stringbean
Enthusiast
I've had this Blast City cab sitting in my shop for a few months now and my plan is to restore it by the end of December. I originally picked it up off eBay along with an Astro that I previously restored back in August time frame. My goal is to give this cab a really good deep cleaning and bring back as much of its former glory as possible without going as far as repainting. This guide will hopefully be helpful to others looking to do something similar and provide loads of information via photos.
The cab is fully functional as is right now, but has years of nicotine buildup along with rusted out and corroded parts.
The door panels have seen better days, but hopefully with some good cleaning products, elbow grease, and a little luck I can get most of the original color to return.
I know some people like completely disassembling a cab before cleaning, but I prefer to do it part by part because I'm paranoid about losing bolts/screws/etc and/or forgetting the order in which to reassmble everything.
From the inside, the control panel looks a little gross.
I removed the control panel and the front monitor bezel. I was looking around the internet for other resources on blast city disassembly and sure there is the Bass Fishing manual with the exploded view of everything (see here pg 86), but there really aren't many guides on step by step disassembly. Not that it is all that difficult, but the best resource I found was from Spacies Arcade on YouTube (see here for that video). I also watched his series on the Astro City he restored and he details out a bunch of helpful little details.
After removing the old rusted out control panel I can see there is quite a bit of rust and staining going on with the plastic. I plan to hit this with the simple green (or zep which I have for some reason instead) and a plastic brush + magic eraser. I'll be ordering some new control panels from @alberto1225 and won't need this old one. Anyone know of something better to do with these other then just trash them? I assume there has to be someone out there wanting these older panels.
Time to get scrubbing. Lots of the really gross stuff came off pretty quickly, but there is some deeper staining here that I'll try to get in another pass with buffing compound and a circular buffer later.
The bottom of the control panel doesn't look much better. And, you can see there is a lot of corrosion going on with the metal. My plan is to see if I can gather up all the worst corroded metal parts and give them a multi-day white vinegar bath later.
Some of the really dirty stuff seems to be coming off with the simple green so that's good.
Tada! I guess I forgot to take an after picture of the top part when all rinsed off, but here is the bottom. Next, I'm going to get the buffer out and see if I can get some of the deeper stains out. Most of my availability to work on this stuff is going to be on weekdays, so I'll make more progress each day of the week and post here. I'm not entirely certain how far I'll go when it comes to the restore. I would love to recap the monitor and power supply, but I don't have that fancy Hakko desoldering sucker iron that makes it really easy and I also really hate using a solder sucker. There is the option to send off some of these things as well, but I haven't decided on that yet. It seems I could get more benefit by just buying some good tools. I have so many things that could used to be recapped with some of those fancy Nichicon caps. I still remember back when I was in college trying to desolder stuff using a solder rope - that was the worst.
The cab is fully functional as is right now, but has years of nicotine buildup along with rusted out and corroded parts.
The door panels have seen better days, but hopefully with some good cleaning products, elbow grease, and a little luck I can get most of the original color to return.
I know some people like completely disassembling a cab before cleaning, but I prefer to do it part by part because I'm paranoid about losing bolts/screws/etc and/or forgetting the order in which to reassmble everything.
From the inside, the control panel looks a little gross.
I removed the control panel and the front monitor bezel. I was looking around the internet for other resources on blast city disassembly and sure there is the Bass Fishing manual with the exploded view of everything (see here pg 86), but there really aren't many guides on step by step disassembly. Not that it is all that difficult, but the best resource I found was from Spacies Arcade on YouTube (see here for that video). I also watched his series on the Astro City he restored and he details out a bunch of helpful little details.
After removing the old rusted out control panel I can see there is quite a bit of rust and staining going on with the plastic. I plan to hit this with the simple green (or zep which I have for some reason instead) and a plastic brush + magic eraser. I'll be ordering some new control panels from @alberto1225 and won't need this old one. Anyone know of something better to do with these other then just trash them? I assume there has to be someone out there wanting these older panels.
Time to get scrubbing. Lots of the really gross stuff came off pretty quickly, but there is some deeper staining here that I'll try to get in another pass with buffing compound and a circular buffer later.
The bottom of the control panel doesn't look much better. And, you can see there is a lot of corrosion going on with the metal. My plan is to see if I can gather up all the worst corroded metal parts and give them a multi-day white vinegar bath later.
Some of the really dirty stuff seems to be coming off with the simple green so that's good.
Tada! I guess I forgot to take an after picture of the top part when all rinsed off, but here is the bottom. Next, I'm going to get the buffer out and see if I can get some of the deeper stains out. Most of my availability to work on this stuff is going to be on weekdays, so I'll make more progress each day of the week and post here. I'm not entirely certain how far I'll go when it comes to the restore. I would love to recap the monitor and power supply, but I don't have that fancy Hakko desoldering sucker iron that makes it really easy and I also really hate using a solder sucker. There is the option to send off some of these things as well, but I haven't decided on that yet. It seems I could get more benefit by just buying some good tools. I have so many things that could used to be recapped with some of those fancy Nichicon caps. I still remember back when I was in college trying to desolder stuff using a solder rope - that was the worst.
