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Manual scan for the Exceleena II cabinet HERE
https://mega.nz/file/qdg2TTAY#bn4fxBJjYJXzfykPRds6YGibtwpf4ZxWulg2INtK3ds

Picked these 2 Namco Exceleena cabinets up recently.

Going to do a bit of a restore on both of them. The blue one is already very nice, so that will mainly get a clean up, the red one is filthy. They had all original wiring/chassis/screens in there though, so it's a nice base!
 
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Here's the insides of the red one just to show how dirty it is.
 
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The monitor brackets have a pin on them, and it sits inside another bracket bolted to the rear of the cabinet, so the back of the monitor doesn't fall down into the cab if you are trying to lift it.

You can see if here looking top down. Both cabs have a similar mechanism, it's slightly different on the different version cabs, but it's basically the same thing. So you still have to lift and bare the weight of the whole monitor, but you can pivot the back of the screen on the pin/bracket so it doesn't fall down at the back. Makes rotating the screen easier (but still difficult, and a 2 person job).

These cabs rotate the opposite way to normal screen (apparently).
 
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Pretty cool, i've never seen one of these, neither in japan, and i've been there quite a lot
 
You got 2 beer holders built in?

How could you lose?

The color red is very nice on your II. The ones I’ve seen sold in the last year looked more maroon and faded
 
These cabs are really really hard to find any kind of parts for... i'm not sure if they were replaced quickly due to the the size of the blue one and the design of the red one being a little tedious. For example, no back panels to access the monitor. You can't get into the chassis on the red one at all without completely removing the screen, there's no rear panel of any sort, and you can't even get around the side of the monitor frame. Blue cab has a panel on top.

I think the plastic on the red one is just a plastic that doesn't stand the test of time so well. The plastics have become quite brittle on the red one. The blue one is made of fiberglass and not plastic... the blue one is amazing. I'll take some better pics to showcase them in the coming days.


When i got the blue one it was missing the original control panel, so ii found the red one a few weeks later and it had the original control panel, so i got the red one just to pinch the control panel for my blue one! And of course the price was ok and i'm always happy to have a new project.

The jamma harness on both cabs and the original control panel all have date codes stamped on them, so you can get an idea when these cabs were made. I'm sure it's not the exact day, but a rough idea.


The blue Exceleena 1 has the date 94 . 9 .6 stamped on the jamma harness.
The red Exceleena 2 has the date 95 . 4 . 17 stamped on the jamma harness
The original panel that came on the red one and is now on the blue one has the date 95 . 1 . 27 stamped underneath it.

So I think from these you can get an idea that the blue one was probably made around late 1994 early 95, and the red one some time around mid/later 1995. Just a little nerdy thing! Date codes are YY . MM . DD
 
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I love the Namco cabs. They don't get enough love. 10 years ago when I got my first Astros I could have bought a Exceleena from the same guy but passed because of the size. I've always regretted it though and always wonder what happened to it
 
I have one of those Exceelena blue and I love the looks of them. I call it the "bat cab" because it reminds me of the bat mobile Batman. Mine stays vertical permanently.
And my favorite thing about those cabs is the built in cup holders! :D

Since it's my permanent vertical cab, I had a 1 player panel made for it by a friend of mine.
 
These are by far the most common candy cabs that come up for sale in Australia. Especially the second revision (blue). @Apocalypse mentioned NZ had a bunch too, must have been an Oceania thing.

I always avoided them because they rotate the wrong way for almost everything. And most of my cab play is in TATE mode.

In saying that, they have a nice look to ‘em.
 
Yeah, that's why mine is rotated the corrected way (counter clockwise) and not the Namco way.
I wish I could find more of these Exeelena blue for a decent price here in the USA.
 
Those are both beautiful. I've had opportunity on both in Texas, and passed due to circumstances at the time...but only have seen one of each. Really wish I could have gotten the II, as I love the whole design of that cab.

Congratulations on the score....very, very nice.
 
Thanks for all the comments!

I'm going to start putting up pics of various parts of the cabs, feel free to comment if you like but it's more for reference as there really isn't any good reference i could find about these machines... so i'll post up some pics here as i clean them up.
 
