Astro City Restoration - stringbean

[stringbean]

After much looking I recently managed to buy two arcade machines - an Astro City and a Blast City. I've been reading a ton of other peoples Astro City restoration threads (which there are a few here and other forums) trying to gather as much info as possible. I've never owned an arcade machine before so pretty much all of this is new. My plan is to document the process as I go and hopefully rely on some of the expertise here in this forum for answers that might help me as well as others down the road. The Astro City I bought is already in pretty decent condition albeit with some missing / incorrect wires. When I connected up the one CPS2 Street Fighter Zero board I just bought the game fired up and the volume was blazing loud. I currently have no idea how to activate free play or turn the volume down but that was a promising first step. Then, I opened up the control panel and saw there is a missing lock on the left. Also, the wiring going to the joysticks is something I'm a little unfamiliar with as I was hoping it would be compatible with a Sanwa JLF lever. The seller did not include a kick harness or correct control panel cabling for the kick buttons which I will need to find. I've already found some auctions on eBay for something that might work, but haven't pulled the trigger yet.

Based on what I've seen in some of the other Astro City restoration threads, I've bought the following items:

1. Simple Green cleaning spray
2. Magic eraser sponge
3. 52mm "Green Gel" skateboard wheels & bearings to replace the stock arcade wheels
4. Meguiar's M4916 Marine/RV Heavy Duty Oxidation Remover (specifically for removing stains/dirt from fiberglass)
5. Novus 7100 Plastic Polish Kit (for the control panel & black facia cover)
6. Chemical Guys Heavy Metal Polish (for the metal kick panel)
7. Impact drill bit set (I've seen impact drills necessary to disassemble parts of the arcade frame)
8. HONE Car Buffer Orbital Polisher
9. Replacement reproduction 2 player Astro City control panel
10. Set of Sega 5380 locks/keys
11. Set of Logitech z-5500 speakers (others have mentioned these are a straight drop in replacement for the original speakers)
12. Two new Sanwa JLF levers and all new Sanwa buttons
13. NOS coin slot
14. Kick harness
15. Kick button control panel loom wiring
16. 3 rolls 1/2" wide 1/8" thick foam
17. Fluorescent light fixture (This one)
18. Ratchet set for bolts
19. Black extension cable (To upgrade power cable to be grounded)
20. New control panel chrome bolts
21. 3m rubbing compound (to remove scratches from monitor screen)
22. Hand cleaner with pumice (to remove scratches from monitor screen)
23. FG-1E Ballast Starter
24. Hand file to reduce width of skateboard wheels
25. RAL9002 paint pen
26. Candy White Audi LB9A paint pen

Here are some pictures of the arcade right now. I'll continually post as I make progress on the restoration.

 

[Asobu]

Wow that Astro's in really nice condition. The marquee colors are still bright, not faded. How many plays are on that thing? There's a coin counter next to the coin box at the bottom.

Looking forward to your thread.

 

[rewrite]

Magic eraser sponge

Be careful with this, you can take that shiny finish layer right off of the top of the plastic.

Safer to not use it at all. Cab's in too nice of shape to dull the finish!

 

[BlinG]

JIS screwdriver/bits! I am unsure if the Astro uses these types of screws, but either way its always good to have these bits if you plan on taking the entire cabinet apart for cleaning. 80% chance you're gonna strip the screws on that Blast City with a normal Phillips bit.

 

[Geddon]

Nice! I have a new Astro and two blasts. They came in pretty decent shape so I didn’t do much cosmetically, but this might inspire me to do some work eventually. As for volume, in the Astro city there is likely a knob on the power supply in the cab. Blast has a knob inside the control panel which is nice. I actually want to mod all my cabs to have a volume control somewhere on the outside of the cab, but I’m not sure where I would put it.

 

[stringbean]

Wow that Astro's in really nice condition. The marquee colors are still bright, not faded. How many plays are on that thing? There's a coin counter next to the coin box at the bottom.

Looking forward to your thread.

I know I was fortunate. A guy selling cabs on eBay sold me one and when he looked at it decided it wasn't in good enough condition so he let me choose between this and another Astro City he had just imported. According to the counter its 18950 on plays.

Magic eraser sponge

Be careful with this, you can take that shiny finish layer right off of the top of the plastic.
Safer to not use it at all. Cab's in too nice of shape to dull the finish!

Oh, wow, I didn't realize. I'll definitely be careful. I did already use the magic eraser a little on the control panel, but I've seen other people report using the novus stuff so I'll probably convert over to that. I'll be putting in some time actually working on this thing this weekend so hopefully I'll have some good updates.

