Aero City - flooded, forgotten, found.

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

An exciting day today collecting the powder coated parts. A few pieces were the wrong colour - the coin box door, the top rear removable panel and control panel. I’ve left those with them to do again. They were silvery grey which I’ve had all the previously plated but oxidised parts done in. They left everything out in the rain which I wasn’t too pleased with. So I had to wash the machine again. Step one is to replace the base. Removing the blank screws and nuts once again took ages. I even snapped one off and had to carefully drill it out with tiny drill bits so as to not damage the thread. I’ve put rubber feet on the front and castor wheels on the back. These aren’t stock but I don’t have the original separate castors on the lower back section and can’t be dragging this thing around on the original metal feet. The room it is going in is tiled too, so I might keep this setup. I used my home made tumbling machine with steel balls and nails to tumble the bolts and washers for the base. It doesn’t shine them as such but cleans off all the corrosion and gunk.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

The bottom of the machine looks beautiful and even better with the base bolted on.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

And up on its feet and a nice look around. A few minor imperfections here and there but nothing egregious. They got powder coat into all the tricky areas under the coin counter which is a win.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

Handles are on to wheel around. I put nylon washers outside and inside to protect the coat from chipping under load. Here’s the rubber feet and castors too. Looking at this now I wonder if the wheel offset from the shaft will load up the thread and base too much when the tube is in.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

I laid out all the nuts, bolts and screws etc. I’ll have to clean, polish or replace a few of these.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

Back to the power supply assembly. Here’s inside after a Jomac service (recap I guess).
Then on with the repro decals I got from Mikonos (Zona Arcade). The serial number is correct . The little button bracket is powder coated and was originally zinc plated/galvanised I think.

 

[Stokers]

That looks amazing! Did they powder coat brackets that hold the monitor?

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

That looks amazing! Did they powder coat brackets that hold the monitor?

I’ve just left that as is in the yellow gold plating. The frame - is that what you mean? Otherwise the mounting points are powder coated. I might have to dremel off some of the coating if the frame is meant to ground to the cabinet.

 

[Stokers]

I’ve just left that as is in the yellow gold plating. The frame - is that what you mean? Otherwise the mounting points are powder coated. I might have to dremel off some of the coating if the frame is meant to ground to the cabinet.

On my Astro these brackets are zinc? coated (the yellow coating you describe), they were a real pain to remove as well.

Might be different on the Aero.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

On my Astro these brackets are zinc? coated (the yellow coating you describe), they were a real pain to remove as well.

Might be different on the Aero.

They just had a really light dusting of paint, but they’re welded into the cabinet and not removable.

 

[Mrhide]

Powder coat day is always the best day!!

 

[hoagtech]

That’s @hoagtech. I bought one of those decals for the underside of the glass from him.

Thanks. I have 4 left if anyone needs one. I haven't seen one bubble from the air release film personally

 

[Gonzo]

Beautiful, bro. I got to this to mine.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

Added this little powder coated Jamma to Aero edge mounting bracket with new screws and another repro sticker. I also stripped the paint off the locks (that someone had sprayed many years ago) and polished them up a little. I also cleaned up a few tangs, the coin reject button and some other thing that goes in the coin door but I’m not sure of it’s purpose.

 

[Chihiro]

Late to the party but everything looks fantastic! looking new now.

Aero City is the ideal home friendly cab more so in Europe with our narrow doorways ect.

And built like a tank.

 

[d00mdrew]

And suddenly my Aero isn’t as pretty

Fantastic job so far. It looks like it’s going to be factory fresh.

 

[opt2not]

Added this little powder coated Jamma to Aero edge mounting bracket with new screws and another repro sticker. I also stripped the paint off the locks (that someone had sprayed many years ago) and polished them up a little. I also cleaned up a few tangs, the coin reject button and some other thing that goes in the coin door but I’m not sure if it’s purpose.

So I take it you're keeping the Sega harness connector and not converting to full JAMMA?
I believe @Kavas has done this on his Aero restore, and I was considering it for my Aeros as well. Eliminates another point of failure in the wiring.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

Late to the party but everything looks fantastic! looking new now.

Aero City is the ideal home friendly cab more so in Europe with our narrow doorways ect.

And built like a tank.

Thanks @Chihiro.

And suddenly my Aero isn’t as pretty

Fantastic job so far. It looks like it’s going to be factory fresh.

It’s going be as close as I can get it. Thanks @d00mdrew

So I take it you're keeping the Sega harness connector and not converting to full JAMMA?
I believe @Kavas has done this on his Aero restore, and I was considering it for my Aeros as well. Eliminates another point of failure in the wiring.

Yes I’m going to keep it stock but will add fourth button wiring. I like the Sega harness connector for its place in Candy cab history. I do have a plan though to make a custom pcb that takes all of the Jamma connections into connector and then breaks out a few of the missing connections. There aren’t that many that are needed TBH. I’m also planning to have an input and output for CPS wiring. It’s only an idea right now and in the middle of learning kicad - so it’s a while off.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

I cleaned, scuffed and repainted the speaker brackets. I would have gotten them powder coated as well but sort of missed them in the process. Paint is fine. The speakers are back in them too.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

I cleaned and polished as best I could all the coin door hardware. There’s still a bit of visible pitting from corrosion but it looks good. More repro stickers from the scanned originals. Some before and after pics.

Before

After