Cyber lead twinsies restoration (attempt, atleast...)

[ChapDDR]

Hi all,

Kinda new here, but after half a year of planning and waiting I am finally able to start the restoration of my 'dream' candy cab, which I would love to share with you all!

Some context: back in the early 2010's I was an avid user on a Dutch candycab forum as a late-teen, where multiple people owned a Cyber Lead. I freakin' loved this cabinet design, it's the best kind of 'campy', the 90's purple with a gundam-esque cabinet shape and a DMD marquee In my opinion it's the dopest cabinet ever made...

Back then I saved a lot of money and could only afford a Astro City (which were significantly cheaper at that time). Well, times have changed, and I have been in contact with a old forum friend of mine who, by chance, happened to have two Cyber Leads and was willing to sell one. It took a while to get everything arranged, and by the end, we made a nice agreement that I will also be restoring his Cyber Lead. Both are in the shape you expect most Cyber Leads to be. Discolored purple side panels, yellowed bezel, missing corner-plastic due to brittleness etc.

My restoration plan is the following:

• Fill the holes / missing plastic
• Find a way to strengthen the brittle plastic (if possible, perhaps with a paint?)
• Disassemble, and bring all exterior parts to a prof. paintshop
• Deep-clean the cabinet, wiring etc.
• Ultra-sonic clean / tumble suitable parts
• Re-apply decals (I might contact someone to make high quality scans)
• Restore the control panel (using Novus and a lot of buffing)
• Clean, and possible fix, the DMD (if any col/rows are broken)
• Re-assemble

After that, one CL will go back and I will receive my monitor. Regarding the monitors, one CL is the Toei setup (identifiable by the missing 'Namco' text on the marquee), and the other an MS9. The MS9 is getting tube-swapped due to bad burn-in. I chose to take the MS9, as it is more reliable and I am not a repair-wizard. My goal is to find someone that is able to recap/service my monitor, as that is beyond my expertise and this will be my 'forever' cab (going with me to my retirement home), so in the end I want it be in great shape.

Sadly, both cabinet are missing to original Namco Jamma --> JVS i/o board. Luckily I was able to purchase someones Irkenlabs Jammafier (which should be an upgrade)! I will mainly be playing a Mister FPGA (which can output 15khz over vga directly, if I am correct) but would love to own a few of my favorite titles on pcb.

Anyway, that's the plan for now. I've already read Ziggy's restoration thread multiple times, and we have been in contact (thanks Ziggy!!!) but if anyone has any tips, let me know

Now for some first-impression of the build quality of these cabs I did not expect them to be this flimsy- / frail feeling (despite this being common information). Usually people talk about the sidepanels, and they are probably the most likely parts getting damaged due to the brittle plastic, but I thought I was wrecking the entire cabinet when try to open the CP. Every plastic part bends, as the weird mechanism puts stress on the cp, the bezel and other parts. The bottom-door covering the PCB area is also loose and feels like flimsy plastic. Personally, I think that these cabinets are not suitable for non home-use, but otherwise they should be fine (unless you trip and fall against the sidepanels or kick the door due to dying on a 1CC- run). And that is fine... I picked a Cyber Lead over a common Sega cab because I love the design. People also drive unreliable rotary engines for no logical reason, other than passion.

Now it's time for a photo-dump

 

[ChapDDR]

Abusively using a second post to attach photo's of the second cab

Joking aside, since the cabs are going to a paintshop, we have been debating on what kind of paint would look nice. We want to keep the colors the same, but the original has a matt finish for purple and a glossy (pearl) white for the rest. I think the original matt purple with a pearlescent (instead of normally glossy) white would look awesome.

Both the white and purple shiny (metalic or pearlescent coating) might be too much... idk... what do you all think?

 

[NFGx]

I went with a 2-pack paint for mine because the resin in it will strengthen and protect the polystyrene and prevent further decay. I considered pearlescent but this sort of paint will show every single bend, dip and flaw in the plastic, so if you aren't a proper wizard with a perfect cab these paints may draw attention to the flaws.

 

[mourix]

You're going proper overkill on this one. Will follow along closely. It's such a playful machine. It looks fun.

It does scare me a little that each new Cyberlead restore describes the plastics as even more brittle as time passes.

I wonder if at some point these machines need actual metal stabilization to not crack from normal use...

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

Looking forward to watching the progress @ChapDDR. I can’t recall if I told you but arcade art shop in the UK have the side art that I had scanned and restored. I shared it with another user and he had his printed there. It doesn’t quite pop as much as the offset printed originals but Oli said it looks pretty good with the inks he’s using. I don’t think you’ll find a better option out there. As far as frailty goes, I liken these to mobile phone screens. If you don’t drop them, slam them into walls or drag them sideways off the back of a truck you’ll be fine.

https://www.arcadeartshop.com/?s=Cyber+&post_type=product

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

I went with a 2-pack paint for mine because the resin in it will strengthen and protect the polystyrene and prevent further decay. I considered pearlescent but this sort of paint will show every single bend, dip and flaw in the plastic, so if you aren't a proper wizard with a perfect cab these paints may draw attention to the flaws.

