Moon Patrol Restoration

[Wade]

Finally finished this one up (well, almost - it still has a couple of lights out.)

This was supposed to be a relatively easy restoration, but I had a lot of difficulties with the clearcoat, and some difficulties with the stenciling itself.  I spent about an extra 1-2 weeks because of these problems.

Here is what was done:

* new control panel overlay
* new buttons
* new t-molding
* added better condition bezel
* disassembled and cleaned everything
* vacuumed and scrubbed (water and bleche-wite) cabinet (inside and out)
* removed paint from sides
* repainted sides (stencils)
* clearcoated sides
* filled, sanded, and repainted front (resprayed all black)
* repainted carriage bolt heads black
* repainted coin doors
* cleaned and polished joystick ball, painted shaft
* new steel bar along bottom edges

Pictures to follow.

Wade

[Wade]

1. Before picture.  The paint on the other side was in much better condition.  I could have touched it up.  But this side, the paint was just flaking off.  I could rub my hand on it and a bunch of the light blue would come off.  Cleaning it just removed the paint!

2. Some of the stencils I made for this project.

[Wade]

1. Monitor, after hosing down and scrubbing with a soft paintbrush and cleaner.

2. Cleaned boards, power brick, repainted rear door.

[Wade]

1. More clean parts.

2. Repainted coin door.

[Wade]

1. One of the sides after stenciling (the other side actually turned out better).  The colors look off, but they are VERY close.  I used my brother's loaner camera and it makes some of these colors look strange.  Most notably, the dark blue looks far too dark in these pictures.

2. In the gameroom!

[Wade]

The game in the gameroom, surrounded by other games! Finally.

[DarkKobold]

Wow, Hot damn that is a good job.

[ChadTower]

Clearcoated sides?  What method did you use?

[arcadefever]

  i love pepole who restore old games you did a great job on that moon patrol

[arcadefever]

i went to your web page i saw you game room can you sned us more pictures because it look really nice

[CheffoJeffo]

Nice job ... and that T&F cocktail looks really sexy ... nice ...

Cheers.

[SirPeale]

Wade -

I don't remember, do you live anywhere near me?

If so, can I borrow your stencils?

[Wade]

Thanks for all the nice comments guys!   I spent a lot more time on this game than I really wanted to (about 4 weeks), but it's hard to complain once it's all over.

ChadTower, for the clearcoat, I tried several different approaches, but the one that worked best for me was to spray minwax polycrylic satin through my air gun.  This step wasn't absolutely necessary, but I wanted to protect the art a bit and give it all the same sheen.

Arcadefever, Thanks! I don't have any recent pictures on my web page, but I plan to update the page and pictures soon, now that the Moon Patrol is in there.  I have been holding out on updating because the MP was in progress.

Peale, I think you live quite a distance from me, but I might be able to ship the stencils.  I live in Charleston, WV, 25314.  Email me privately if you are interested, at wadelanham at hotmail.com.  BTW, do you have an original you can use for alignment purposes?

Wade

[SirPeale]

Email sent.  If you don't see it in your inbox, check your junk box.

[johnvv]

Great job!

I'm in the process of restoring a Joust and am approaching the clearcoat work.  In general, what were the problems you encountered with other methods?  Did you try with just spray can?

In cleaning up my very beat up Joust, I found a small section of orginal condition paint under the speaker panel.  I had seen on tutankham.com that Williams games used a glossy clearcoat.  I was very surprised at how glossy the orginal black areas were.  In my testing, I've tried the Minwas poly gloss and semi-gloss spray cans, but not satin.  Gloss was much closer to the original than semi-gloss.

Congrats on being finished.  I still have stencilling to do...

[Wade]

Johnvv,

   The problems I had with the mixwax polycrylic were bubbles in the finish and brush strokes in the finish.  I think the problems were related to the temperature, which was around 90F at the time.  Spraying it with a gun let me put it on heavy like I wanted, without any strokes or bubbles.

   I also tried Krylon Crystal Clear, which I have had decent results with in the past.  However, I couldn't get the sheen to be consistent.  Again, this might have been made worse by the outside temperature (it was probably drying far too quickly).

   Well, I'm not sure I believe the originals had a clearcoat, although I have also heard people say they had one.  My Moon Patrol showed no signs of clearcoat at all.  However, ALL the paint was highly glossy.

   I repainted the black areas on the insides and edges with Rustoleum Satin black, which was a very close match but just a tiny bit less glossy.  The front, I repainted Flat black (unoriginal), but that was only because I had to do a lot of filling and patching on that panel, and I would never have achieved decent looking results if I used Gloss.  I had plenty of trouble getting a good finish with Flat paint.

   I clearcoated the sides to get an even sheen between the different paints I used.  I used Satin because it was "shiny enough" and I already had it laying around.  In hindsight, I probably could have used Gloss and the results would have been good with the spray gun, because I had the game on its side and put the clear on heavy.  I was going for a decent looking finished product, more than a totally accurate reproduction, which might be more important to you.  It now has a fairly glossy sheen to it, but it isn't as glossy as the original high gloss.

   Good luck!  It took so long, that I'm not sure I'll do another repaint.  It'd be a lot easier and perhaps even cheaper, to just buy a real nice one from the start.  Or, maybe I'll take what I learned this time and my next experience will be better.   Who knows.

TTYL,
Wade

[rchadd]

Nice job ... and that T&F cocktail looks really sexy ... nice ...

Cheers.

yes i want to see more pics of T&F cocktail!

[Wade]

There are more pics of the T&F on my webpage.

Peale, I never got an email from you, not even in my junk filter.

Wade

[SirPeale]

Peale, I never got an email from you, not even in my junk filter.

Weird.  Anyway, the gist was how much do you think shipping would be on such a beast?

[Wade]

Bump to an old thread about stenciling.

Wade

[Spyridon]

Nice work.  How did you create the stencils?

[ChadTower]

I love good stenciling.

[Wade]

There's more than one way to skin a cat, but here's how I did it, and it worked pretty well.

1) Stuck clear contact paper over the graphics and traced them with a marker.
2) Pulled the clear contact paper off and stuck it onto posterboard.  Used hobby/utility knife to cut out holes in stencil.
3) Sprayed backside of posterboard with spray adhesive.
4) Most of both sides were the same aside from some details like text... so I only made one "side" of stencils, split them where needed and just flipped the required parts over to do the opposite side.

For painting:
1) Stripped old paint with paint stripper (only took about 15 minutes per side).
2) Painted with quality flat latex wall paint with fine/smooth foam roller. Maybe 2 coats, sanded smooth.
3) Sprayed details with stencils and regular spraycans (several light coats).
4) Lightly sanded to reduce edges of paint colors.
5) Sprayed over whole sides with satin polycrylic with spray gun.

I'd be 100% happy with the results if the dark blue weren't as dark.  It isn't as dark as the photos make it seem, but it is definitely darker than the stock blue color.  When color testing, be sure to paint several coats on a test sheet first (initially I thought the color was correct but after many coats it got too dark).

Thanks,
Wade