JIS screwdriver/bits! I am unsure if the Astro uses these types of screws, but either way its always good to have these bits if you plan on taking the entire cabinet apart for cleaning. 80% chance you're gonna strip the screws on that Blast City with a normal Phillips bit.

I actually had one of these and didn't realize it was JIS until I heard that from a YouTube person who restored an Astro City cab. I did by some impact bits for my impact driver, but I'm not certain they are JIS. I read that many times people have to use impact drills to get the screws out of the side of the cab and in some cases even drill them out.

Nice! I have a new Astro and two blasts. They came in pretty decent shape so I didn’t do much cosmetically, but this might inspire me to do some work eventually. As for volume, in the Astro city there is likely a knob on the power supply in the cab. Blast has a knob inside the control panel which is nice. I actually want to mod all my cabs to have a volume control somewhere on the outside of the cab, but I’m not sure where I would put it.

Volume outside would be nice. I did eventually find the volume knob but not until after I had to endure Street Fighter Zero 2 at max volume for 20 seconds. Thankfully, I'll be upgrading those speakers.

 

[Asobu]

Only 18,950? My Astro's almost at 100,000 plays.

A good find for sure.

 

[stringbean]

That is a well used arcade machine. Fun times were had.

 

[Anselmo]

Only 18,950? My Astro's almost at 100,000 plays.

A good find for sure.

my blast has two counters, one is 450k and the other one is 60k!!

I also have a big blue with 350k plays....

 

[stringbean]

Only 18,950? My Astro's almost at 100,000 plays.

A good find for sure.

my blast has two counters, one is 450k and the other one is 60k!!
I also have a big blue with 350k plays....

That's really cool. I also bought a blast city cab when I got this astro city, but it definitely has more miles on it. I looked and I think someone may have even removed the play counter if it is supposed to be next to the coin box. There is a square hole that looks like it belonged there.

 

[stringbean]

Had some time to get around to working on this today and was really excited. A few of the items I had purchased showed up over the last week and I also ended up buying more stuff along the way. Eventually, I'll get around to updating the original post to reflect the full list of items I used. Here are some of the goodies.

I started by removing the front facia from the Astro City for cleaning.

While doing that I noticed a bulge in the fiberglass where one of the screws must have been over tightened. You can see it here:

The inside of the black monitor cover had some very old crusty foam that was in need of replacement along with quite a bit of black residue from over the years.

Time to disassemble all the parts and soap everything up with car wash detergent. I decided against removing the main marquee and speaker grills since I've read some people accidentally cracked them doing this and I didn't want to take any changes. The adhesive there is still very good so I think cleaning around it will be adequate for my purposes.

On the black monitor cover, I carefully used a flat head screwdriver to scrape off the old foam strip once it was soaked. This went fairly well. The adhesive from the 25 year old foam strip was really on there so after giving both pieces a good wash, I put Goof Off on the area where the adhesive was and let it sit for about 10-15 minutes to break down the goo.

That gave excellent results for the fiberglass where I was able to easily take a sponge and remove all the adhesive with some aggressive wiping. It proved much less successful with the black monitor cover. Even with aggressive scrubbing and adding extra Goof Off the adhesive just ended up gumming up in clumps and it was very difficult to remove. In the end, the only way I could remove it was by taking a green scrubbing pad from the kitchen and liberally applying Goof Off while scrubbing and it took a while. Thankfully, since this was the back of the plastic cover I didn't need to be concerned with aesthetics that much.

While I was waiting for the Goof Off to break down the adhesive I decided to disassemble the control panel and start cleaning that as well. It had some scratches here and there and some pretty deep chips on the bottom right corner where the metal insert sits. There was also a generous buildup of questionable gunk in all crevices. I also went ahead and ordered a new old stock coin slot that wouldn't be so yellowed.

I don't plan to repaint the control panel or really any part of the machine so I'm a little uncertain what my best approach to these chips would be. I wouldn't mind filling them but if that but only if I can find a decent way to make the filler the correct color. Out with all the screws and parts and into the suds bath it goes.

Using a toothbrush and sponge I was able to get most of the dirt out although there were some deeper stains that managed to stick around. Thankfully, those were in areas that wouldn't be visible once a new panel is installed. Next step was on to drying and using the new buffer with Novus scratch remover.

After a lot of buffing I was able to remove most of the light scratches. There were a few deep cuts in the black monitor cover where the paint had actually been removed which there wasn't much I could do about, but the end result looked much better then before.

