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opt2not

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So the stars aligned with this one.

Picked up a semi-empty Jambo Safari recently with no monitor, and no Naomi board. But everything else is there.
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The guy selling it wanted $110, how could I say no? I’ve been wanting a Sega Racer for a long while now so this was the opportunity. I have a spare 29” monitor that I can slide into this, a Nanao MS9-29a which is dual-res (15/24khz), a Naomi system outputs 15/31khz... more on this later.
I already own a Netdimm Naomi that I can load up Jambo Safari or Crazy Taxi, since the configuration of this cab is compatible. That's going to be the initial first step. Get it running with those games.

With help from my friend and his truck, we loaded it up in the back after taking some of the bigger parts off. This cab breaks down pretty nicely.
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My plan for this cabinet is to convert it to Daytona. Daytona and Outrun 2 are both games I wanted to have in my collection for a long time, but somehow the universe has this way of making things happen at once. In parallel I was talking to a guy looking to sell a twin Daytona for months, with no bites.
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It's complete, but doesn't turn on, he says.

The story goes: the seller bought these from a closing arcade in Whittier, CA, back in the early 2000’s. He put it in his bar, and had it there for a few years. Fully working. He ended up selling the bar, and afterwards he brought the cabs to his home garage, and for some reason they stopped working. He thinks something jostled in the move. I’m betting it was something trivial, like a fuse or a connection coming loose.

His goal was to fix them up, but the guy knows nothing about this stuff and was in way over his head. It sat in his garage for years.

He listed it about 5 months ago at $500. No takers. People want working units, not projects. Well most people that are not me. ;) Then he listed it for $400...then $200. He was going to list it for free before I came along.
Now, I cannot fit a twin cab set-up along with my Jambo Safari in my home. I'm already getting pretty full with the cabs I have now. But I want the parts from this machine.
So I messaged him asking if he'd be willing to part out one of them. He gets back to me saying "if you take all the parts, I'll give you a smoking deal". We decided on $200, his asking price for the complete cabs, for all the parts I can gut out of this.
He was super happy to have me take as much as I could. I told him I’ll strip it to the point where you can separate the wood and trash the cabs easily. So sad, I know, but these parts are in better hands now. What can ya do, that cabinet would have stayed in his garage neglected forever. At least it's soul will continue on.

So I get to his place early in the morning, and get to work. It took me 3 hours to strip the cabs:
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I got everything, all boards + wiring + control panel + monitors + speakers, mounting brackets...I left the pedal assemblies since the bolts were rusted and I didn't have enough time to try more drastic measures. I plan on going back tomorrow to get those out. I'm going to try a bunch for things, but if all fails I'll try just drilling it out with a metal bit.
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While I was gutting this i was thinking, "i hope he doesn't go on ebay and find out how much he could make on individual parts!".

I have the Jambo Safari Control Panel, which is in better condition than the Daytona's. No scratches on the dash, just some sticker residue:
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Here are the Daytona's:
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I might be able to polish out these scratches, but I'm not confident it'll look good enough. Might be best to just mix and match the dash from the Jambo, and use the parts of the Daytona. They're all very similar.

Wheels:
Jambo
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Daytona 1 (missing center cap)
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Daytona 2
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I'm leaning towards using the Jambo Steering wheel since it has the cool center Racing Gear sticker, as well as the Sega extrusion at the bottom.

I was able to grab both of the monitors, they're Nanao MS8-26SU’s. Same monitor that’s in my Sega Aero City.
Unfortunately both have Daytona Burn-in. So I’ll probably keep the chassis as backups to my Aero.
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Besides, this Jambo monitor box takes a 29” Monitor and I can use my spare Nanao MS9 for it.

Since Naomi is 31khz or 15khz, I can either run the game in low res, or use my Ultracade UVC to downres to 24khz. When I switch to Daytona, the Model 2 board that it's on only outputs 24khz so that will be clean.


Anyway, to sum this all up, I ultimately want to convert this into a Daytona running on the larger sized Sega sitdown cabinets that were made for Jambo Safari, Crazy Taxi, and Daytona 2.
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with the colours and artwork of this:
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This will be new territory for me since I have only restored and converted standup woodies and Japanese candy cabs. So my standard restoration process will be modified a bit.

But first order of business, assess the damage and work needed for the restoration. Stay tuned!
 
Looking forward to seeing the progress. Congrats on the scoop!
 
