 |
|
|
|
The Pole Position Restoration
Log (long!)
Pole Position was one of my favorite games in the
mid-late 80's. I loved playing it back in the day on
the old Atari 5200 console systems my brother and I
had. I decided on a Pole Position II instead of the
standard Pole Position because it has more variety
with 4 tracks instead of just 1. The below section
is dedicated to outlining the restoration of my
Atari Pole Position II. I did most of this
restoration during about a 3 month time period at
the end of 2000.
When this game first got to me I had mixed feelings
about it. I live in Washington State and I had the
game shipped to me from New York via Forward Air
trucking. The seller was probably a liquidator on
eBay -- I don't think he knew much about arcade
games. Just about every metal piece on the game was
either rusted or corroded. The good thing though was
that the artwork on the sides of the cabinet, after
some MAJOR cleaning, was in very good shape. Because
I eventually wanted to have a super nice Pole
Position the artwork was VERY important to me.
Below is what has been done to it.
-New 1/4" Plywood Bottom Installed on Cabinet
-Major Wood Blemishes Repaired on Cabinet
-Cabinet Structure Reinforced
-Rear Access Door Repaired & Painted
-All Black on Cabinet Repainted
-Severely Corroded Cabinet Wood Screws Replaced
-Side Art Touched Up (almost done)
-All Major Metal Pieces Sandblasted & Powder Coated
-New +5vdc, +12vdc, -5vdc 130w Power Switcher
Installed
-Main Power Supply Rebuilt
-All Mechanical Subsystems Rebuilt
-Wiring Harness Refurbished
-Free Standing 27,000uF 15v Capacitors Replaced
-PCB Boards Cleaned
-New Wells-Gardner K7200 Series Monitor Installed
-New Happ Controls Coin/Cash Doors & Mechs Installed
-2nd Credit Switch Integrated Into Top of Cabinet
-Coin Door Lights Rewired for +12vdc Automotive
Bulbs
-NOS Parts Acquired
-Marquee
-Control Panel Overlay
-Dashboard Track Sticker
-Steering Wheel Center Cap Logo
-Shifter Assembly
-Steering PCB - Optical Reader Board
-Shift Bezel Refurbished
-Steering Wheel Refurbished
-Dashboard Bezel Refurbished
-New Monitor Bezel Created from Scratch
-Fluorescent Marquee Light Assembly Rebuilt
-New JBL 6x9 Speakers Installed
-Most all Bolts/Washers/Nuts Replaced w/ Stainless
Steel Hardware
-All New High-Quality Locks Installed
-Monitor Glass Cleaned & Installed
-Marquee Glass Cleaned & Installed
-New T-Molding Installed
-Utility Panel on Coin Box Rebuilt
-Replaced Foot Pedal Potentiometer
-Rebuilt Score-Table Battery Recharge/Supply Circuit
& Mounted New Battery
I began by taking the game completely apart. I
carefully took pictures with a digital camera and
labeled bolts/washers/screws/etc in plastic baggies
while I removed all of the major assemblies and
eventually ended up with only the wood cabinet. The
following info is in no particular order because I
do not exactly remember the order in which I did the
restoration.
After the cabinet was completely disassembled I
moved it into my garage and began the difficult
work. I mostly started by repairing damaged wood
with wood putty. I used Miracle Wood filler for all
of my patching and repairing. It worked very well
for me because I didn't have any major holes or
structural areas to patch. If you are looking to
fill large areas I would probably recommend Bond.. it is
a lot stronger and more durable than the
Miracle Wood I used. For sanding I used a Makita
hand sander and about a metric ton of various grits
of sand paper -- an electric sander is a MUST for
this type of project!
After a LOT of wood repair and sanding I glued and
nailed a new 1/4" plywood bottom to the bottom of
the cabinet. I did this because the original bottom
was very worn and needed to be covered. I recommend
routing the edges of a new bottom to ensure that it
doesn't snag when it the game is slid along carpet
in your home or office.
After I filled and repaired a HUGE number of nicks
and small holes in the cabinet I masked it and got
it ready to be painted. Before I painted over the
external cabinet screws I brushed them with a metal
brush to get the rust off and primed them with a
rust proof primer.
The original monitor was a Wells-Gardner 19K4931
that I still have. It has a very nice and bright
picture but a lot of screen burn. I replaced the
original monitor with a new Wells-Gardner K7200
series model. It works very well.
Originally I wanted to keep the stock coin door
assembly. Unfortunately, the coin mechs where
corroded and both the mech and cash doors where in
pretty bad shape -- all kinds of rust and messed up
paint. I tried to have the doors, frame and other
black metal components sand blasted and powder
coated but one of the doors was damaged during the
powder coating process.
I ended up finding a complete coin door assembly at
Happ Controls for a really good price that included
the doors, frame, mechs and everything else
required. I did reuse the original Atari cash box
though. The new coin door assembly came with yellow
reject buttons so I purchased some red ones to keep
with the original Atari theme.
Wow, this is one of the most difficult and costly
parts of restoring a classic arcade game! New old
stock parts (also referred to as NOS) are hard to
come by and NOT cheap! The NOS pieces where all
located from various sources and shipped to me. I
lucked out and the monitor glass that came with the
game was in very good shape.
The side art was in very good shape when I got the
game -- as I said before it required a LOT of
cleaning but it came out very nice. I was able to
touch up the black and white blemishes with stock
all-surface oil-based enamel gloss paint from the
Sherwin-Williams Company. Testor's hobby acrylic
paint works too.
The original monitor bezel was in very bad shape, as
most are. It was sagging quite a bit and needed to
be replaced. Using the 2 pieces of the original
monitor bezel as a template I cut and scored pieces
of flat-black matte board with a razor blade to be
almost exact duplicates. I then bent the new pieces
into shape, fitted them together and glued the
points at which they connected. After the glue was
dry I painted the front of the bezel with a
gloss-black spray paint to mimic the original. The
new monitor bezel turned out really well -- it just
took a heck of a long time to do. Good luck finding
an NOS monitor bezel -- if you do, count yourself as
VERY lucky!
The dashboard bezel was in really bad shape as well.
As typical with these bezels the back of it (by the
monitor glass) was used as an ash tray. The track
sticker (with the gauge sticker under it) was a
goner too. I ended up peeling off the stickers,
grinding out the cigarette burns and filling them
with a plastic filler from TAP Plastics and painting
the entire bezel with a gloss-black spray paint.
When doing this it is very important to make sure
you sand the plastic filler so that it is completely
smooth and feathered into the rest of the bezel. It
is also very important to rough-up the rest of the
non-damaged portion of the bezel with low-grit sand
paper to make sure the paint sticks to the plastic.
Also, to be safe I primed the fill spots before I
painted them. After the paint was dry and the bezel
was reinstalled into the game I applied a new NOS
track sticker. It turned out pretty nice. Again,
good luck finding an NOS dashboard bezel -- if you
do, count yourself as EXTREMELY lucky!
There are two major upgrades I made to this
machine. I wanted to keep my game as original as
possible but I felt that some basic improvements
would add quite a bit to the game. I am not a
'purist' like some people who restore arcade games
are but I did make a great effort to make this game
as original as possible -- luckily NOS parts are
still somewhat possible to come by.
I decided to rewire my coin door light sockets to
use standard +12 volt DC automotive lights. The new
switcher I installed had a free +12 volt DC tap so I
figured what the heck -- it works VERY well. I kept
the original 6 volt leads just incase I need to
convert back to the original voltage in the future.
I really like to have my coin mechs active for
realistic operation. Because of this I don't like to
use 'free play' mode. I decided to mount a simple
push-button switch from Radio Shack onto the left
side of the top of the cabinet to act as a 2nd
credit switch. I decided to counter-sink the switch
into the particle board so that it would fit
properly. I drilled the hole for the switch before I
re-painted the cabinet and integrated the new leads
for the switch into the original wiring harness.
Eventually the new switch leads run just about the
entire length of the original wiring harness and end
up splicing into the original credit switch leads on
the utility panel behind the coin mechs. |
|
|
|
