Sega New Astro City (Part 1)

Many years ago, I bought an abused Sega New Astro City arcade cabinet. The outer casing was marked all over, there were spots that had been painted with what looked like matte emulsion, the loom had been sampled by rats, and the power supply was half dead.

I cleaned it up, sprayed it with typical plastic paint (I believe I used the Plastikote that comes in the grey cans), made up a new loom, replaced all sorts of bits and bobs, and eventually ended up with something that looked quite new. Around that time, I actually considered doing this as a side business - Piconet Ltd (aside from being a reference to my aborted masters thesis), was originally intended to restore arcade machines. Even now, my loft is filled with wonders like spare Blast City control panels, Astro City bezels, bits off a Nanao MS9-29, and so on.

Anyway, I did some house-moving last year, and in the process, the cabinet (which wasn’t painted at all well, I should admit), recieved some nasty bumps. Mostly just around the area the control panel meets the front frame. The paintjob I’d settled for, while very even, was thick. Thick enough repairing the cosmetic damage would involve a meaningful amount of filler. So I left it.

In the last week or so, I’ve become the owner of a Crumar Mojo 61 Organ (including the lower manual). This took the cab’s place in the bedroom, and moving the cab was, as always, a lot of work. This led to me deciding to sell it on. Until I found out there’s an upcoming production run of 27.5” LCD displays intended to be used as 29” CRT replacements. No 60KG CRT, no problem.

The Job

So I’m keeping it, and I’ll be replacing the screen. But the replacement screen is potentially months away - pre-orders aren’t going to open until February, and I have no idea what the price may be. So for now, I want to clean things up. Really go over it properly. Which involves, I think, the following work:

The cost

I don’t know how much it will cost. From the time I was looking at this as a business, I managed to procure a lot of bits and bobs - AMP-UP connectors, speaker diaphragms, door locks, etc. But I know I don’t have certain things, and I know I’ll be spending money on them shortly. At least for the refinishing job, I’m looking at the following:

Specifically, probably:

Obviously, the Wagner and Hempel gloss white are up in the air for the moment. I’m really not sure whether it’d be worth using boat paint. The cabinet is fibreglass, boats are regularly fibreglass, the paint is for boats. The big benefit is that unlike automative paint, it’s one-part, so I’m not working out ratios. The benefit of the Wagner is that it comes with two spray solutions, one for varnish (which would be fantastic for the woodworking I do), and one for paint. It also has one for typical emulsion used indoors that I could buy later on. But it is a lot of money to spend.

The undercoat I’ve used before, and I think it’ll be a good solution. In my uninformed opinion, I don’t think the primer matters much here. I’m not putting my cabinet in salt water.

The stripper I haven’t used before, but it’s difficult finding paint stripper safe to use on all the materials that make up the cabinet. The bottom doors are metal, the control panel and frame is fibreglass, and the speaker shroud is plastic (I think). Paint Predator, with its bad-ass name, melts plastic. Bartoline I’ve also used - they don’t recommend use on plastic either. I’ll be making a point to do the stripping in the house, so I can check on it every twenty or thirty minutes.

Next steps

Well, the stripper and finishing pads are ordered. So the next update will likely be the stripping process, and what, if anything, went wrong. Hopefully it will just be a boring before-and-after.