A mouse f****** my Cyber Lead. Time for a restoration.

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

A month or so ago I noticed my Cyber Lead was playing blind. I had sound but no picture. Thinking it was a chassis issue I let it go for a while. I later noticed it was a bit stinky too which I attributed to one of our cats spraying on the machine. Gross I know. So I took the front of the machine off to clean it and to my disgust saw a mouse had moved in - pissed and shat all over the base of the cabinet. It had a light rust layer on it already but now it was very manky. After a huge job of restoring my Exceleena, I wasn’t psyched up to do another resto so soon. But I had no choice but to clean this cute cab up and do it properly. So I rolled the machine outside and started disassembly. With the back panel off you can see the horror.



Upon further inspection I saw that the little bastard had made a nest in the chassis. At first I thought the wires were just scraps the rodent has collected - but no - they had been chewed off the chassis and other areas.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

The plan is to powdercoat all the metal in the machine, thoroughly clean everything, paint the faded side panels and repair all the chewed wires.

Dismantling took a while and I photographed and took notes as I went. All screws etc were bagged and labeled.

 

[DRAGONKZ]

I will have a complete base of a CyberLead that I was going to toss or list up for sale (thinking no one would ever need it, but perhaps so!)

I need a bit more time to finish making “the best” cyberlead 1 cabinet from both I have left, but the condition of the base I have spare would be better than yours

Example of one of them…

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

It’s quite interesting seeing the change in design from the all-steel Exceleena. This Cyber Lead is still quite hefty with the very solid base and subframe. There were more bits than shown here but this is the bulk of what it looked like broken down.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

Some repair work started on the chassis wires and I managed to save some decals which I laminated ready to stick back on. Jomac supplied me with a junk MS9 that I could farm wires from, however I’m going to attempt to pin and wire the required connector that is soldered to the chassis (bottom pics). Just waiting on parts. Mr mouse managed to chew several remote board wires in half and chew out a couple of whole sections. I used wire joining crimps to repair all of these.

.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

The JV JAMMA adaptor was previously hacked so I rejoined the wires using a different method to normal. Using a terminal wire crimper I just twisted the wires together, crimped them and covered them in heat shrink. I guess it’s not as attractive as having and in-line repair but it does the job and was less fiddly.

.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

All the parts went off to the powdercoater. The time spent protecting all the threaded areas by fitting them with sacrificial nuts and bolts is important but painful. The first ones back were the back panel and power box. This is where the mouse got in. I plugged it with a 30mm button hole blank.

The panel is not 100% white. It had darkened a bit, but the inside was unaffected and the closest powdercoat match I could get was Shoji White.

I cleaned the board and wires and stuck it all back together. Some of the output connectors were getting rusty so I treated them with a bit of Deoxit. It didn’t disappear the rust but it’s much better. I mocked up a decal as well but have done a more accurate paper sticker since. Some before and after shots.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

I will have a complete base of a CyberLead that I was going to toss or list up for sale (thinking no one would ever need it, but perhaps so!)

I need a bit more time to finish making “the best” cyberlead 1 cabinet from both I have left, but the condition of the base I have spare would be better than yours

Example of one of them…

Thanks mate. Mine’s at the powdercoating place so I’ll see how it turns out. I’ll give you a yell if I need more parts later and see what you’ve got left.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

Next up was to clean the monitor. I haven’t been confident in the past to wash the tube, but read enough about people doing it that I went ahead. I was sure to dry every nook and cranny using the blow feature of my shop vac. I also repaired a few wires that had been chewed in half.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

I was on the fence about painting the side panels but really needed to if this machine was going to look great on the outside as well. They had a number of stains on them from water running down them over a period of time. Like a storage warehouse roof dripping on it every time it rained. I’m not sure if the residual marks were some sort of lime/calcium combo or the actual plastic (polystyrene) reacting with the water. They were slighty raised and required sanding to level them off. I was able to remove the decals and save them for replacement or reproduction.
I had the paint matched at the auto shop. I read that thinners can eat into polystyrene but the shop didn’t do acrylic in cans, so I had to go with enamel. They also don’t do flat finishes in cans. Only gloss. Using a higher spray technique I was able to layer the paint on lightly which left the finish very much like the original plastic surface. I taped off the back of the panels as there was no real point to painting them.