If i were you, I would seriously consider looking at doing an L2M2 build with the daytona original steering wheel and ffb motor and keeping the crts on them via a model 2 emulator (yes, I know it's not 100% the same but it's definitely close!) edit: looks like there's a much newer and improved version of the L2M2 which is really old - the original developer has newer stuff which I believe Mackie is doing


Here's my L2M2 build using a shell that was literally about to be thrown away - I kept the tube, wheel (with FFB motor) and the pedals - the rest is running a PC, JPAC and hacked up Logitech wheel to use on the L2M2 - you can scroll through my pain in my worklog if you wish to :)


Such a shame you couldn't keep the shells of both daytonas and the jumbo safari
 
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You can't really use the original Daytona pedal assemblies on anything else than one of those older cabs.

Indeed, shame about the cabs. I have an old Sega Rally twin that was made in the UK and it looks exactly the same as that Daytona. They're nice cabs and 24khz looks amazing on a MS8-26. The shells look like they're in decent nick.

Personally, I would sell the Jambo and restore the twin. Daytona is great fun in 2P. I think the tube size is pretty common there (A63), so you have that option too (A63 is rocking horse shit here).

Anyway, don't mind me, you do you. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with. The Aero restore was great.
 
Exciting project and a good story. Thanks for sharing and good luck.

Be aware though, you can't use the Jambo dash plastic on the Daytona panel because Model 3 and Model 2 style dashes are slightly different, mainly the hole for the steering wheel has a different offset.
 
I went back and pulled out the Pedal assemblies, and picked up the seat kickers/woofers and the topper sign.

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The sign has a crack in the middle of it, which is not ideal, and the marquee art is really faded. This is not fixable, as it's a really noticeable spidery crack right in the center.
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I'd most likely just keep this is a man-cave ornament and decide what to do with it later.


You can't really use the original Daytona pedal assemblies on anything else than one of those older cabs.
You are right, the pedals look similar, but they're a half-inch shorter than the one currently installed into the Jambo base.

Daytona:
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Jambo:
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One of the Daytona pedal assemblies is complete, while the other is missing some parts and doesn't function. I've got a buddy with a 4-player Indy 500 set-up that could probably use the Daytona assemblies, his cabs are in the older wooden style similar as well.

They do need some work though:
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Indeed, shame about the cabs. I have an old Sega Rally twin that was made in the UK and it looks exactly the same as that Daytona. They're nice cabs and 24khz looks amazing on a MS8-26. The shells look like they're in decent nick.

Personally, I would sell the Jambo and restore the twin. Daytona is great fun in 2P. I think the tube size is pretty common there (A63), so you have that option too (A63 is rocking horse shit here).

Anyway, don't mind me, you do you. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with. The Aero restore was great.
Thanks nem. Agreed MS8's are nice in 24khz. My MS9 does as well, which is what is going into this Jambo. It'll be fantastic for Daytona.
it is a shame I couldn't grab the shell. If I had enough space for it I would have, but I just have enough room for this single cab, and the Jambo is in much better shape than the Daytona. I didn't snap any pictures of it, but the bases of the Daytona had a lot of wood rot and in some areas was falling apart. Cutting new bases wouldn't be too hard, i guess...
But hey, I will make sure to do this justice and make sure the project is finished looking fantastic.

Exciting project and a good story. Thanks for sharing and good luck.

Be aware though, you can't use the Jambo dash plastic on the Daytona panel because Model 3 and Model 2 style dashes are slightly different, mainly the hole for the steering wheel has a different offset.
You are right as well! I just did a mock line-up and comparison and the dashes are slightly different. No matter, going forward I want to keep one of each, a Daytona Dash and a Jambo/Crazy Taxi dash. Since it's really easy to swap panels, this might give me good options in the future. Especially if I look into that Universal Interface board posted in another thread.
 
Let's get this thread up-to-date.

I mentioned this before, there are so many parts in this cab that I have to divide it all up in mini-projects. I decided to start with the Control Panel, which was in rough shape.

First up, the VR Panel:
So this panel was trashed! Buttons caps missing, gum stuck in the sockets, gross and dirty.

I was able to desolder the switches, and take it all apart. This was a straight-forward fix. Just clean, replace the switches and button housings, clean the metal and put everything back together. Voila:
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It cleaned up really nice.

Next was to tackle the plastic CP itself. As I showed you above, the plastics were really beat-up. Tons of scratches, people etching their initials into the top, cracks present... just rough.

