i have finally acquirred my grail cab, an egret 29. it has been a difficult but rewarding journey to get to this point. in this thread i will tell the story of how i got the cab and i will outline all the steps i am taking/ will take to get this bird looking like it hasnt spent all year at the beach.
my Goal of this thread is to catalogue my journey thru the process of restoring this cab, as well as provide a comprehensive guide to the inner and outer workings of the Taito Egret 29.
Story of How I Discovered The Cab
first off lets tart off with the story behind the cab and how i found it:
i originally put out a WTB for an egret 29 about a month ago and had found a cab for sale from a friend of mine. last week on sunday night, i got a text from him saying there was an issue and the cab was no longer available. i would like to further explain this, but out of respect for the other parties involved, i cannot so thats all i can say about that experience. needless to say, after hearing that information i was completely gutted. i was very close to throwing in the towel and just leaving, but i realized the only way i could cope with having my dream cab taken from me was to play more games on my other cabs so checking out would have only made things worse. this is the stuff that brings me happiness and lets me escape from the horsefuckery of the outside world. so i updated my WTB thread in most of the places i had posted before and started the hunt all over again. one of the places i posted in was a rhythm game cab discord. i like the ppl in there and its a fun place to hang out. tuesday morning i check my discord threads before work like i always do. in the rhythm discord there was a guy talking about my post asking if it was real or a joke. no ping, no @ or anyhting. if i hadnt happened to see it, it would have just been lost in the sea of posts in that channel. i told him its me who is looking and i am very serious. he took my info and sent it to his friend who hit me up an hour later.
the first picture he sent me was the most recent pic he had of the cab, it had been in storage since 2017, and it was only 1 hour 10 minutes away from me! too good to be true? maybe, but i had to at least look at it. this is the pic.
i talked with him for about an hour and i learned a lot about the history of the cab and how it ended up in storage. he bought the cab in 2003 to play shmups on, then for whatever reason, had to sell his games and ended up putting the cab in storage in 2017. the movers who moved it ended up cracking the yellow marquee and banging up the bottom a bit. they also lost the key to the cab. at this point i hadnt seen the marquee yet but i wasnt gonna let a cracked marquee stop me from looking at the cab. he made it clear that he was very selective of who he would sell this cab to because he did not want it to get mame'd or something silly like paint it black or put an LCD in there. i assured him i will take good care of it, and that i plan on keeping it original and will fix the yellowing on the bezel and make the cp actually blue again. i told him i stream and plan on open up a private arcade for others to enjoy these cabs with me free of charge and i want to make it a place where ppl can enjoy these cabs with like-minded individuals (hopefully this year). he was very happy to hear that so we agreed to meet up on that weekend. in the meantime i decided to buy tubular lock picks so i can at least try and get this cab open . it was the next day after looking at the pics he sent of the cab that i realized that monitor inside is not mounted to the brackets like its supposed to be.... then the extreme anxiety set in... it was very difficult to concentrate on thngs cuz all i could think of was getting the front of the cab open, flipping up the bezel, and the monitor falling out. literal nightmare fuel. nothing i could do but wait and find out when i get there.
Meeting Up And Making The Deal
over the week i set out to prepare for this meet up, making sure i had all my bases covered. i overnighted some tubular lock pics and spent the next few days learning to use them. by friday, i was able to pick both my e2's and both my neo cabs. those were all the ones with tubular picks i had. i am pretty decent at lock picking tubular locks now, so if you ever need advice, just hit me up. i know the egret 29 uses the same wing bolts as the egret 2, so i made sure to pack 2 of them with me for the trip because i was not going to drive this cab home with the monitor free floating on its rotation mech (turns out the mech is VERY sturdy and probly wouldnt have been an issue, but hell no i will not take that risk). i also took my screw driver, stubby screw driver, channel locks, thin angled pliers, pot adjustment tool, a stepdown transformer, allen set, multimeter, jamma passthru voltmeter, and a set of cobalt drill bits, cuz i was not gonna take "NO" for an answer. he was not sure the cab would work, and neither was i, but i needed to find out. i asked him if the storage unit had an outlet accessible and he said yes, but i have an inverter in my truck just in case. ya boy dont mess around.