This is how it looks after the first few coats. Every bug in town decided to land on it.

 

[Offsider]

Hey mate,

Bloody fine work so far. After doing a bit of a recent spruce up on one of these, I really can appreciate your efforts here.
Mine also has the “drip marks” on one of the sides, it’s only very minuscule and only one “drip” but it’s definitely exactly like you described.
Possibly a common thing with the sides of these cabinets as they age in the sunlight?
Good job mate

Tom

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

The spray cans are pretty good but do blow out the occasional drip which is frustrating to try and dab up and then tidy over the top. They’re $30AUD each but only contain about 200ml of paint - with the rest being propellant. So it doesn’t go that far. I used four cans to do both side panels and the control panel surround. The colour match is pretty good. Here’s the inside original compared the new paint. You can see the spray strokes in direct sunlight but off-angle you can’t.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

Hey mate,

Bloody fine work so far. After doing a bit of a recent spruce up on one of these, I really can appreciate your efforts here.
Mine also has the “drip marks” on one of the sides, it’s only very minuscule and only one “drip” but it’s definitely exactly like you described.
Possibly a common thing with the sides of these cabinets as they age in the sunlight?
Good job mate

Tom

Thanks Tom. Did you post anywhere about it? I’d be keen to have a read. I recall seeing something perhaps.

 

[JohnRambo'sKnife]

For the sake of durability, are you using an adhesion promoter? Not sure if they have SEM outside of the US, but their XXX promoter has held up very well for seat parts. It is more of a solvent spray so you get a good chemical bond and get to keep the original texture of a part. You just can't touch anything after you spray it.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

For the sake of durability, are you using an adhesion promoter? Not sure if they have SEM outside of the US, but their XXX promoter has held up very well for seat parts. It is more of a solvent spray so you get a good chemical bond and get to keep the original texture of a part. You just can't touch anything after you spray it.

Yes I forgot to mention that. I used one called Dupli-Color Plastic Adhesion Promotor.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

I’ve created some reproduction decals. Some are simple photos of existing stickers that I’ve adjusted a little with my basic skills and others I’ve use translate and Apple pages to do new ones.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

The parts are back from the powder coater. Quite happy but a few stuff ups. The guy that did my Exceleena paid close attention to detail but whoever did this missed a few bits.
There’re two bits I’ll need doing again. The brackets that hold the front door in place and the main base plate. There are two strips of old sponge seal that they didn’t sand blast off completely and then they coated over the top. . That set me back because I wanted to reassemble things this weekend.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

I went with precious silver for all the metal parts that aren’t plated. Same as the Exceleena. For the plated parts I went with a flat gold - to try and stick with the gold theme. To save money I left it flat because gloss required another coat. It looks nice. Not particularly shiny but corrosion will be prevented. There’s no electro plating place in my town anyway but powdercoating is superior. They charged my $10 AUD each for small pieces and $40 for large pieces. Each piece is sand (garnet) blasted, prime coated and then top coated. So it was $600 AUD the lot + $160 for the power box and back panel. I could halve that if I wasn’t so fussy but I want to do it properly. Also, the powdercoating place didn’t have a matching grey powder for the door - so that’s why I went with precious silver.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

So I got cracking on what I could. The coin box came up well with the powder coat - new hardware on the coin chute, polishing the old screws, the original decal replaced, a new lock, heat shrink on the cable retainers and lining the box with silver vinyl to stop the coin tub from scratching it. The door is very tight with the powdercoating but hopefully it will wear down with use.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

The chassis tray is coming together nicely. A couple of my repro stickers. All parts powdercoated including the little vga connector mount.