MostroVeneno
Grand Master
Howdy Ap friends!
I wanted to share this thread with you; here you can read about some restoration process I went under for 2 of my Capcom Q-25 cabs (カプコン Q グランダム 25 ).
The first one is standard cab and the second one holds a rotation mechanism inside.
Needless to say when I got into this, I never thought I would come across such iconic machines.
I barely knew anything and just wanted to play Street Fighter II in real Arcade Hardware, as this was the game responsible for countless and incredible experiences during childhood with brothers and cousins, where we would sit and play on the SNES for hours. Those times really felt like an endless Era.
LET´S START WITH THE STANDARD
This Q-25 came home 3 years ago, with a Frankenstein 20” monitor attached to a wood that almost fell off during the shipping, it was pending from one and only bolt in the upper-right corner.I was so obstinate with the idea of at least giving back some of its past glory I didn’t even test it with the 20” monitor in, didn’t turn it on, didn’t play for one second for a year, and it sure was a bittersweet sentiment to have this beautiful machine without actually sitting down to play some rounds.
I searched for 25” tube and chassis cabs for a long time with no results, practically there aren’t cabs to source these in here, mostly national wood made from the 80´s that housed from 20” to 22”.
Then again, It had grown on me the idea of making RGB mod to a suitable TV set.
There are some 25” model TV’s candidates around, just had to narrow them to curved screen and gambling on possible RGB chassis capabilities. I had tried this before with 29” models with the hope that studying the manual and schematics prior to buying would lead me to some certainty about this aspect. Well I learned the hard way, disassembling a TV I could find any tube brand, any chassis model not listed in the manual. So… yes, gambling.
This time around luck was on my side. I found a 25” Phillips TV that turned to be perfect match. When dismantling I found to my surprise it came with a Toshiba tube A59LAM94X01 original being A59JMZ193X….
I was really happy to be more close to original as possible.
I tried the RGB mod in the chassis tapping RGB lines from jungle chip ( TDA8362 ) and went great. Gorgeous and crisp image!
As I said, it was difficult to source 25” cabs, so to find a suitable metal structure to hold the tube would follow the same luck. I talked to a friend and got me a 27” Wells-gardner structure and I ended up trimming it to fit the required 25”, it was not the prettiest job but did the trick and worked just fine.
One other thing needed to be done was get the original coin feeders (and I just had one), the other was replaced by OP to feed customs coins from here.
So i had to think how to do something similar.
I made these in CNC aluminum, they had a rough finish.
So i sanded and aplied Brasso with brute force and the results were incredible. Here´s a comparison picture.
Other things done:
- Sand and repaint metal base floor
- Replace keylocks ( had to drill to get into coin box )
- I added Original Plexi marquee for promotional flyers
- I have yet to replace side Capcom vinyl from one side
Aside from the tube & chassis this Q-25 came with, I can say it was in good condition.
Didn’t urge to me the need to restore its aspect but of course i did minor things, mostly to the control panel and general cleaning.
Whenever I can maintain originality (even on paint and materials) I will do, I believe these machines have some sort of soul and changing its formal properties relatively change its soul.
For the second cab, major restoration was inevitable and a must done, at least repaint doors, replace side contact vinyl and broken parts (it was a mess)
Still some work to do but things are looking much better now
Last edited:
