the restoration continues ...now that the cab has been in a warm dry room for more than a week, the yellow has dried completely and i can check whether my protection of the original plaque has paid off
YES!!! another original part saved without having to drill it out
a huuuge tube has arrived from the usa - i found someone who cut me some pac-man stencils
cost me $63.50 to get those "arcade posters"
over
a first peak inside - that seems to be a lot of stuff!
now that i have the stencils, all i'm missing are the colors red and blue. i haven't been lucky finding the right color shades this time, but i found something eh someone even better. a guy from the british jamma+ forum had recently done a full pac-man restoration (including stencilling) and he was willing to help me out. he had transported his cab to a local shop where he had the original colors scanned. when i asked him whether he could send me the colors codes, he made me an offer i couldn't resist: the original pac-man colors ready to be sprayed on in cans. no roller, no spray gun - SPRAY CANS!!!
thx a lot, justin 
anxiously i was waiting for the package to arrive, when suddenly the doorbell rang. look what i've got
let's open this up quickly - of course my cat gnocchi has to do some investigative work as well
and here they are: two cans of blue and two cans of red
the american guy who sent me the stencils had "slapped" the colors he used for his pac-man restoration on a sheet of paper, so i want to check whether the american colors match the british colors. looking great, don't you think?
ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, let's get the stencilling on the road ...
all in all there are 9 different stencils in the tube, 3 for each side and for the individual colors. i'm starting with the front of the cabinet. what you can see on the following picture is that some of the stencils are wrinkled a lot - hope this doesn't cause any problems later on
whenever there is something which is important to know, usa-kevin has written it down directly on the stencils
marking the middle of the cabinet
pulling the application mask off slowly while "rubbing down" the stencil
first stencil applied
removing the protective layer
i've talked about the wrinkles in some of the stencils before, here are two pictures showing them in detail. when spraying on the paint, i will have to press them down shortly beforehand and it should work!
masking off the rest of the front to protect it against overspray (more on that later)
on to the sides! fortunately, i had taken measures of the sideart placement before sanding down the cabinet, because although usa-kevin has written down instructions on where to put and how to align the stencils, they don't match up at all with my original measures. i've decided to stick with my numbers!
protective layers removed and cabinet masked off
another one of usa-kevin's little notes
all the stencils have been applied, the rest of the cabinet has been protected - let's shake the spray cans!
i very soon realize that this job CAN'T BE DONE in my usual arcade workroom, because the spray cans are producing so much overspray and atomized spray that i have blue paint "flying around" everywhere! so i'm setting up a temporary spraying booth with protective foil in the corridor leading up to my workroom. in hindsight, this was the right choice to do - check out the floor and the foil!
the floor where the cabinet once stood - this is going to take a while to clean it up
but the first results look promising
once again, this is going to need some time for the paint to dry, so in the meantime i can concentrate on other parts of the cabinet - very tiny parts! the cab's serial number is printed on a piece of cardboard which was stapled inside the cabinet, but it fell off and parts of it are missing. what can be done about that?
i found a new piece of cardboard with a pretty good color match (not identical, but i'm already being anal enough, so it will do just fine)
and to be even more anal, this needs some protection - i've picked this up from someone on the klov forum and liked the idea of laminating the labels! call me crazy ...
two original labels / instructions protected for eternity
next up: the power board (and the wiring) - dirty as hell as you can see!
in order to give that thing a good clean, everything has to be removed
voila - looking a better!
on to the coin door. once again, here's the state it was originally in when i picked up the game
from behind: very dirty and a little bit unorganized
look at that midway logo plate
drilling out the rivets that hold the logo plate in place
underneath - RUST ATTACK
got a replacement logo plate from rich from thisoldgame.com. i've decided to go for the one
without holes because up to now noone has been able to find the correct rivets to re-attach it, screwing this thing on is not an option and somehow i think it looks better without the holes!
the coin door after its visit to the powder coater
in detail
some steel woold and polish make the rusty metal parts shiny ("before" in the left, "after" on the right)
and here we go: the re-assembled coin door from behind ...
... and from the front!
to be continued ...
