help: got a pacman cab that has been painted over and want to restore

[GMZombie]

just as the post says im trying to find out if the sideart is still in tact or if it has been ruined...how would i go about getting the black paint off? The machine was converted into a nintendo gradius i think is the correct spelling. it had a midway coin door and the monitor was obiously a pacman cause it has heavy burn in. still for 20 dollars not a bad deal...i wanted a pacman cab for my ms pac gal bootleg that i have

[Darkstalker]

Well, my suggestion would be to try and chip some of the black paint off to see what you have underneath before doing the entire side.  Pac-Man burn in just means the monitor was hooked to a Pac-Man PCB at one point.

You could use some diluted paint thinner, or a razor blade if you have a lot of time on your hands...

[GameDork]

My Pac Cab was painted over in gray paint. I could see the raised painting of the Pac art underneath.So, I just sanded it down until I could see the art clearly and made my own stencils.

You can look at the before and after pics in my project announcement thread:

http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=10;action=display;threadid=20460

[spriggy]

Go to this thread about paint removal and check out my reply.

Good Luck.

http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=21121;start=msg170837#msg170837

[daeven]

Be careful with the 3M Safe Stripper on a Pac Man cabinet.  I tried that on the first side of mine and it took the original artwork off as easily as the paint.  I'm doing the second side using Goof Off and its doing a much better job.  It does require a lot of rubbing!

[MonitorGuru]

My Pac cabinet didn't have the advantage of just being painted.

Someone took a scoring tool and dinged up the paint to the underlying plywood or primer, then they used a pink colored contact cement and placed a formica side on the cabinet (to convert it to, what else, Arkanoid.) [not that I dont like arkanoid, just that thats what ruined many a classic cab]

I have tried a number of things... heat gun, chemicals (goo off, paint thinner, electronic contact cleaner, GASOLINE (yes..desparate), extreme rubbing, dulled random orbital sander disc (basically paper only, no grit) and have barely made a dent in the pink crumbs of contact cement.

Does anyone have any idea what would remove this stuff?

[RayB]

Whatever you do, DON'T SAND! Read the other posts that say to use paint stripper or Goof Off. Don't use sandpaper!!