Dragon's Lair Restoration

[More Cowbell]

Dragon’s Lair was one of my absolute favorite games back in the day. I know a lot of people hate it but I thought it was just the greatest. Lots of good memories associated with it. I’ve kept my eyes open for a cabinet to buy or restore for a long time and nothing has ever presented itself to me. I listed a WTB thread at KLOV and someone somewhat local came through with a DL that had been converted to a Ghosts & Goblins. I made the 50+ mile drive to pick it up and found it to be in pretty rough shape. That’s ok, I don’t mind putting that kind of work into it, especially since I got it for $40! It is solid overall but it has some really rough spots that need some major bondo work done. Also, the lower marquee was cut off to allow for the straight marquee of G&G as opposed to the dimensional marquee of DL. Since the weather was extremely cold for the last week or so here in Chicago, my wife was nice enough to allow the cabinet into our living room so that I could work on it over a nice long weekend (Thursday through Monday). So if you see drapes in the background, that’s why. I took it back into the garage each time I sanded.

[More Cowbell]

I started by cleaning the cab out (mouse nests) and removing the control panel, coin door, marquee, lower marquee, and coin box. I noticed the coin box had some crumbly tape that said Ghosts & Goblins on it. The tape came off and under it was Dragons Lair in sharpie. Same goes with pulling off the cpo, there’s some DL peeking through under there. Exciting! Anticipation growing! I decided that there was no saving the side vinyl so my son and I started stripping it off. He lost interest after 5 minutes and I was left to pick tiny bits of vinyl off the sides for several hours. There’s no easy way to do it. I tried a heat gun but that didn’t speed it up much and left glue residue behind. I finally ended up using a razor blade scraper which left some gouges but I figured I could fix that up later. Once the sides were stripped I got down to bondo-ing the rough spots. I scraped the chunked up areas out to get any loose debris or loose wood out. On the biggest area I decided to drill some holes and put some pegs in to give the bondo something more to grab onto. I probably should have done larger pegs but at least it was something. Bondo is kind of tough to work with for me so I like to build it up. A few layers and I had the holes filled. I did this for the area by the control panel and the top and bottom corners (all on the left side). Of course it looks like crap until you sand it, then you start to see it coming into shape.

[More Cowbell]

While waiting for bondo to harden, I worked on the control panel. One of the latches had come apart from the control panel and someone in the past drilled some holes to attach a new latch. I also had some extra holes that needed filling. I bought something called JB Weld hoping that it would do a good job of being a permanent adhesive. Man that stuff gets pretty damn permanent! I “welded” some pieces of acrylic under the holes and “welded” the latch onto the control panel. Wait 12 hours or so and they are not going anywhere (I hope). Filled the holes with bondo and sanded. Nice and smooth. Once the bondo hardened on the cabinet, I took it out to the garage for a good sanding. I used a rotary sander and it worked great. There were some places that I had to go back and refill due to some bubbles or areas I just plain missed. I also filled all of the gouges on the side with spackle and sanded that as well. Those weren’t very deep so I didn’t mind using the weaker stuff for that.

[More Cowbell]

Then I got to work on the coin door. I know a lot of people strip everything down to the bare metal when doing restores, but I tend to take the easy route. Since it was in good shape except for the paint, I decided just to repaint. I cleaned it thoroughly to get any loose paint off and covered the coin acceptors (red plastic) with painter’s tape. I also covered the lock for some reason, since I’ll be replacing the lock, I’m not sure where my head was when I spent the time on that. I use a spray paint from Ace Hardware called something like Rust Eze or Rust something. It’s made specifically to go over rusty stuff. It’s nice and thick so it covers bad paint well and holds together even if some of the surface won’t let it adhere as well. The pic I took is after only an hour or so of drying so it looks a little uneven. It looks perfect in real life. I have a Cinematronics sticker coming from Cysnake over at KLOV which will look great back on the coin door.