Did you finish your resto @NFGx?

 

[ChapDDR]

Time for a (long overdue) update. Life has been busy, and I have been putting work into the CL's but didn't find any time to do well-documented progression updates. Sorry about that!

In late Oct. 2025 I fully disassembled the cabs, and began preparing them for the painter. This meant cleaning off years of dust and grime, and repairing the broken shell.

As for the cleaning, the backpanel and coindoor were not getting painted. I used novus 2 to clean and polish the dirt out of the paint layer, which worked REALLY good. For reference, a hot cloth with green soap was not able to get any of the coindoor grime off by itself, that's how 'cooked in' the dirt was. Looking back at the pictures, the difference is night and day. One of the coindoor suffers from yellowing, but when assembled you hardly notice it.

For repairing the shell I went with special two component 'plastic putty'. I had only worked with normal wall-filler putty before, so this took some getting used to. It is a lot more sticky, so I did three separate layers allowing the final (thinly applied) layer to be shaped like the body/shell. The first two layers looked afwul, I shared it with my Dutch arcade group and did not get very positive responses but after the third layer it came out quite good (for a DIYer) I chose putty over glassfiber because I assumed it would be easier to use, which I think it was. One of the advantages of glassfiber is that it is stronger, but to be honest, the hardend putty is structurely way better than the original ABS plastic so I assume if the shell would break somewhere, it would likely be a new spot. Glassfiber would be overkill in a CL.

 

[ChapDDR]

Working with the paintshop was a bit more tedious than I had hoped. I dropped the parts off in Nov 2025. Colormatching the original paint was not an option, I was limited to known colorcodes of the painter. We couldn't find an exact match, but the R5/R491 seemed to match best (it's 'Ford Ka purple, lol). I was a bit stressed because I was fearing that it would turn out way too dark/purple, but complaining would be unfair as the paintjob was all made possible by the owner of the other CL. If it wasn't for him, I would have painted it myself in the backyard and the quality would have been less...

(My phone's camera is not that good, the pictures with the colorstrip are not representative of the actual color. See the assembled cab for the color IRL)

Anyway, it took until Feb 2026 for the painting to be done. The first thing I noticed (aside from it looking really good) is that the purple is indeed different, but as soon as I came home I verified the paint with the CP. It's almost an exact match, with the paint being lighter (but not as 'pastel' as the original). Okay, that's good! Then I checked the original flyer, and it's an exact match! Idk if the body on the flyer in inaccurate, or all CL's have 'faded' in their color over the years, but my worries about it not looking good were gone.

In the mean-time the decals from ArcadeArtShop arrived, let the assembly begin!

 

[ChapDDR]

The last few weeks I have been busy reassembling both cabs. The paintjob made fitting the speakergrills troublesome, the rest was an easy fit due to the design of the CL. Still, my opinion hasn't changed: structurely this cabinet is awfully designed. Removing the CP (or other parts) is cumbersome and fragile. But this is one of the best looking cabs IMO, so I don't mind

My own cabinet was assembled in my home-office (first floor) because I did not feel like disassembling it again or lifting the cabinet as a whole on a set of stairs. Sadly there is no good lighting in my home office, so the pictures are a bit less but it looks just as good (or dare I say, even better) than the other one.

But you know what they say, a picture says more than a thousand words, so I'll let them do the talking. I just want to add, how the purple is captured on camera can differ quite a bit, it's weird to get it to match how it looks (to me) irl. But personally, I think the purple feels exactly right. If I didn't know any better, I would think this would be original. The pictures from the front match the most with how it looks IRL, the sun was quite orange during the shoot.

Well, up next is saying goodbye to one of the cabs! That also means I'll be receiving the monitor (and installing a stepdown). Hopefully it's smooth sailing from now on I scored a (conversion) Progear A+B set locally, so I have a game ready to be played!

 

[ChapDDR]

Pictures of the second CL

 

[hoagtech]

Subscribed. Such a cool cab

 

[DRAGONKZ]

Crazy to see the purple they should be as opposed to the purple most are today!

 

[PASTBLASTER]

Woah, super bright cab! Subbed.

 

[JohnRambo'sKnife]

That looks incredible.

 

[Ziggy Cheetos Dust]

Great progress. Decals look great.

 

[Venger]

Wow, that is amazingly clean and just super glossy! Absolutely beautiful work!