My Midway Coin Door Restoration [Ms. Pac-Man]

[Neilyboy]

Well in case you missed my first post. I was lucky enough to pickup a Ms. Pac-Man cabinet in fairly good shape for $40 bucks. Yes $40 bucks. From a guy about an hour away from me. I called the guy up and he said $40 and its yours. I picked it up and arrived home with it later that night. If you want to see full cab pics go here http://neilyboy.mtco.com/pics/arcade/

Anyways, So first thing was first to get this coin door off and get it cleaned up. Now I have to be honest here. This took me way longer than it should have. But in between the time I picked up the cabinet and now (since I just put all the hardware back on the door this morning) I got married and finally had a free day to myself.

Here is the coin door the way it arrived in my garage sometime back in late May I believe.



It was in decent shape but needed some work.
So I started stripping all the hardware off the door.



With the help of my dog Bailey (foreground) and my wifes dog Hershey (background) sometime back first week in June.



Fully stripped coin door. Notice all the dirt in the background the dogs tore up...


Here is the front of the original door before I poped the rivets out of the midway logo plate.



Luckily, I have a friend who works in a paint shop and had some free time. I sent my parts away with him telling him I dont care how he paints this.
Or if its powder-coated or what but since he was doing this for FREE it was totally up to him. He was worried about 'fish-eye' if he were to powder-coat it and said. They had just finished cleaning out their spray booth and putting in new filters and he had this paint from PPG (I think) that he had used before and said he could get close to reproducing that 'hammered' finish that we all go after with these things.
He called me up like 3 months later (haha I wasnt worried about it and never rushed him since one it was free and two I was in no hurry with the wedding quickly approaching and all) and said that the parts were painted and they turned out pretty good. I was so excited to see what he had done. He told me his process (I probably dont remember it quite right but I can ask agian if anyone is interested) of blasting it with a plastic 'sand-blaster' then sanding with something then blasting again then sanding then tack-clothing it then primer and some more primer and then as thick as he could go with this paint without it running and looking like hell and it produced this (more pics below).


I was totally pleased with the final product. He did a great job!! And best of all it was free.

Another shot of the coin door taken outside this morning. Before I put the hardware back on.



And the backside of this beauty.



As im putting the hardware back on (Yes I realize I didnt route the wires quite right haha I have to take it all apart and run them properly.



A little more progress



more.



Until we have this.



I am totally satisfied and thats all that matters.



High-Res for detail if anyone wants a peek.
http://neilyboy.mtco.com/pics/CoinDoorRestoration/coin13large.JPG



Another High-Res for detail if you would like.
http://neilyboy.mtco.com/pics/CoinDoorRestoration/coin14large.JPG

Overall I think it turned out GREAT! All I am waiting for now is rikitiki to use my vector of the logoplate and get some free time to finish printing it so I can finish up my door! I think ill buy some new 25c coin inserts from him as well just to give it that fresh feeling all over.  If you have questions feel free to ask. I need to get ahold of my buddy that painted it and find out what paints he used so if anyone wants to try replicating this they can.

Take care and thanks for looking.

Neil

[More Cowbell]

Very nice. Are the chrome parts new or did I miss that? If not new, how did you clean those up so nice?

[Neilyboy]

Chrome parts were just brushed with some steel-wool for about 5 minutes each. They cleaned up beautifully as well. Only thing that will not be original is the logo plate which was too scratched up to save.

Neil

[Neilyboy]

Couple quick shots of the control panel with an original NOS overlay installed. I had hoped to find all NOS for this and was lucky enough to find this NOS overlay only problem was it had two creases in it it down by the play 2 Ms. Pac-Man's (You can see them in the picture). I took the overlay to a friend who works at signsnow (vinyl sign store) and they were able to apply it fairly well with a burnishing (sp?) tool. Then she gave me one of them and told me to go home with a hair dryer and keep going over it to see if I can work out the crease.. We will see I like it the way it is and im just happy as can be.



and keepin it NOS not repro.



Now to clean up the original joystick and buttons.. Anyone have any Ms. Pac-Man Control Panel hardware they want to get rid of thats in fairly good shape?

Neil

[HighNoon]

Looks good!

I just went through the very same thing with my Pac-Man.

How are you planning on doing your logo plate?

I went through Arcadeshop Amusements for my Pac.  The quality is nice.

Check out the plate you need here:

http://www.arcadeshop.com/pics/midway-logo-plate1.jpg


Take care.

[Neilyboy]

I had the artwork vectorized and sent it to rikitiki here on the board (www.thisoldgame.com) and he is supposed to be getting them printed up. Said he would have them done last week or hoped to have them done. Im sure he is close but I love his work (especially his burger time cab) and cant wait to get the plate.

Neil

[Level42]

Looks good!

I just went through the very same thing with my Pac-Man.

How are you planning on doing your logo plate?

I went through Arcadeshop Amusements for my Pac.  The quality is nice.

Check out the plate you need here:

http://www.arcadeshop.com/pics/midway-logo-plate1.jpg
Take care.

I got my Midway coindoor plate from Arcadeshop as well but was not 100% pleased with it. Check out my Galaxian restoration thread: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=62784.msg656196#msg656196

Also, the CP artwork I got from Arcadeshop was a misprint. I discussed this with Rich from thisoldgame.com and he produced absolutely fabulous CP artwork for the Galaxian, which are TRUE silkscreened.
He also made this on my request:

I hope he will finish the "galaxian" style coindoor plate soon so I can put in my order for all this eye-candy.

Rich is great in communications and he actualy changed everything I mentioned on the Galaxian CP art before I ordered it

Nothing but  for www.thisoldgame.com