Took me a couple of weeks to fully restore the control panel. There are many different steps that all have to be done in order.
I started by completely disassembling, cleaning each part of the joysticks.
Each little metal part got a soak in some simple green.
One of the joysticks wasn’t moving very well and here is why.
Tool the joysticks outside and sprayed all the garbage out of the ball joint with some Brake Cleaner. (Awesome stuff)
Then lubricated the ball joint with some white lithium grease. I love this stuff. Virtually no odor. Doesn’t run and doesn’t attract dust.
Polished the plastic dust washers, plates and ball tops. Then reassembled the sticks.
I used my crappy heat gun from Harbor Freight to remove the old decal.
It gave in pretty easily with my scraper.
Nothing beats the smell of 30-year-old burning plastic and adhesive.
So as it turns out, removing the CPO was actually the easy part. The really hard part had just begun. Upon closer inspection, I realized that a very THICK layer of freakishly strong adhesive was still adhered to the panel.
So I took it outside and socked it with some Goo Gone and did a little scraping. Barley made a dent in it.
Then hit it with my heat gun on high with the scraper. Got a little more off. Mmmm….the lovely smell of smoldering adhesive.
Used my palm sander and got some more off. It’s putting up a very good fight.
Then went back to the Goo Gone and a razor blade. This is when it started to give up.
I then buffed it with some acetone to get it squeaky clean. (I snuck in a huff when nobody was looking)
Also, *Pro-tip*: use you kids' socks as rags...kids never keep their socks on anyway.
Here it is all perfectly smooth and ready for the new decal to take hold.
I ordered my new CPO from QuarterArcade.com. I’m very happy with it. It’s a faithful reproduction, right down to the tiny green “comic-book” dimples on the turtle’s nose and shell.
First step: Line it up the die-cut holes and use one of the existing bolts to hold it in place.
Second step: Peel back the top edge and cut off the backing
Third step: Use a felt squeegee to push it into place.
Fourth step: Totally freak out because the decal is not holding on the corners and then breathe a sigh of relief when you realize you have an extra bottle of Contact Cement that will get the decal to take hold of the corners.
Moral of the story: QuarterArcade’s CPO is printed on very ridged plastic. Either use a hair dryer to get it to relax around corners, or use contact cement. It will NOT hold on its own under a significant bend.
Here are the final results, with PlastX polished buttons in place: