trashedcabs
Professional
This was one of several summer projects and I'm just now getting to posting it.
We bought a lot of 5 of these OK baby cabs from a collector in Canada who was clearing out their storage. These were at the arcade CHQ in BC, and then somewhere in China before that. They were as expected--yellowed, scratched beyond belief, and very dirty. Some of them had cracks on the control panels. We inspected the condition of them all and I took home the worst one for myself.
The whole cabinet comes apart into many pieces. I really like this design, but I would later find out it uses SO many more screws than a regular Sega cabinet. Everything got stripped apart and cleaned as best I could.
I didn't take a ton of pictures of the bodywork process because it mostly happened between other projects. There were holes drilled in the control panel and a very sharp dangerous metal piece was screwed in to "fix" the crack. I removed that crap and used a pipette to drip some acetone into the crack, then at the top of the crack I used a soldering iron to tack it in place so the acetone could properly fuse the plastic back together. It worked great! The next day I used a soldering iron to plastic weld the entire length of the crack, and placed some metal staples in for structure, then I mixed up some ABS slurry (ABS scraps and acetone in a jar) and applied it on the inside and out. I could not break the cracked area no matter how hard I tried. I then used the slurry to fill the holes in the control panel as well as the holes drilled for the security bars.
Once dry, the cracks and holes were sanded and filled with body filler, then sanded again. They were now ready for paint. Here you can see one of the front supports from the inside where I filled the hole with ABS slurry, and what the outside looks like after all is done.
Paint was a LONG process and I hated it. I have never had a good setup for painting and have always been relegated to rattle cans in the backyard, and to make matters worse I now live in a condo with neighbors that complain and a nosy HOA that loves to threaten fines. I really wanted to pay to get this professionally sprayed, but the only shops that would even talk to me gave me quotes that would have been far more than a mint one of these is worth. If anyone in the PNW is willing to do paint work for me, shoot me a DM.
I did most of this on my patio in a paint tent and used cheap Rustoleum acrylic enamel spraycans. I learned a LOT about painting during this process. Many mistakes were made during all of these steps. The result isn't amazing, but it is all one color and shiny. No more piss yellow. Most importantly, it was also very cheap.
Biggest lesson learned was you WILL get orange peel when using spray cans, and that spray cans are thinned significantly more than what's shot from a gun. If you want a mirror finish you need to spray several more coats of clear coat than you think, then spend the time wet sanding and polishing every part. The best looking parts were done with 6 light coats of clear, sprayed 10 minutes apart, wet sanded with 1500 grit, cut with a DA polisher using a wool pad and 3D ACA 510 compound and then polished with Sonax Perfect Finish and foam pad.
We bought a lot of 5 of these OK baby cabs from a collector in Canada who was clearing out their storage. These were at the arcade CHQ in BC, and then somewhere in China before that. They were as expected--yellowed, scratched beyond belief, and very dirty. Some of them had cracks on the control panels. We inspected the condition of them all and I took home the worst one for myself.
The whole cabinet comes apart into many pieces. I really like this design, but I would later find out it uses SO many more screws than a regular Sega cabinet. Everything got stripped apart and cleaned as best I could.
I didn't take a ton of pictures of the bodywork process because it mostly happened between other projects. There were holes drilled in the control panel and a very sharp dangerous metal piece was screwed in to "fix" the crack. I removed that crap and used a pipette to drip some acetone into the crack, then at the top of the crack I used a soldering iron to tack it in place so the acetone could properly fuse the plastic back together. It worked great! The next day I used a soldering iron to plastic weld the entire length of the crack, and placed some metal staples in for structure, then I mixed up some ABS slurry (ABS scraps and acetone in a jar) and applied it on the inside and out. I could not break the cracked area no matter how hard I tried. I then used the slurry to fill the holes in the control panel as well as the holes drilled for the security bars.
Once dry, the cracks and holes were sanded and filled with body filler, then sanded again. They were now ready for paint. Here you can see one of the front supports from the inside where I filled the hole with ABS slurry, and what the outside looks like after all is done.
Paint was a LONG process and I hated it. I have never had a good setup for painting and have always been relegated to rattle cans in the backyard, and to make matters worse I now live in a condo with neighbors that complain and a nosy HOA that loves to threaten fines. I really wanted to pay to get this professionally sprayed, but the only shops that would even talk to me gave me quotes that would have been far more than a mint one of these is worth. If anyone in the PNW is willing to do paint work for me, shoot me a DM.
I did most of this on my patio in a paint tent and used cheap Rustoleum acrylic enamel spraycans. I learned a LOT about painting during this process. Many mistakes were made during all of these steps. The result isn't amazing, but it is all one color and shiny. No more piss yellow. Most importantly, it was also very cheap.
Biggest lesson learned was you WILL get orange peel when using spray cans, and that spray cans are thinned significantly more than what's shot from a gun. If you want a mirror finish you need to spray several more coats of clear coat than you think, then spend the time wet sanding and polishing every part. The best looking parts were done with 6 light coats of clear, sprayed 10 minutes apart, wet sanded with 1500 grit, cut with a DA polisher using a wool pad and 3D ACA 510 compound and then polished with Sonax Perfect Finish and foam pad.
