LAI Moon Patrol Cocktail Machine Restoration

This restoration thread won’t go into the same depth as my first LAI Cocktail Arcade Machine Restoration thread, so please refer to the original thread for more detail on some of the cosmetic work.

Time to fix up Moon Patrol. This works, and isn’t too bad, but can look a lot better with some effort.

The wood grain vinyl is coming off badly. The chipboard is a bit flakey. I could have sanded the top section back, but decided that I would replace the top section with new MDF.

Other side, wood vinyl completely gone – bit flakey here.

Joysticks removed. They are 2 way only. As you can see years of crap built up – dirt, cigarette smoke, chewing gum – yuk. I will give these joysticks a good clean up and overhaul – should come up all right.

I actually have some original LAI Moon Patrol control panels. Sure, the artwork is very boring, but how many people would go to the effort of preserving the artwork? I don’t think many would, so I will in the interest of preserving Aussie Arcade history.

Most of the way through gutting the cabinet. Removed the peeling woodgrain vinyl. See the dark spots, the wood is a bit bloated in these areas. The top frame will be replaced.

Nearly gutted the whole lot.

The vinyl all needs to be replaced. Best way to remove is to get a heat gun, heat the vinyl up a bit while pulling back. Then remove the remaining glue with thinners, cleaning up with metho then soapy water.

New black vinyl now applied, with powder coated legs.

Made the new top. I use my Dremel with stand to get nice straight holes.

Applied woodgrain vinyl to the new top and attached to cabinet.

Got the Control Panels back from the powder coaters. Rather than getting the artwork printed on overlay, I am getting some clear perspex, then having the artwork printed on a sticker to apply to the underside of the perspex.

Putting things back together. Things to fix:

– Wire up service switch
– Wire up coin mechs to edge connector.
– Fix wiring that pinches when door is shut, making the picture shaky.

Wired in service switch
Fixed up wiring that was pinched with the door shut.
Next thing to do is get artwork printed for perspex to go on control panels.

I have drilled holes in some perspex covers for the control panels. I used a drill press, withn Forstner drill bits for the big holes, and cheap masonry drill bits for the bolt holes. I drilled at 600rpm, which was the slowest the drill press could go. If you can, I think about 400 rpm would be best, not pressing down hard on the handle. This prevents the plastic from overheating and melting.

I had some help recreating and vectorising the artwork. Because it was very simple, I actually had the artwork cut out of vinyl stickers. The graphic file can be downloaded from the end of this document. As a bonus a vectorised scan of the cocktail instruction cards can be found also.

The reason to use perspex for this is so that if I change games I can remove the artwork, and to not cover the nice looking powdercoating with an adhesive sticker.

I placed the perspex over the vinyl sticker, and positioned it. I then used painters tape to hold evrything in place.

I then turned it all upside down, and anchored the top down with the tape.
You can see I have attached something to line the perspex up to the table. Those spring clamps are very handy for this work.

After carefully removing the sticker cover, then carefully place down on the perspex. You can see the yellow around the joystick artwork. I need to place the blue sticker over that.