TheShanMan's Tron facelift

[TheShanMan]

This isn't a full on restoration by any means. It looked and worked good from the time I bought it (original thread in misc arcade here. But there were some things that bugged me. The first thing I did was to replace the awful looking aluminum foil reflector above the CP with a reflector I made out of chromed poster board. You can read my blog on that project at CoinOpSpace.com here.

Beyond that, being the anal retentive person that I am, there were some things that bugged me which would take real time and money to correct. The CPO was on crooked (when I first bought it, I took off the CP thinking it was mounted crooked) and had minor cracking on the front bend. The inner art was damaged (I'm thinking it was original art) and "repaired" by manually painting the lines where necessary. The paint around the inner art was also looking awful. And the art on the upper plastic (the cover for the blacklight + reflector) was extremely faded. So with some Christmas and birthday money from my parents, I decided to order a new CPO, inner art, upper plastic, and "tron" insert for the joystick.

Installing the CPO was easy. Installing the inner art wasn't quite so easy. First, I've never installed side art, and this is probably a bit tougher than side art because you have to cut it perfectly to fit and then when applying you have obstructions to work around rather than an unobstructed side panel. Plus, I was figuring I could just pull off the old art, and slap on the new. Wrong. It pulled off paint when I tried to goo-gone the adhesive that was left behind. Plus the paint was so damaged to begin with that it really wouldn't have done it justice to leave the paint as is anyway.

One additional thing that came of this was to get the coin door panel (not the door itself, but the wood) repainted. It didn't look bad, but a refresher is always nice, plus I had a hole in it because the prior owner put a credit button there, so this allowed me to fill the hole and paint it black.

On to the "before" and "after" pics...

Pic 1 shows the cracking on the CPO. Pretty minor, but I noticed it and it bugged me.



Pic 2 shows how the CPO is crooked. Look at the blue line along the top.



Pic 3 shows the damaged inner art on the right side.



Pic 4 shows the damaged inner art on the left side, as well as the damaged paint next to it.



Pic 5 is an "after" pic in the dark, that shows one of the side benefits of having gone through this: the background art and the background window both had a film of dust/dirt on them that I cleaned off. Now it is much more vibrant and colorful!



Pic 6 is a closer pic that shows how nice the new inner art looks (as well as the CPO).



Finally, pic 7 is a fully lit pic that shows how nice the CPO looks now that it's not crooked, and the sweet looking upper plastic which made a HUGE difference.

[RetroACTIVE]

Your going to make me want a dang Tron... Cheffo got me thinking a while back now you!

Good stuff, I like the small restores... wish I was capable of one

[TheShanMan]

The problem is how the project keeps going! First I thought it would be a simple "pull off old stickers, slap on new". Next thing I realize I'm spending a week on sanding and painting. Then I decide it doesn't make sense to just paint the inner art area so I decide to paint the panel where the coin door is. Now the coin door looks trashy compared to what's around it, so I'm already figuring I'll be pulling it off to paint in the near future.

And when I first bought it, I noticed how the sheen on the sides is so inconsistent. I figured it was just because black is an unforgiving color. After painting the inner art area I realize it's just a crap paint job (the inner art paint looks so much better). I don't want to replace the side art (one side is nearly perfect and the other has a dozen scratches here or there, but I've touched them up with paint and a toothpick and it looks "good enough"). So I'm asking myself, "do I mask off the side art and give the area around it a nicer looking paint job?" Probably the only thing keeping me from doing so is my wife saying "you've spent way too much time on that thing!". So I know what you're saying!

But yeah, nothing beats a nice looking tron! I know you had a little trouble with the Phoenix packaging, but they sure did a beautiful job on the tron art!

[Spyridon]

I love a good Tron restore!  How is the side art on this one?  Control panel looks good now.


I want a Tron!

[RetroACTIVE]

Probably the only thing keeping me from doing so is my wife saying "you've spent way too much time on that thing!". Wink So I know what you're saying!

But yeah, nothing beats a nice looking tron! I know you had a little trouble with the Phoenix packaging, but they sure did a beautiful job on the tron art!

Yeah, last night I was rebuilding my SW Yoke on the kitchen center island... and my wife said... "I think you need another work bench."  I explain my hobby to friends this way: "Its like I'm a gear-head with alternators and batteries all about the house... except its PCBs, parts and artwork"

Just for the record I'm totally cool with Phoenix, they did me right... the replacement piece I received looks fantastic, and I would most certainly return to them... (even though they do take a chance with that type of packaging).

[TheShanMan]

I love a good Tron restore!  How is the side art on this one?  Control panel looks good now.

Side art is essentially perfect on one side. On the other it probably has 2 dozen scratches, ranging from very short to 2 or 3 inches long (most very short). The prior owner used a pen to fill maybe half of them in, since the scratches are white, but the rest were untouched. So I used a toothpick and paint to fill in the remainder, and that certainly is better than using a pen! So now from several feet away it looks great, but of course if you're looking close up you can see the scratches. But I'm far more concerned with what I see when I'm playing the game anyway. Plus once we get our next house with a big arcade room, it might end up being sandwiched between games anyway.

[Neverending Project]

Looks great. I don't even think I noticed the cracking on the CPO, but the crooked graphics would have driven me crazy.

Is that the replacement handle, or the original?

[TheShanMan]

It's slightly more noticeable in the flesh than it is in the picture. On the cpo alignment, it was so easy to get it perfect. I just found some pill bottles that had lids exactly the same size as the joystick and spinner holes (I think on one I had to wrap it with a bit of tape to build up the diameter), and then stuffed them through the holes to serve as guides when placing the overlay. I'm shocked at just how horrible of a job the prior installation was! Obviously that person doesn't sweat and agonize over getting something like that perfect like I do!

It's the GGG handle, and I have an original as a backup.