After removing all the decals and metal plate, giving it a wash down, I ended up taking multiple grits of sandpaper to the plastic. Smoothed out all the scratches, made sure the surface was rough enough for new paint to adhere to.

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All scratches smooooooothed:
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Cracks were filled in with epoxy and sanded:
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After that I threw it up on a makeshift pedestal for painting. Hit it with fill-primer first:
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Then a few coats of semi-gloss black, with wet sanding in-between the surface came out really nice. Scratches gone!:
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Put it all back together to see how it all looks. I can't decide if i want to go with my (cleaned up) metal plate, or the dashboard looking one:
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(the picture with the metal plate has the smoothest wet sand pass on the paint job, and clear coat applied)

Next is the gear shift cover. Same deal as the dash CP, vandalized scratches. I sanded down the surface so the scratches are smoothed out. Since they weren't too deep i didn't feel the need for fill-in primer, so I hit it with a few coats of metallic black, similar to the original finish.
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Then I taped off the numbers and sega logo to apply the metallic shiny silver:
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The outcome? Spectacular!
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That's about it for the CP plastics. Next let's tackle the gear shifter.
Disassembled the entire shifter, removed the grime and rust:
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I got NOS bumpers for the bottom guides:
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The screws for fastening the top plates were stripped to hell, so I had to drill the originals out. But I ended up buying replacements, unfortunately they didn't have the short ones I needed, so I figured to buy longer ones and just trim 'em:

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After all the clean-up was done, I reassembled it all together and re-greased it:
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The shifter feels like butter now! The grooves for each position are nice and smooth.

That's about it for now, next up will be the steering and force feedback mechanics. I gotta pull the parts out and give it all a cleaning, as well as confirm the FFB motor is working well.

Stay tuned.
 
I lied. there's still more.

I wanted to get the monitor sorted out because it was a point of worry. I have multiple spares in my stash, and the monitor that i was originally going to use was only a dual-res Nanao MS9. A spare for my New Astro City. If I used that one I would have to use a downscaler to get some of the 31khz boards to work nicely with it (like Outrun 2 SP). That would have been a hassle.
But, I did have a spare tri-sync tube without a chassis that I got in a package deal with a couple other monitors.

(the front one here):
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This tube was taken out of a PGA Tour Golf Team Challenge cabinet, which uses a WG 9200. The seller told me it was working before he pulled it but he didn't give me the chassis with it, so I figured I'd keep an eye out for a spare.
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After months of searching, a WG 9400 chassis appeared on ebay for cheap. "untested" yadda-yadda... aka not working. So I threw a minimum bid of $25 on it, and won! After shipping it turned out to be just over $40 to my door.
Of course as soon as I got it I wanted to see if it worked. NOPE. nothing on screen, chassis kept clicking in a reset loop. So I started looking up repair logs and found there aren't many out there. I know nothing about tri-sync monitors. never repaired one before, and figured instead of going down that rabbit hole right now I'll just pay a pro to fix it. So I got it repaired by PNL , which is well known in SoCal for arcade monitor repairs.
They fixed it! But, they didn't do a full recap, or calibrated it for me...which would have costed more.

So, on the bench for new caps!
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66 caps! Including the 2 big B+ filter caps.
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Here's some comparisons of the before and after new caps and calibration.

Before - colours were off, red was weak, geometry distorted:
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After - I was able to get the Red back a bit, and the geometry was a hellava lot better:
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For game tests I connected a Sega Lindbergh and ran Outrun 2 SP through 31khz VGA:
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Before:
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After:
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Definitely an improvement!

With the monitor sorted out, I relax a bit on the hardware front. But I still got lots of wiring to sort out, here are two piles, Daytona 1 and Daytona 2 full wiring:

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PS:
Here's a look of those universal interface boards I got from France:
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These boards are going to make hooking up games to the one set of wiring and controls a piece of cake!
 
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Thanks!

I’ve decided to go with the metal plate for the steering section. With that, came a bit more polishing.

I didn’t have a ton of time this weekend for this, but I ended up cleaning and painting the little speaker grills in the CP.

Here are some shots of it coming together. You can see the CP’s smooth painted surface a bit better.

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do you have exact ref about the rivet on the panel please?

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I don’t yet. I still gotta figure out what those are, or come up with another solution for them.
 
one guy on ukvac give me this ref: 3.2mm x 8.0mm aluminium pop rivets.
 
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