i made it to the storage unit on saturday afternoon, introduced myself and got to work cracking this cab. first issue i encountered was that these locks are not like typical tubular locks. they are 8 pin, which is a standard number of pins, but the 8th pin is centered where the guide notch is. they have the same spacing as a 7 pin lock, but there is an extra pin at the top of the lock. i dont know if a lock pick is designed for this style of lock. i had talked to TwistedSymphony and he told me they are alpha ly-0069 locks and they are 8 pin with the center pin, but i didnt see any picks like that so i bought what i could and hoped it would work. well it didnt. when i attempted to pick the lock i could see all the pins around the guide pin were obviously picked but the top pin was pushed in all the way, preventing the lock from turning. picking the locks myself was a no go. i am still determined and worst case scenario, i am willing to call a locksmith and pay to get it picked, and drill if one isnt available. i still have some options though. the coin door had no lock on it so i looked in there. pretty cramped so i moved on to the back
the back has a cover to access the chassis and neck rings, etc but also can be used to access the back of many of the other locks in the cab. i will go over that in more depth later in the restore thread. it is held in place with T20 star screws. i did not have any star bits, so i carefully used my channel locks to unscrew them enough to get them out with a screw driver. i have been a plumber for almost 20 years now and i am very good with a pair of channel locks on chrome. i did a good job unscrewing without fucking up the finish of the screws or the paint on the cab. once i had the back open, i could see the jamma harness was intact, and everything was there as it should be. the nanao ms8 29 looked like it never left the cab. was very clean tho. at this point i knew i could at least get a pcb in there and power it on. unfortunately due to the rotation mech, i could not get access to the front hood locks from there. so it was back to the front i go to try to get access to the back of the locks through the hole in the front from the coin door.
sadly i did not take any pictures while i was going thru this process, we were in the front lobby of the storage facility dissecting an egret 29, i was living in the moment.
i managed to get my arm up in there and got my hand on the back of the lock for the left side of the hood. i could probly get a small pliers in there if i had to, so there was some hope. i repositioned myself to get to the right side and it was basically undoable with anything in my hand, because of the coin chute getting in the way. "fuck. ill probly have to call a locksmith" is what im thinking right now. so i move back to the left side and try to feel how it connects to the cab to lock in place. i push up on it and i can see the hood raise about a half inch, which really makes me think this thing isnt locked at all.. the lock's guide part was pointed in what would typically be in the unlocked position, but this is a lock with 2 notches in it, so i dont know for sure its unlocked or not until now. i do the same thing on the other side of the hood. this hood is definitely not locked! awesome! i lift the hood and am SOOOO relieved to find the rotation mech is still intact! my suspicions were correct tho, that there were absolutlely no wing bolts holding this monitor in place and this tube had just been suspended by the rotation mech for around 5 and a half years. props to Taito for designing something so tough. there was no sag or nothing. i took the 2 wing bolts i borrowed from my egret 2s and fastened them together. i also took my jamma voltmeter and hooked it up to the jamma edge. i plugged in the cab to the stepdown transformer and plugged that into the wall outlet. i had the Seller power on the cab for me in the front (i wasnt aware of the power switch in the back yet cuz the bottom lip of the cab was so dirty the old worn sticker for the switch kinda just blended in with the grime. volt meter read 4.8 volts , should be safe to plug a board in, so i had him power it down. i plugged in the soul edge board i bought with me that i use for testing and had him power it on again... 5.18, i told him to power it off and before he did we heard audio and he said he saw a jumbled screen. i go back around to the front to look for the voltage adjustment pot on the power supply. i couldnt see it at first so i unscrewed the 1 screw that was holding it in place and pulled it out of the cab. once i located the pot behind the large connector on the psu, i reinstalled the power supply and adjusted the voltage down to 5.0 with the help of him rattling off the numbers as i adjusted on the fly. once i got it to 5v i looked up at the screen and it was just garbled shit. it looked like h hold issue, so i took my long pot adjustment tool and fiddled with the h hold adjustment on the remote board. a little change, not as bad, but still messed up. i increased the h size, and boom, came right in focus and everything, just a little small. i let it sit just playing for about 10 minutes as we talked and celebrated.
