanks for asking, chempop!


I will order some marquees at spectre tomorrow.

I asked my girl what marquee she wants. She wanted a streetfighter one, last week. Today I asked her again, and she much prefered the BubbleBobble one. I would like to have the ChunLi-One and one with IBARA. - and of course, the Blast standard-Marquee.

Here are the marquees i threw an eye on:




Love the colors of this one, so classy!



Wonderful shades of blue, and ChunLi looks great on this one.





Good groupshot, but a bit too complex on the eyes, no good usage of color, logo too centered.





Ibara ... so nice ... great color scheme, simple. Would really love to have that one, but thats the wrong cab... see below.





Such a great motiv! But wrong cab again ... but this one is so great ... i wish it was just the doll and its ship, without instructions.





Bubble Bobble. My girl chose that. I think it is a bit bland, but ok .. it is in our room, so she should be bribed happy.





No-Brainer. I am missing this one, and to have it is always good. Can be used with every other flyer I own.




Problem is, Can't buy every marquee I want. Wish I could buy all of them. I would like to have 3 at max. Now I have to choose.

I think I would go for:

• Street Fighter in yellow and purple.
• Bubble Bobble
• ChunLi moneyshot

Ok, girl just told me to buy just one ... ... so I will buy two.
BubbleBobble and CumLi in Blue.

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I wanted a second cab, so I don't have to rotate Candy bi-annually. It just took half an hour to rotate, but was a war on my nerves every time.
So, I was looking for a cab to keep horizontal all the time. Candy, the NAC, was the one I bought for vertical games, so:
Randy is the straight guy.

He is for streetFighter, BubbleBobble, GhostnGoblins, Double Dragon, Final Fight ... and all the other classic horizontal games.

And, it also makes sense in my eyes to keep the 31khz screen horizontal .



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Buttonwise, I have not decided so far.

Candy is green and pink already, and I dont think that the green/pink-scheme fits particularly well on blasts, even if this appears to be stock.
I have no intentions to go stock for Randy, it should just look good.

I saw thatblue buttons look very good on those panels, maybe in combination with yellow.



I would love to own a versus-City 1P panel... [a 2-player panel would be great too ].
The colorscheme on that one is just great, by far the best looking panel in my eyes.



Randy will have installed 2 joysticks and 12 buttons most of the time, for the quick street fighter duell.


But... all these things will take time, because I will have to fill my wallet first...


So, I will have to stay with warm water and the tools I have at my hands, before I can go shopping again.

[jase]

Very nice write up ninn, awesome work so far and looks like it will be a beauty once its all cleaned up.

[Chempop]

Cool, That bubble marquee is pretty bland imho, maybe that's the charm... but I don't see it. I agree the versus panel is a looker (especially with yellow buttons). I basically only use sanwa screw ins, so if Candy has green/pink, then maybe Randy should have blue/red... or pimp it with all white!

[ArcadeSTG]

I really like this kind of threads.

Keep up the good work!

[codecrank]

love to read these threads, reminds me of the degunking I had to do with mine.

coming along great

[ninn]

Yesterday, I started removing scratches from the Bezel. But since this is not finished yet, I will not post any pictures yet...


Last week, I adjusted the coinmech.
Because, without proper adjusted coinmech, it just feels like a mame cab. I have no intention to stroke the switch manually for any longer

So, I grabed a ordinary crosshead screwdriver and went to adjust the coinmech.
The mech was a bit different than the mech that I am used to from Candy, but with some patience and problem-solving-skills I adjusted to to take just 20 cents, and reject all other coins. The coinmech was fully working - contrary to candy's mech, which had a bent plate - 10 minutes of work, 3 screws to adjust, superfun to do! Took me about 20 coins to get it adjusted right, without knowledge of the mech at all. Love those kind of real life puzzles.

When I closed the door, and dropped my first coins, It did not gave a credit. It sounded like it was stuck somewhere in the slide. When I wanted to open to coinmech-door to inspect the problem, i was not able to open the door.

Looking thru the service bay, I found this:





Problem analysed:
Since I am missing locks on the coinmech-door, it swings open a bit. This misalignment between slide and coinmech brings the coin to a halt. The coin locks in place between funel and slide, effectively blocking the door pretty well.

When the door is held closed, it workes like a charm.

I need locks.

I threw an eye on these locks, but I am not sure If they would fit.
http://www.smallcab.net/cam-locks-23mm- ... vi15_l5NQ0"

I am in need of 3 locks: For the Coin-Chute-Door, for the Cashbox-door, and the Control panel. I would prefer this to be the same key, but ... not even sure if they need the same lock.

Bassfishing manual states
220-5574 on Cashbox-Door
220-5575 on Control-Panel
220-5575 on Coin-Chute-Door

Can someone tell me, if the locks at smallcab would fit?
What size do I need?