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Tron Restoration Blog - Page 3

Slow But Steady... The Progress Continues.
May 2, 2005

There actually has been work on Tron over the past week. Knocking out item after item. Here you see the power supply board with new LiIon battery in the lower left. Worked great for the first day. Then came out second day and the high score was gone. Either something is draining the battery or the soldering job stinks. It's probably the soldering job. Gonna re-do it and see how things go.

This is the sound amp board. I had been having issues with this cracking and popping on the left hand channel. Well, after taking it out, I now know why. A couple capacitors and resistors blew. View the larger pic to see... focus on the left bottom.

Here the game is shroud-less. She's a little modest so don't stare too long. You can see the translight in the back which I am still waiting for a replacement to arrive.

Here the shroud is after having the overlay removed. It's full of glue and it's gonna take a ton of effort to get it off. I used goo-gone against my better instincts.

First side came out pretty well. Remember, this will be stickered over anyway, so it's most important to get it smooth, but how it looks isn't as big a deal.

The second side came off, but formed a white haze. Guess I left the goo gone on too long. Anyway, it will be covered. Towards the bottom, there is a tiny bit of visible hazing. I ordered a plastic polishing kit to remove it. Also used some "back to black" product I use on my cars plastic and rubber molding to bring the shine back. Worked pretty well. This is the shroud with new sticker on.

Side View of the shroud. Looks pretty great doesn't it? Go further back to see the then and now comparison and you will see why I am so happy with the results. Application of the shroud overlay was pretty simple. Put plain Windex on the shroud in an amount like you were cleaning a window. Apply the same amount on the back of the overlay... and float into place.

Then all I had to do was use a rubber squeegee and pull from top to bottom once positioned and smooth all the Windex and air bubbles out. It was a lot easier than I had thought it would be.

What's so exciting about this? Well, the cabinet thru all it's years in service had NEVER had it's feet on.... and it shows. The bottom of the cabinet is in the worst shape of all. This side isn't too bad but still, had they kept the feet on, this probably wouldn't have happened.

This is a reference side shot prior to removing the side graphics. While they don't look terrible here, they were a bit worn, and since I was replacing everything else, why not this as well.

Here is a little better view of the deteriorating art work. Plus you can see the control panel shelf bracket, which is starting to rust. I ended up taking both sides out, sanding, shooting with grey primer and finally coating with nickel colored metallic Rustoleum paint.

In this photo, you can see the newly painted brackets and the fact that I finally got all the side art off and all the glue removed. We're at smooth surface!

Here's the left inside of the cabinet. The sticker has been removed as well as most of the glue. Will need to sand this down, primer and paint satin black (Rustoleum 7777).

Here's the opposite side of the cabinet. The funny thing is, looking at these pictures, it looks like we are going backwards progress wise, especially when you see the lit cabinet below, but rest assured, like an episode of trading spaces, it will all come together when it reaches the end!

Cabinet Back, Batteries, & Side Art
April 26, 2005

Things have been a little slow but I am making progress. I also got a complaint from one of my long time buddies about the quality of the pics, so when possible, I will be shooting with my mega pixel cam rather than phone cam. Certain pics (blue border) can be viewed larger by clicking on them. Oh and we'll be moving to multiple pages to tell the story. In this pic is a view of the back cabinet after I used plastic wood to fill a missing area.

The repair tuned out wonderful and worked like a charm. Plastic wood allows you not only to fill problem areas but rebuild corners.

Late last night, I finally got all the side art off. As you can tell, there's not a ton of glue left. That's because I was able to heat the side art, get a corner going, and then heat and pull the graphic off. Where that worked, all the glue stayed on the graphic. It might have taken longer, but time will be saved with Goo Gone in the next step rather than just heating and scraping without pulling the graphic.

Another view of the side graphic removal, sans the bright flash. The cabinet is in pretty darn good shape!

Here's something I was pretty excited about. In the upper left corner of the power board, you can see a battery. Well, previously, there was a Li-Ion battery there that was dead, and was starting to corrode. Some have referred to this as the ticking time bomb or suicide battery, because if you leave it there to corrode, it will destroy the board. I ordered a battery replacement kit from therealbobroberts.com - and after what was probably the worst solder job in the history of mankind, installed it. What's so cool about this? Well, now high scores are actually stored in the machine when you turn it off!

Here is just a cool pic of the restored control panel.

Another pic of the restored control panel with new spinner and overlay.

Nice shot of the Tron Cabinet and our Clean Sweep Crane, both of which currently reside in our garage. Soon they will move to the basement.

Looking good....

Here you can see she's coming along. The rusted out bolts on the front of the cabinet have been primed, painted and re-attached for now. Of course, I will remove them when I repaint the front, but have them there for now so they don't get lost!