after 10 minutes i decided to adjust the horizontal and vertical size to take up the full screen. once i adjusted the h size again it went back to the fucky mess that it was before. nothing i did to the remote board was able to make it work properly again. bummer. at least i know the tube is good though. i power the cab down and button it all back up. time to take a look at that marquee crack. i rip thru the clingwrap and take off the red jacket protecting the marquee and see its cracked on the yellow plexi a little less than half way thru to the other side. its not the prettiest, but the marquee is still all there and functional. at this point i tell him i will definitely take the cab, but the original price we agreed upon was for a complete cab that is in working condition; and, to be honest, it didnt really reflect the actual price of a cab like this... i just really wanted one and would stop at nothing to get it. he was impressed with how i was able to come in and in a matter of 20 minutes, resurrect his cab and ensure it would function eventually all things considered. he knew i was the right person to have this cab and offered me a large discount from the price we agreed on originally. now we just had to get it in the truck. ezpz, right?
Loading and Unloading
my truck has a lift gate and can fit a candy cab such as an astro city without the marquee thru the overhead door no problem (albiet very close). i can also easily fit 2 candys side by side with just short of another cab to spare till the back edge of the truck. i back it up so its close to the entrance door, lower the gate, and grab my trusty new red handcart cuz my employees didnt put my trusty blue one back on the truck when i delivered the last water heater to them, lol thanks guys. i COULD have just wheeled the cab on its 4 built in wheels, but i didnt mention that all of this is being done during a snow storm. a light snowstorm, but a snow storm nonetheless. im not gonna get these wheels wet so they squeak everytime i move the cab. i tip the cab and get it on the lift gate, hoist it up and realize its not gonna clear with the topper on. i bring it down and proceed to take off the screws with the pliers and screw driver again, very carefully. the entire time on the lift i have a death grip on the cab and will not let it fall. i have read stories, fortunately their ending is also a happy one. i remember there is a wire connecting the lights and speakers to the wiring harness of the cab that goes thru the chrome tube of the topper so i will need to unplug that before i pull this topper off. i lift the hood and unplug the connector, and shut the hood back down. i pull the topper of and place it in the passenger seat. i strap it in with a seatbelt cuz this is precious cargo along with the marquee. we get it back up and into the truck with relative ease. i drape a shipping blanket over the cab and strap a rachet strap around it, ensuring it wont move around. everything was ready to go. i thanked the guy once again and we both exchanged a heartfelt handshake and i began my journey home which didnt get far because i saw a deli down the street. i housed 2 philly cheese steaks then got back on the road.
once i got home, i solo'd the cab into place. im a total pro at this after 10 cabs and moving them around and things. after about 10 minutes, the outside door was back on the hinges and all the parts were safe and sound inside my room. time to get to fixing...
First Day With The Cab
i didnt put the cab together right away from the topper-separated state it was in. i started with addressing the locks in the cab so i could more comfortably connect games and test the monitor. the tangs on most of the compartment locks just hold up against the lip of the space so you can just remove the nut that holds the tang in place and pop out the panel with the lock on it and remove it comfortably outside. i would like to get keys for these locks but its not a full complete set, so i will just buy my own locks and save the originals "just incase". for now i just placed some regular locks i have keys to to keep things accessible but still together. i havent addressed the hood locks, but dont feel an immediate need to at the moment. once i had access to all the compartments of the cab i got to work on replacing the chassis. i found it easier to get at the anode cap if i rotated the monitor to tate.
i replaced the chassis and booted it on but i noticed it really smelled like burning after about 10 minutes and the heatsink on this chassis was very hot, like u could burn urself. the only spare i had was from my yaton cab and that chassis was not the hottest to begin with so its not suprising the fix didnt last that long. the width was not working right either. guess this spare chassis isnt cutting it right now. i did manage to adjust it pretty decently on sf2 turbo tho. this monitor has a teeny amount of burn, not worried about it, but the guns all work. al 3 colors , nice and bright.