Starting this off with the Blue Exceleena 1.

The control panel..... As i mentioned earlier, the blue cab came with a really well made, but completely incorrect control panel. It was well made but just horrible to play on, and i really wanted an original panel.

Here's the panel that the blue cab came with... YUCK.

I feel like the control panel is a big part of the artwork of a cabinet, and when it's not original or at least a remake of the original, the cab loses a lot of character.




So... I ended up buying the red cab to get the control panel for the blue one. The issue here, is the original panel on the red cab was in similar shape to the insides of the red cab... it was rough. BUT... the artwork overlay was actually in pretty good condition, so i knew i would be able to clean it up and use it on my blue cab.

Here's how it was when i got it. As a bonus, it also had the original Seimitsu sticks that these cabs came with. They were also filthy.






Check out all that rust. If you've ever worked on rusty control panels before, you learn to be able to tell if rust is light surface rust or if it's going to be that rust that's eaten into the metal. I could tell that all that rust around the button holes and the right side of the CP was that horrible rust that had eaten deep. I was right :(




I used a power drill and wire wheel, trying to get all the rust off without damaging the artwork on the other side. It'd tedious work because the rust is so thick and hard to get off, you need to have the drill going full power and also push hard down onto the rusty spots to get it to come off, all the while trying to hold the flimsy panel in place, but not damage the artwork on the other side....... It was a lot more work than i thought it was going to be.

Around 2 hours later, i ended up with this. You can see the spots where the rust was very thick, it's eaten into the metal. It doesn't matter, it's just the underside of the panel, but it was really difficult to get off!



NOTE i managed to save the date code on the back :)



Also note in this pic that one of the joystick screws is now broken, this happened when i was trying to remove the nuts to get the joysticks off. The nut and all around it was rusted and the nut never even moved, it just snapped straight off. I still have 3, but a little worried if another one comes off.



After i had wire wheeled pretty much all the rust off, i painted it with a grey primer/rust protectant paint. It's a product that primes and also has some anti rust treatment in it. Available from the hardware store. I also cleaned up the artwork with some warm soapy water and a cloth (non abrasive).

So I ended up with this.

Back of panel :) I managed to preserve the date code on there with a little piece of tape and cardboard over it when i painted. Just a little nerdy thing!



Small section of the panel front.



Very happy with the results so far :)
 
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Next up is the joysticks. These are the original sticks that came with these cabs, the yellow seimitsu stick with the yellow sleeve on the shafts. These sticks actually still work really well, so i was hoping i could just clean them up and keep them on the cab, this also saves me a little bit of money because i don't have to buy new sticks.

Here's what the sticks looked like after i removed them from the panel. More horrible rust...


If you lift up the little black plastic cover, you can see that the sticks have some sort of powder in there...They were both like this. No idea what it was at this stage..



Removing the stick, you can see that powder and more of the rust.



Here's what the sticks were like inside.




That powder.... it's actually coca cola soda..... I have no idea why it turned into a powder, it was obviously spilled into the sticks at some stage. As soon as you add water to it, it turns back into cola coloured liquid. I had a hunch someone had spilled some sort of sticky drink into the cab at some stage, the whole cab has what looks to be pooled sugar drink down the front inside of the machine.



Anyways, I soaked all of the parts in water except the board with the microswitches on it. Then i scrubbed them all. The microswitch boards i just wiped down and dusted out. The microswitches were on the underside of the green board above, so they didn't get hit by the liquid, just the solder side of the PCB you see above with the dusty material on it. After it was all soaked and scrubbed, we end up with something like this.


The only thing missing is the metal plates. I let those sit in citric acid overnight to remove the rust in a more delicate way, then i sanded the leftover stubborn rust away, gave them a coat of metal primer/rust protect paint like the control panel above. I also lightly greased all the friction points inside the joystick, put it all back together and ended up with these...






Once again, very happy with the results, the sticks still work really well after all those years of use :)
 
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Here's the panel as it sits now with sticks. I have some sanwa yellow buttons and red start buttons coming in the post. I feel like they are closest to the original colour. The modern seimitsu buttons are fairly different in colour now to what they were back in the 90s.
 
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