I partially reassembled the control panel after cleaning the glass and metal inserts for the instruction strip. I might come back later and buff the stainless steel with the metal polish I have when I do the kick plate.

Next, I unhoused the Logitech z5500 speakers I bought. They look significantly beefier then the original speakers, so that is exciting. Yay, improved sound. One difference I noticed was that the positive terminal on the z5500 speakers required a larger connector then the original speakers, so I'll have to address that at some point. I might drop by a local electronics shop to see what I can find. Another option I might instead do is to cut the wire from the z5500 cables and solder that to the wiring harness with some shrink wrap since I have all the stuff needed to do that (eg soldering iron, solder, wire strippers, etc). These new speakers are going to be killer.

I re-applied new foam stripping to the inside of the monitor cover and bottom of the front fiberglass cover.

Re-assembled and replaced the original wire holders with something newer. The originals were very brittle and had to be removed because they were falling off.

The front panel is back together and looking much better. There are leftover marks and small stains here and there but overall I'm happy with the results. While doing all this, I noticed the fluorescent lamp bulb did not light up, so I'll have to add that to the list of things to address later.

EDIT: Fixed the spacing issues.

 

[stringbean]

Sorry about the weird spacing in my previous post. The editor doesn't reflect whitespace that well when inserting inline images. Also, if anyone with knows the answers to the following questions, that would be very much appreciated:

1. Best method to fix/replace burnt out original marquee bulb (and any other components with that)
2. I'm trying find artwork for the instruction panel and the plastic part that mounts on the top of the arcade, but most of what I see online is for the Blast City. Does anyone know of a good place to get this for different games?

 

[Hatsune Mike]

Most of the eBay artwork you see "for the Blast City" is put together by this one guy. Some of is kind of jank - the DoDonPachi bezel uses screenshots from the wrong game entirely. The artwork intended to mount in the original Astro marquee holders, and many other similar ones, come from the game's kits. Usually it's just some glossy-printed inserts, and a movestrip to mount in the control panel space.

 

[GeekMan1222]

Looking good ! That cabinet will clean up super well

 

[stringbean]

Most of the eBay artwork you see "for the Blast City" is put together by this one guy. Some of is kind of jank - the DoDonPachi bezel uses screenshots from the wrong game entirely. The artwork intended to mount in the original Astro marquee holders, and many other similar ones, come from the game's kits. Usually it's just some glossy-printed inserts, and a movestrip to mount in the control panel space.

Thanks for letting me know. I’m not really sure how else I can get some art like that but I’ll keep looking in hopes.

Looking good ! That cabinet will clean up super well

Thanks! I’m hoping the same!

 

[djsheep]

If you’re looking to print some art for yourself, you can find some pretty good stuff online, here are some good places to get stuff from and print it yourself (google will find you more):

http://world-of-arcades.net/ (click through to individual games to download art assets)

https://segamadebaddecisions.wordpress.com/custom-astro-city-instruction-cards/

http://www.emphatic.se/?p=807

https://ikotsu.blogspot.com/2010/04/street-fighter-3-third-strike-arts.html?m=1

 

[stringbean]

@djsheep Wow, thanks for that. I think one of these might do the trick! Also, I was considering a touch up pen for some of the spots where the paint was scratched. In another thread here two years ago you mentioned candy white LB9A, but I've also seen other threads around the web mention RAL9002 color. Do you know if one color is more accurate then the other?

 

[djsheep]

I’m unsure, I have seen both codes mentioned too, and I’m sure either are close enough. Perhaps get one of each and do spot tests in inconspicuous areas and let them dry to see which one is better.

Enjoy the arts. Post pics once you’ve decked out your cabs.

 

[stringbean]

That is a good idea about testing each color. I'll probably do that.

I'll be posting more progress pics sometime this week. Over the weekend I did manage to completely disassemble the arcade, shampoo it with car wash detergent and generally clean most stuff. The body itself looks to be in pretty great shape aside from some scratches. I'm still waiting on some parts, but I did get more stuff in the mail so hopefully I can make more progress on this project this weekend and update with lots more pictures.

It looks like I have one of the Toshiba MS9 monitors. And it looks to be in great condition although I did notice some burn in. Not sure if that can be fixed. In fact, I'm pretty inexperienced when it comes to CRT monitors in general so I'm hoping not to have to do to much with that. Although, I know it's common to have them recapped so I'll keep that in mind.

 

[BlinG]

1. Best method to fix/replace burnt out original marquee bulb (and any other components with that)

I would check the FG-1E starter first. These are usually burned out and will cause the bulb to not light up.