could be tuned finer, but i started smelling burning so i investigated. sources led me to the chassis. it was very hot. the heatsink was so hot it cold burn me. powered it down and took a few minute break. used the time to order a cap kit for the original chassis. we will see where that goes when i get that in. i spent the rest of the night scrubbing the outside of this cab and getting the multitude of side scrapes and stuff out of the outside surface of the cab. i also used pliers to pull out the dents in the bottom lip of the cab. again was very careful and u couldnt tell no matter how close u put your eye to it. after about 8 hours of work, this is what i ended up with:
i used clorox wipes to get the surface dirt and loose grime off, then i used a paper towel with a little goof off on the white base. u need to be quick with the goof off, rubbing fast then immediately wiping the goof off away with the clorox wipe or a wet paper towel to neutralize the goof off. this proved to be very effective in removing the scrapes and paint swaps form sliding in and out of places. u cannot use goof off on the plastic parts at all. be very careful to not touch any part of the polastic parts with anything that has touched goof off. goof off is caustic AF and will melt the plastic. to clean the plastic i just used old fashioned elbow grease and a clorox wipe. there is still a lot left to do. i will continue to update this thread as i go along the process of restoring this cab to the glorius state it deserves to be in.
i have made a dropbox link to the video of the cab running as well as a dump of extra pics and pics of better quality. feel free to take a look and listen to the speaker system on this cab . its pretty epic.
Pics and Vids Link:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2cdyyt7ovhiyz0r/AACWkm234eiXcDvbVOkn6zSJa?dl=0
PSU Cap List and Pics:
https://www.arcade-projects.com/threads/imbord3rlin3s-egret-29-restore-thread.25062/post-372628
https://www.digikey.com/en/mylists/list/GPZICTHZ9Q - link to digikey parts list (thanks to @Hatsune Mike)
Link to 3d Scan of Alpha LY-0069 key (printable STL file) - (thanks to @twistedsymphony)
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5888442
Link to 3d printed bezel screw savers (printable STL file) - (thanks to @FluxChiller , STL by Lymando)
https://www.printables.com/model/115773-taito-egret-29-bezel-screw-savers
my Goal of this thread is to catalogue my journey thru the process of restoring this cab, as well as provide a comprehensive guide to the inner and outer workings of the Taito Egret 29.
Story of How I Discovered The Cab
first off lets tart off with the story behind the cab and how i found it:
i originally put out a WTB for an egret 29 about a month ago and had found a cab for sale from a friend of mine. last week on sunday night, i got a text from him saying there was an issue and the cab was no longer available. i would like to further explain this, but out of respect for the other parties involved, i cannot so thats all i can say about that experience. needless to say, after hearing that information i was completely gutted. i was very close to throwing in the towel and just leaving, but i realized the only way i could cope with having my dream cab taken from me was to play more games on my other cabs so checking out would have only made things worse. this is the stuff that brings me happiness and lets me escape from the horsefuckery of the outside world. so i updated my WTB thread in most of the places i had posted before and started the hunt all over again. one of the places i posted in was a rhythm game cab discord. i like the ppl in there and its a fun place to hang out. tuesday morning i check my discord threads before work like i always do. in the rhythm discord there was a guy talking about my post asking if it was real or a joke. no ping, no @ or anyhting. if i hadnt happened to see it, it would have just been lost in the sea of posts in that channel. i told him its me who is looking and i am very serious. he took my info and sent it to his friend who hit me up an hour later.
the first picture he sent me was the most recent pic he had of the cab, it had been in storage since 2017, and it was only 1 hour 10 minutes away from me! too good to be true? maybe, but i had to at least look at it. this is the pic.