[More Cowbell]

Somewhere over the weekend, I found time to cut the lower marquee. I used the old one as a template for width, but used the Jakobud plans to determine the angle of cuts for the front. I have heard that the Jakobud plans aren’t perfect so I took the leap of faith that at least this part was right. It worked out and the angles look good compared to the upper marquee. I attached blocking to the lower marquee piece and screwed it into place. If it needs to be removed and adjusted, it will be easy to do so, just 6 screws holding it in place. Once that was in, I decided it was time to start painting. I had a quart of primer tinted as darkly as possible and started the whole thing off with a layer of that. I just did that last night so I’ll likely sand it tonight and give it another coat of primer if it needs it. You may have noticed that I didn’t replace the textured vinyl. I’m not concerned that this cabinet is 100% accurate to the original as I’m going to be running Daphne on it. I left the internal wiring in tact in case future generations want to restore it 100%, but all there was inside was wiring so it would have been difficult to replace the other laser disc elements. It’s been a blast to get it looking like it does now compared to where it started and I can’t wait to really get going on the rest. I have sideart, marquee, and cpo on their way.

[Spyridon]

Nice work so far.  I'd love to pick up a Dragon's Lair at some point.  Unfortunately, your Daphne comment may get this nice restoration moved to a different area.

Is your scoreboard still in place or do you need to find a replacement?

[More Cowbell]

I need a replacement scoreboard. I'll be keeping an eye out for it on eBay and anywhere else I can. I figured I would start with the restoration here and if the powers that be deem it a standard MAME cab, so be it. The only real difference is that this will be running on a computer instead of a laser disc player. I'm fine with it wherever, I mostly just wanted to put it all down on "paper" for posterity and for anyone doing one in the future that may benefit from something. There were several good restores out there on the innerwebs that I scoured before I even landed the cabinet.

[Steve]

My Dragon's Lair runs Daphne (and I used the HD rip of the game and it's AWESOME)

I got a repro scoreboard that has Daphne support and works a treat.

I'll see if I can track down a scoreboard and I'll let you know 

Great to see another DL coming back (and a fan of the game too)

[More Cowbell]

That would be awesome, Steve. Let me know what you find out and I'll keep this thread updated if I find one myself. 

[More Cowbell]

I received the marquee and cpo from Quarterarcade yesterday. I have to say I'm not entirely impressed at first sight. They both look very grainy. I'm hoping they will look fine once installed. Now I need to focus my attention on recreating the marquee plexi. It has that bowtie shape and is bent in two places so it's not as easy as just cutting to fit. I plan on cutting it to shape, then heating it with a heat gun briefly and hoping for the best. Fortunately, the marquee goes on the outside of the plexi so any imperfections will be covered. I'll take some pics of the marquee and cpo and the process of creating the plexi bends.

[polaris]

I received the marquee and cpo from Quarterarcade yesterday. I have to say I'm not entirely impressed at first sight. They both look very grainy. I'm hoping they will look fine once installed. Now I need to focus my attention on recreating the marquee plexi. It has that bowtie shape and is bent in two places so it's not as easy as just cutting to fit. I plan on cutting it to shape, then heating it with a heat gun briefly and hoping for the best. Fortunately, the marquee goes on the outside of the plexi so any imperfections will be covered. I'll take some pics of the marquee and cpo and the process of creating the plexi bends.

don't know if you saw it but someone posted a vid of them bending plexi with a heat gun in project announcements a few months back , ill try and find the link

EDIT here you go

[More Cowbell]

Awesome link, polaris! That's exactly what I had planned on doing and I'm glad to see it will work. My bends are not near 90 degrees and the plexi is also only about 6 inches wide where it will be bent so it should be super easy. Famous last words.

[erlsjj]

Nice work so far! Another one of my favorite games. Good luck with the restore.

