Pinx's Crystal Castles Restoration

Restoration.

One of my all time favourite games is Crystal Castles by Atari.
This game is one of my top five all time favourites and as a teenager, i played the guts out of it, i could even get to the very last level, but sadly could never finish the damn thing.
So to get to own one, is yet another dream come true, so firstly i say a big THANKYOU to my mate Malc for selling it to me.
Over the coming months i will be going through a full resto on this cab, but work wont start untill i have found meself a new home first !

Here it is still in Malc's kitchen, when i went up for Scotvac7.


Yes its mine and i love it ....	working on it ...	Left side.	Right side.

Once i had agreed to buy it, i had to get it down from Scotland (deja vu a certain pinball) but this time there was a plan, ever unfolding. I had sold the 26" Jamma to Revowp (Chris) who lives in Manchester, which is halfway between me and Malc.
So... Chris went up and brought the Crystal Castles down to his mums in Manchester and then i took the Jamma upto him a week later and got to pick up the Crystal Castles in the process !
And just to make a full day of it, i decided (after being badger'd by Kev) to meet up at Cyclo's (Alan) on the way back, which meant Alan got his new Test Rig deliver'd too :)


Me & Kev fixing dry joints on monitor pcb's.	In the van outside Cyclo's.	New Repro kit.


Its here YaY !	Work needed on Marquee and speaker grill.	Control panal is quite good.

Monitor Re-cap .

Once the cab was back at home in the garage, it was time to get stuck in, so i decided to start where Outrun (Kev) and i had left off, when we had started work on the monitor at Scotvac 7.

We had already reflowed all the dry joints. So this just left me to replace all the Radial and Axial electrolytic capacitors on the monitor chasis. There is a main base pcb and then 3 daughter cards and the caps had a variety of values and voltage ratings but some of the high voltage caps were alot harder to source.

Glass Marquee and overlay.

Well as its easy to see, the Marquee was in a bit of a state and was'nt actually attatched to the cab when i got it, so once my new repro artwork kit had arrived, it was time to sort the problem.

Stripper. (Don't get your hopes up i mean the ink kind)

This kind of stuff is very nasty and so protective gloves and eyewear is a must (YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED) I used Boss ink stripper because i'm a printer and could get hold of it at work, but its just like Nitromores except runnier. Because the marquee is made of glass and not plastic / plexiglass it is safe to use solvents on it, without causing any damage. I started by gently scoring the old overlay with a stanely knife, to give the stripper a chance to get under the laminate coating. I then placed several rags over the top of the marquee and carefully poured the stripper on to the rags and left it to soak for 5 minutes.

Time to get those rubber gloves on.

Once i had removed the rags from the marquee i rolled up a couple of rags into a ball and then soaked them with stripper, i then rubbed these on the marquee in a circular motion. This started to make the laminate and ink come off, but still left much of the base material behind. Time for some drastic measures......

Ink knife. (paint scraper to the non printers among you)

In order to remove the base material i got a paint scraper and very gently worked away at scraping off the last of the overlay. I didnt apply too much pressure as i didnt want to go and do something dumb like break the glass !!
So i found the best technique, was to keep rubbing the stripper soaked rag for a bit and then srcape the area immediately whilst it was was still soft and workable. To get all the old overlay off took about 10 minutes in total. As with all things of this nature patience pays, if you try and rush it or add to much force, you will end up breaking the glass, not to mention possibly causing yourself an injury !!

Once all the old overlay was completely removed i gave the glass a good wipe over with isopropanol alcohol, to remove any last residue and then finished off with regular glass cleaner. I then offered it into place on the cab, so i could decide how i was going to re-attatch it to the cab.

Now aquiring reproduction artwork can be a bit of a mine field, there are company's out there who do a first class job and there are those that dont. Marquee on left is a very bad copy, completely the wrong size and the material and colours are way off from origional, where as the Marquee on the right, is identical to an origional right down to the part numbers (bottom right hand corner)
I chose to buy my artwork kit from Arcade Renovations, at $70.00 money very well spent !

Removing the marquee involves removing three alan bolts from the top of the cab (see pic on left) then removing the back door and undoing the three philips screws on the retaining bracket just above the speaker grill assembly (see pic on right), it is then just a matter of unplugging the light conector and lifting the marquee unit out of the cab.

Once removed it was then a case of removing the last remnants of old marquee overlay from the wood. I used a small flat headed screw driver to prise out the staples.

It was now time to re-affix the glass to the marquee assembly. I used clear silicone sealer (available in any hardware shop) and applied it to the wood only (see pic on left), once I was happy that I had applied enough sealer I then placed the glass into position and applied light pressure with my finger tips to squeeze out any excess sealer. I then left this overnight with something heavy on top (tool box) to allow it to dry. The sealer starts white in colour but dries clear.

It was now time to turn my attention to the speaker grill assembly. I started by unbolting and disconnecting each of the speakers, thus making the assembly lighter for removal.

The speaker grill assembly itself is held in place by one nut underneath the wooden shelf above the monitor (see pic on left) and the three retaining screws already removed when removing the marquee (pic on right)

With the speaker grill assembly removed from the cab, I placed all the relevant fixing screws and bolt in a safe place, so they wouldn't get lost.

This pic shows the cab with both the marquee and speaker grill assembly removed, note the white patch where years of dust had accumulated. It was now time to fit the new reproduction artwork.