i talked with him for about an hour and i learned a lot about the history of the cab and how it ended up in storage. he bought the cab in 2003 to play shmups on, then for whatever reason, had to sell his games and ended up putting the cab in storage in 2017. the movers who moved it ended up cracking the yellow marquee and banging up the bottom a bit. they also lost the key to the cab. at this point i hadnt seen the marquee yet but i wasnt gonna let a cracked marquee stop me from looking at the cab. he made it clear that he was very selective of who he would sell this cab to because he did not want it to get mame'd or something silly like paint it black or put an LCD in there. i assured him i will take good care of it, and that i plan on keeping it original and will fix the yellowing on the bezel and make the cp actually blue again. i told him i stream and plan on open up a private arcade for others to enjoy these cabs with me free of charge and i want to make it a place where ppl can enjoy these cabs with like-minded individuals (hopefully this year). he was very happy to hear that so we agreed to meet up on that weekend. in the meantime i decided to buy tubular lock picks so i can at least try and get this cab open . it was the next day after looking at the pics he sent of the cab that i realized that monitor inside is not mounted to the brackets like its supposed to be.... then the extreme anxiety set in... it was very difficult to concentrate on thngs cuz all i could think of was getting the front of the cab open, flipping up the bezel, and the monitor falling out. literal nightmare fuel. nothing i could do but wait and find out when i get there.
Meeting Up And Making The Deal
over the week i set out to prepare for this meet up, making sure i had all my bases covered. i overnighted some tubular lock pics and spent the next few days learning to use them. by friday, i was able to pick both my e2's and both my neo cabs. those were all the ones with tubular picks i had. i am pretty decent at lock picking tubular locks now, so if you ever need advice, just hit me up. i know the egret 29 uses the same wing bolts as the egret 2, so i made sure to pack 2 of them with me for the trip because i was not going to drive this cab home with the monitor free floating on its rotation mech (turns out the mech is VERY sturdy and probly wouldnt have been an issue, but hell no i will not take that risk). i also took my screw driver, stubby screw driver, channel locks, thin angled pliers, pot adjustment tool, a stepdown transformer, allen set, multimeter, jamma passthru voltmeter, and a set of cobalt drill bits, cuz i was not gonna take "NO" for an answer. he was not sure the cab would work, and neither was i, but i needed to find out. i asked him if the storage unit had an outlet accessible and he said yes, but i have an inverter in my truck just in case. ya boy dont mess around.
i made it to the storage unit on saturday afternoon, introduced myself and got to work cracking this cab. first issue i encountered was that these locks are not like typical tubular locks. they are 8 pin, which is a standard number of pins, but the 8th pin is centered where the guide notch is. they have the same spacing as a 7 pin lock, but there is an extra pin at the top of the lock. i dont know if a lock pick is designed for this style of lock. i had talked to TwistedSymphony and he told me they are alpha ly-0069 locks and they are 8 pin with the center pin, but i didnt see any picks like that so i bought what i could and hoped it would work. well it didnt. when i attempted to pick the lock i could see all the pins around the guide pin were obviously picked but the top pin was pushed in all the way, preventing the lock from turning. picking the locks myself was a no go. i am still determined and worst case scenario, i am willing to call a locksmith and pay to get it picked, and drill if one isnt available. i still have some options though. the coin door had no lock on it so i looked in there. pretty cramped so i moved on to the back
the back has a cover to access the chassis and neck rings, etc but also can be used to access the back of many of the other locks in the cab. i will go over that in more depth later in the restore thread. it is held in place with T20 star screws. i did not have any star bits, so i carefully used my channel locks to unscrew them enough to get them out with a screw driver. i have been a plumber for almost 20 years now and i am very good with a pair of channel locks on chrome. i did a good job unscrewing without fucking up the finish of the screws or the paint on the cab. once i had the back open, i could see the jamma harness was intact, and everything was there as it should be. the nanao ms8 29 looked like it never left the cab. was very clean tho. at this point i knew i could at least get a pcb in there and power it on. unfortunately due to the rotation mech, i could not get access to the front hood locks from there. so it was back to the front i go to try to get access to the back of the locks through the hole in the front from the coin door.
sadly i did not take any pictures while i was going thru this process, we were in the front lobby of the storage facility dissecting an egret 29, i was living in the moment.