[More Cowbell]

Thanks, erlsjj. I made some good progress this weekend. Finally some rewarding progress that gets it closer to Dragon's Lair as opposed to last week which just got it to a blank grey cabinet. My wife finally lost patience with having it in the living room so I did one last sanding in the garage and moved it to the basement. Then I went about starting on installing the cpo. I sanded the control panel as best I could to remove all of the old adhesive. You can see that there is still some screen print left over from the original control panel. I install my cpo’s by dry fitting it with the buttons in, adjusting, and then cutting some of the backing off. I stick down that area, remove the buttons, then remove the rest of the backing and stick down the rest. Great plan, huh? Yeah, usually it works great. Unfortunately, the control panel is slightly tweaked which I hadn’t noticed so the whole thing ended up a little bit off. No one would ever notice it, but I know and it bugs me. Hopefully I can erase it from my memory with time. Then I started painting. The picture below is after two coats of semi-gloss paint from Home Depot. The stuff covers really well and goes a long way. I use a foam roller and the finishes usually come out great. I put another two coats on just for grins since I had paint in the pan, you’ll see the results of that in the next post.

[More Cowbell]

Next it was time to get the marquee plexi cut and bent. I dreaded this and looked forward to it at the same time as it was something new that I hadn’t tried before. I was confused as to how to cut the initial piece. Should I just cut it to match the marquee overlay? Would things change as it was bent? I ended up cutting it slightly larger and figured I would cut it down to size. The cutting was from hell as I tried to use a jigsaw figuring that the edges would be hidden under the marquee brackets and I’ve cut plexi plenty of times with a table saw. Every once in a while the saw would catch and just tear a piece of plexi or throw a big crack in it. I had to move very slowly and keep it supported as well as possible. I finally got my oversized, unbent marquee. I dry fit it in place and marked where it would need to be bent. I secured it to a piece of wood with the marks on the edge and started heating with a heat gun. Only a few minutes to get it hot enough to bend. Tried it out, bent more, repeat. The bending worked great with no bubbling or even hints of clouding. I cut it to fit mostly with a miter saw moving slowly with that as well. Once again, I dry fit the marquee overlay to get it centered and straight, clamping it in place. I took one end of the clamps off and cut off the backing, stuck it down, and repeated with the rest. Trimmed off the excess and it was complete. I have the lower bracket but not one for the top so I decided to try to make one myself. I used a piece of aluminum L channel that I had lying around and cut a notch out of it with my dremel where it needed to bend. Cut it to size and it looks great in place. I spray painted it black last night so it’s still drying. It’s finally starting to look like a Dragon’s Lair. Next up, monitor installation and control panel wiring.

[Chris G]

Sweet!  Good luck MC, can't wait to see how it turns out.   

[More Cowbell]

Just got my sideart in the mail today. It came to my office so I can't wait to get home and really check it out.

[gatordad]

Looks good Don,
Excellent work so far,
Moving at lightning speed,
when your done you have to invite me over, looks like a nice collection you have. My son (and I) would love it!
I have daphne up and running and like it very much.
Mike

[More Cowbell]

Thanks, Mike. Consider yourself invited. I'm surprised how quickly it's coming along. Especially considering I haven't spent more than an hour or so on it at a single stretch. I guess it works well to work on it for an hour, let it dry/cool/harden/whatever, then get back to it when it's ready. I do a lot of multitasking on it too. While one thing is drying/hardening/etc I'll work on something else. As I mentioned, I got my sideart and it looks great from what I can tell (it still has the paper covering it). I took a peek and it looks good from what I could see. There's some dust on the lens so I got some bloom in the pic of the cab as it stands now. I'm hoping the paint on the upper bracket will be dry today so I can install it and see if it will ultimately work. Now I need to get my monitor and computer inside and start configuring. I have Daphne up and running on my MAME cab so it shouldn't be too much trouble getting it going on this one too. I plan on using a P4 1ghz computer with a low end sound card and video card. I'm hoping that will run it sufficiently.

[leapinlew]

Hot damn this looks good. Your a brave man to take on such a cabinet. "Rough" was being kind.

I got a daphne related question... When I run my daphne full screen it registers the controls a bit laggy. You have that issue? If I insert a few coins, it doesn't register all of them and it could take a few seconds to register the ones it does recognize.

If I play in a window, it's very responsive. It does this on any of the computers I'm running it on.

