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Anselmo

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Bakersfield, Ca
Never got around to sharing this resto from this past May, but all the cool astro restoration posts really got me excited to share this with you dudes.

My first Candy pickup after obsessing over big blues for a while, was this new Astro that was shared over in the SO Cal Arcade Club Discord Channel. It was a very rough shape, but working*, New Astro in Tijuana!

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After making a deal and receiving some videos of it working, arranged for shipping from San Diego to Bakersfield. Sadly, it arrived with a necked tube, and blame is really tough to pin. The seller said it must of broken in transport and the shipper said he transported it with extreme care. The detail here, is the seller crossed it from TJ to San Diego where it was picked up. It was tested in TJ, but it was not tested upon pick up as it was being picked up from a relative's house of the seller. So I cant really say the shipper picked up a working cab, it may have broken from being transported from TJ to San Diego. What a huge bummer. I took the L on that. Luckily the MS8 Chassis looked to still be in good shape, but my tube was toast. A quick call to PNL Video and sure enough, he had a nice MS9 chassis and tube for me. Problem solved...for now.

I was excited to restore this cab, but boy it was in bad shape.
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The Control Panel was a total mess and the harnesses had been hacked up and wired directly to the jamma, and the quick connectors had been removed.

Took the entire cab apart to clean and prep for paint. Beer was a very important part of this project! Big appreciation to how well thought out these cabs are and how easy it is to break them down and put them back.102964892_10160589978838636_7461208200081252943_n.jpg

Took the pieces down to my buddy's auto body shop and we got to work on them. Sanded down and prepped for paint, it was easy peezy for me. I didn't do anything but supervise !
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Stay tuned for more posts here shortly, gotta run for now!
 

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Now the fun part: re-assembly. I got really overly excited to see it back together. I later realized and learned a very valuable lesson.
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I thought I was real smart placing all the parts in zip lock bags and labeling them, I figured it would make re-assembly a breeze. The lesson is that you need to put things back together in the reverse order you took them apart, that would make things flow a lot better! I realized I could much easily work on the jamma harness if it was still split in half, as I could have a much easier access to the harness and neatly place it where it belongs. I assembled it at the shop to admire the fresh paint job, and to make transporting it home easier for it's final assembly.

Once home I still had to spend time fixing the hacked up harness and figuring out how to make CP harnesses. I chimed in with @Lemony Vengeance and he was a real big help in helping me figure out exactly which parts to buy and how to put it all together. This was simply to fix up the harness so it can be ready to plug and play with his CP harnesses. Thanks yo!
117177521_807014740042531_1888065765807028760_n.jpgIt was a nice spring day to be outside!


Checked in @alberto1225 for a control panel, which is widely recommended because of it's quality, so even with my high expectations of quality I was still blown away by how nice his panels are. Thanks Alberto!
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The MS9 replacement tube and chassis was not a drop in replacement to the wiring of the cab that was for an MS8. The degauss wiring was different, and I spent some time trying to figure out if i was going to hack up the connectors or not. Ultimately I just used a degauss coil and left the degauss cables disconnected. The picture is super nice, colors are just spot on. The only downside, is the tube has some real serious scratches right in the center. For now, I pretend they aren't there but it definetly bugs me and I'll be hopefully replacing the tube at some point. It's been a few months now and I have been playing it quite a bit.

Thanks to all the great resources on this forum and all the good people I have met, I was able to put this together. The good folks over at the So Cal Arcade Club were a big help. I was able to re-cap the power supply and add a ground to the power cable thanks to there guidance, and overall support and camaraderie throughout the project.


In it's current nook in the house:
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The MS9 replacement tube and chassis was not a drop in replacement to the wiring of the cab that was for an MS8. The degauss wiring was different, and I spent some time trying to figure out if i was going to hack up the connectors or not. Ultimately I just used a degauss coil and left the degauss cables disconnected. The picture is super nice, colors are just spot on. The only downside, is the tube has some real serious scratches right in the center. For now, I pretend they aren't there but it definetly bugs me and I'll be hopefully replacing the tube at some point. It's been a few months now and I have been playing it quite a bit.
Really nice work on this restoration! What paint color did you end up going with? As for the scratched monitor, you might be able to fix it yourself without having to replace. Have you seen this tutorial from Arcade Otaku wiki?
 
Awesome work! Definitely don't have the hookups to do that nice of a paint-job ;( lol

Where did you order the astro side decal from? Looks pretty minty in the "afters" compared to the pickup photos, so I'm assuming its a repro?
 
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