i managed to get my arm up in there and got my hand on the back of the lock for the left side of the hood. i could probly get a small pliers in there if i had to, so there was some hope. i repositioned myself to get to the right side and it was basically undoable with anything in my hand, because of the coin chute getting in the way. "fuck. ill probly have to call a locksmith" is what im thinking right now. so i move back to the left side and try to feel how it connects to the cab to lock in place. i push up on it and i can see the hood raise about a half inch, which really makes me think this thing isnt locked at all.. the lock's guide part was pointed in what would typically be in the unlocked position, but this is a lock with 2 notches in it, so i dont know for sure its unlocked or not until now. i do the same thing on the other side of the hood. this hood is definitely not locked! awesome! i lift the hood and am SOOOO relieved to find the rotation mech is still intact! my suspicions were correct tho, that there were absolutlely no wing bolts holding this monitor in place and this tube had just been suspended by the rotation mech for around 5 and a half years. props to Taito for designing something so tough. there was no sag or nothing. i took the 2 wing bolts i borrowed from my egret 2s and fastened them together. i also took my jamma voltmeter and hooked it up to the jamma edge. i plugged in the cab to the stepdown transformer and plugged that into the wall outlet. i had the Seller power on the cab for me in the front (i wasnt aware of the power switch in the back yet cuz the bottom lip of the cab was so dirty the old worn sticker for the switch kinda just blended in with the grime. volt meter read 4.8 volts , should be safe to plug a board in, so i had him power it down. i plugged in the soul edge board i bought with me that i use for testing and had him power it on again... 5.18, i told him to power it off and before he did we heard audio and he said he saw a jumbled screen. i go back around to the front to look for the voltage adjustment pot on the power supply. i couldnt see it at first so i unscrewed the 1 screw that was holding it in place and pulled it out of the cab. once i located the pot behind the large connector on the psu, i reinstalled the power supply and adjusted the voltage down to 5.0 with the help of him rattling off the numbers as i adjusted on the fly. once i got it to 5v i looked up at the screen and it was just garbled shit. it looked like h hold issue, so i took my long pot adjustment tool and fiddled with the h hold adjustment on the remote board. a little change, not as bad, but still messed up. i increased the h size, and boom, came right in focus and everything, just a little small. i let it sit just playing for about 10 minutes as we talked and celebrated.
after 10 minutes i decided to adjust the horizontal and vertical size to take up the full screen. once i adjusted the h size again it went back to the fucky mess that it was before. nothing i did to the remote board was able to make it work properly again. bummer. at least i know the tube is good though. i power the cab down and button it all back up. time to take a look at that marquee crack. i rip thru the clingwrap and take off the red jacket protecting the marquee and see its cracked on the yellow plexi a little less than half way thru to the other side. its not the prettiest, but the marquee is still all there and functional. at this point i tell him i will definitely take the cab, but the original price we agreed upon was for a complete cab that is in working condition; and, to be honest, it didnt really reflect the actual price of a cab like this... i just really wanted one and would stop at nothing to get it. he was impressed with how i was able to come in and in a matter of 20 minutes, resurrect his cab and ensure it would function eventually all things considered. he knew i was the right person to have this cab and offered me a large discount from the price we agreed on originally. now we just had to get it in the truck. ezpz, right?
Loading and Unloading
my truck has a lift gate and can fit a candy cab such as an astro city without the marquee thru the overhead door no problem (albiet very close). i can also easily fit 2 candys side by side with just short of another cab to spare till the back edge of the truck. i back it up so its close to the entrance door, lower the gate, and grab my trusty new red handcart cuz my employees didnt put my trusty blue one back on the truck when i delivered the last water heater to them, lol thanks guys. i COULD have just wheeled the cab on its 4 built in wheels, but i didnt mention that all of this is being done during a snow storm. a light snowstorm, but a snow storm nonetheless. im not gonna get these wheels wet so they squeak everytime i move the cab. i tip the cab and get it on the lift gate, hoist it up and realize its not gonna clear with the topper on. i bring it down and proceed to take off the screws with the pliers and screw driver again, very carefully. the entire time on the lift i have a death grip on the cab and will not let it fall. i have read stories, fortunately their ending is also a happy one. i remember there is a wire connecting the lights and speakers to the wiring harness of the cab that goes thru the chrome tube of the topper so i will need to unplug that before i pull this topper off. i lift the hood and unplug the connector, and shut the hood back down. i pull the topper of and place it in the passenger seat. i strap it in with a seatbelt cuz this is precious cargo along with the marquee. we get it back up and into the truck with relative ease. i drape a shipping blanket over the cab and strap a rachet strap around it, ensuring it wont move around. everything was ready to go. i thanked the guy once again and we both exchanged a heartfelt handshake and i began my journey home which didnt get far because i saw a deli down the street. i housed 2 philly cheese steaks then got back on the road.