[More Cowbell]

Lew, I haven't had that issue with my Daphne. I use 99.7 and have never had it run slow. I'm typically using it on 1ghz and greater computers with a video and sound card. Geez, you'd think your superior math skills would come in handy for something like this.   

The paint was mostly dry on the upper bracket so I dry-fitted to see how it looks. It's very shiny compared to the lower bracket (with fingerprints). I decided to repaint the lower bracket and upper bracket with the same paint that I painted the cabinet with last night. I figured that would make them look more similar. I also used a brush and kind of stippled the paint on to give the upper bracket some more dimension so it wasn't so smooth and shiny. We'll see how the paint dries. This paint dries much faster than the spray paint so I should have a good idea tonight.

[More Cowbell]

Edited because my quote fu exploded.
What I had meant to add to the above post was that if you think this cab was rough, you should see my Donkey Kong restore. http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=65185.0
Actually, Lew, you have seen it. I would much rather repair a crappy cabinet than figure out what's wrong with a monitor and boards and power supply and fuses and wiring and such and such. That's why I like MAME so much, easy to get up and running and drop into a shell. I know that smacks of destroying classics, but I figure that these are much closer to classics than they were before I got them. Future generations can restore them the rest of the way. Yeah, future generations with their flying cars and portable record players. In my day we used MAME and we liked it! I have 3 classic cabs running MAME (Hyper Sports, DK, Dragon's Lair) and 6 classic cabs that are original (Punch-Out!, Xevious, Tron, Popeye, DK Jr, and World Series: The Season). No one cares when they come to my house to play games.

[More Cowbell]

I finally got around to putting the sideart on. I put the first side on using the windex method and it went on great but I don't feel like it's permanently adhered. I did the second side the old fashioned way and it was way easier and feels like it's on tightly. I have 2 more sets (4 sides) of these graphics which I will open up for sale now that I know that mine look fine. I had these made at a graphics vendor we use for Gatorade graphics so they look great. The only issue I see with them is that the very edges are white since they are white inside (under the printing). I may go over them with a Sharpie. They look great to me but they are not NOS. $60 per set shipped (2 sides). I figure the people reading this thread are interested in DL so I'd open it up to you first.

[Lecithin]

 

Looking good. I love to read your restorations because you're so specific and provide so much information and pictures along the way. Thanks for the resource!

[More Cowbell]

Thanks, Lecithin. Well, I'm pretty much done. I finished installing the computer and wiring all of the switches over the weekend. I had to wire a main switch and then a switch to boot the computer since there wasn't an option in the bios to boot after power failure. This is the first computer I've run into that didn't have that option. I also drilled holes for the control panel. I hate that this cabinet is set up to have the control panel actually bolted into place rather than latched with hinges. Dumb and a pain to install and remove. It's been a blast to play DL on a real cabinet again and it's going to look great once I get it into the lineup of games.

[Steve]

Awesome and Congrats 

[Spyridon]

Nice work.  I'd love to add a DL to my gameroom.

The artwork always looked wrong on these cabs being down so low.  But that's the way they did it.

[More Cowbell]

Nice work.  I'd love to add a DL to my gameroom.

The artwork always looked wrong on these cabs being down so low.  But that's the way they did it.

I agree. It would have looked better higher up but I wanted to keep it close to how it was originally.

[Level42]

Great work, looks very nice indeed.

How is that JB Weld holding out ? I wonder if it would be possible to weld a flat-top bolt to a CP like that and mount a joystick from the underside of the CP that way.

[Pacman83]

Fantastic work there !  looks great and reminds me of the 'good old days' 

[mikejkelley]

Looks great so far! 

[BUCKETHEAD]

Very nice!  Sweeeeeeeet !

[MaineEvent]

great journey to watch unfold.....congratulations $40 - priceless!

[Jetson]

Awesome Work!  I'm working on a DL resto too...where did you get your PCB?  Are you using a daphne cable to make it work?  any other hints on getting the scoreboard to work with daphne would be great.  I've installed direct i/o and still no luck with my scoreboard.  could be that the scoreboard isn't working properly as its an original I bought off ebay.