once i got home, i solo'd the cab into place. im a total pro at this after 10 cabs and moving them around and things. after about 10 minutes, the outside door was back on the hinges and all the parts were safe and sound inside my room. time to get to fixing...
First Day With The Cab
i didnt put the cab together right away from the topper-separated state it was in. i started with addressing the locks in the cab so i could more comfortably connect games and test the monitor. the tangs on most of the compartment locks just hold up against the lip of the space so you can just remove the nut that holds the tang in place and pop out the panel with the lock on it and remove it comfortably outside. i would like to get keys for these locks but its not a full complete set, so i will just buy my own locks and save the originals "just incase". for now i just placed some regular locks i have keys to to keep things accessible but still together. i havent addressed the hood locks, but dont feel an immediate need to at the moment. once i had access to all the compartments of the cab i got to work on replacing the chassis. i found it easier to get at the anode cap if i rotated the monitor to tate.
i replaced the chassis and booted it on but i noticed it really smelled like burning after about 10 minutes and the heatsink on this chassis was very hot, like u could burn urself. the only spare i had was from my yaton cab and that chassis was not the hottest to begin with so its not suprising the fix didnt last that long. the width was not working right either. guess this spare chassis isnt cutting it right now. i did manage to adjust it pretty decently on sf2 turbo tho. this monitor has a teeny amount of burn, not worried about it, but the guns all work. al 3 colors , nice and bright.
could be tuned finer, but i started smelling burning so i investigated. sources led me to the chassis. it was very hot. the heatsink was so hot it cold burn me. powered it down and took a few minute break. used the time to order a cap kit for the original chassis. we will see where that goes when i get that in. i spent the rest of the night scrubbing the outside of this cab and getting the multitude of side scrapes and stuff out of the outside surface of the cab. i also used pliers to pull out the dents in the bottom lip of the cab. again was very careful and u couldnt tell no matter how close u put your eye to it. after about 8 hours of work, this is what i ended up with:
i used clorox wipes to get the surface dirt and loose grime off, then i used a paper towel with a little goof off on the white base. u need to be quick with the goof off, rubbing fast then immediately wiping the goof off away with the clorox wipe or a wet paper towel to neutralize the goof off. this proved to be very effective in removing the scrapes and paint swaps form sliding in and out of places. u cannot use goof off on the plastic parts at all. be very careful to not touch any part of the polastic parts with anything that has touched goof off. goof off is caustic AF and will melt the plastic. to clean the plastic i just used old fashioned elbow grease and a clorox wipe. there is still a lot left to do. i will continue to update this thread as i go along the process of restoring this cab to the glorius state it deserves to be in.
i have made a dropbox link to the video of the cab running as well as a dump of extra pics and pics of better quality. feel free to take a look and listen to the speaker system on this cab . its pretty epic.
Pics and Vids Link:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2cdyyt7ovhiyz0r/AACWkm234eiXcDvbVOkn6zSJa?dl=0
PSU Cap List and Pics:
https://www.arcade-projects.com/threads/imbord3rlin3s-egret-29-restore-thread.25062/post-372628
https://www.digikey.com/en/mylists/list/GPZICTHZ9Q - link to digikey parts list (thanks to @Hatsune Mike)
Link to 3d Scan of Alpha LY-0069 key (printable STL file) - (thanks to @twistedsymphony)
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5888442
Link to 3d printed bezel screw savers (printable STL file) - (thanks to @FluxChiller , STL by Lymando)
https://www.printables.com/model/115773-taito-egret-29-bezel-screw-savers
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