The current replacement & refurbishment of the bikes has been finished. What a pig. My advice is that you shouldn't consider taking apart one of these units on your own. Some of the parts are rather heavy, hard to move and keep steady when replacing them. My hands have taken a battering today and even Swarfega hasn't managed to shift all the grime. However, it's been worth the effort. Both centering mechanisms have been completely stripped and cleaned (although I did not remove the second centering shaft for fear of damaging it before I can obtain another spare one). At present I am not going to respray the foot plates, although this Hammerite paint is a possibility. It took 12 hours to dry properly, despite the hot weather we've had. I selected red & blue paint that matched the colors found on the official Sega game decals. I'm glad they've actually matched so closely. So, here are a few images... The Centering Mechanism liberally sprayed with WD40 and the main parts coated in grease. The steering section. Harder to adjust once assembled... so I discovered! The bikes mid assembly. I decided to assemble them both at the same time, switching between bikes. I am sure it didn't speed things up, but it felt like I was making more progress. This was actually the faulty unit, so it was great to get to this stage and establish that the new part was doing it's job. Those exhausts are a pain in the bum. Not only are the hard to put on (two people really are needed, I really struggled), but because of the angles involved it is damn near impossible to get them exactly right. One of them is slightly off and I am going to go back to it later as it's the only way to protect the subwoofer cable. Fully assembled, needing a bit of a polish and tidy up, plus decals. Note the top corner of the first monitor unit. It has obviously taken a battering at some point. I'm not sure whether to replace the whole side panel and lose (the poor condition) graphic or leave it as it at present. And that's that until I can get decals for the bikes. I'm going to leave the unit unused for 1 week to let all of the paint settle and dry off completely. Now I have an Initial D cabinet to reassemble, so excuse me please...
I think you're going to need a bigger garage.... (Limey, who would like to move into your garage/personal arcade)
When I lived in Edinburgh there was an art studio almost directly across the road from me. It was previously part of a distillery and the ground floor was practically unused. All the studio spaces were up one level, leaving this huge ground level area completely free. From time to time the artists would turn up with a van and require access to a service elevator for their larger installations, but most of the time it was unused. I'd drag a Marshall amp and my then (sadly sold) white Fender Strat into this area, plug it in and practice for hours at a time. My college was 10mins away and if I wasn't at college I was practicing guitar. You don't know how much I could do with that space again. The arcades I could fit into it... plus it had the best resonance for guitar practice. I learnt more guitar there than at any other time simply because I was left totally to my own devices and didn't have to give a monkeys about any neighbors. An arcade museum.... now that would be something!
You should us some up to date and not worry to much that the shape of the bike dont fit. 90's decals are all gonna look out of date. these are the best 2 motorcycles in the world right now and the 2 that will spend the next 6 months trading paint in motoGP
Thanks for that, they are both excellent bikes! I've not followed MotoGP for a few years. From time to time I'd check in to see how Fogarty was getting on. The cigarette company ain't gonna get an inch of advertising space from me! With 4 members of my family having died from cancer, 3 of them smokers, they can kiss my ***! I'd rather have the blue & white Durex logo on my bike than cigarettes lol I could have custom Sega Model 2A CRX logos made for them and instead of CBR have CRX, have Model 2A stickers and instead of Honda have Sega? Perhaps have Sonic instead of the Honda wings? Gold stickers on the blue bike and white or black on the red bike.
I can see you reassembled it at a later time... no sandwich! Looking good (the machine, not you)! Glad you got the mech sorted. Yeah, I'd hate to see what state the other is in! That said, the P1 bike should be worst off. I wanted to get rich and buy the (then) disused Eurotunnel Exhibition Centre up the road and use it for exactly that - an arcade museum. Needless to say that never happened! I believe they sold it stupidly cheap eventually :\
Time line = number and location of crumbs around the unit. It was def the P1 bike and had a lot of abuse other than the centering mechanism. I've no idea how many plays one side has accepted over the other because unlike later Sega units there is only one counter, but I'd imagine it is significantly higher. In the order of 10s of thousands I's expect given it has 350k on the clock. Does the UK even have a decent arcade museum worth visiting? All the ones I have stumbled across that look worth bothering about have been in Northern America and even they are closing down.
I have found someone offering reproduction side artwork for the Manx TT, the downside being that left and right hand artwork combined (just the side of the monitors and not the lower panels) would cost £70.00. Is this really the going rate for repro?
You have to be careful with repros. Quality can vary enormously. And yes, even repros can be expensive - some are just a rip-off, though. There are some arcade 'museums' of sorts in the UK. You've got that arcade on the Isle of Wight that carry a fair few vintage machines. There's the Arcade Barn down South somewhere. And Retrokade if that's still going. I'd still love to do something on a huge scale, though!!
Put this one on hold as I didn't like the look of the reproduction side art. Although you can't see it in the images I have posted, the sides are not completely blank in the white sections. There is a grey map of the Isle of Man interwoven amongst the other colours and logo. The repro missed it out!
As per request. I am waiting for a second tank pad to turn up for the red bike as I needed to verify the quality of the first one I ordered. So, from the 1980's look and feel of a '90's cab (yep, they used old bike decals and that terrible airbrush effect) to something a bit more up-to-date. I did however discover the current cost of CBR decals was too high for an arcade cabinet, thus went for cheaper CRF stickers. Unless you are a real bike nut, I doubt you'll care or notice! I think it goes from being a pretty boring looking plastic toy to an authentic bike look. As good as I can manage without busting the bank on stupidly expensive full body kits. So, as a recap... before: and after:
Thank you mate - I need to do some work on the main cabinet artwork, clean the PCBs & motherboards, fix a damaged monitor frame and it's done! Here's the second bike made up - was wondering whether I should have numbers 1 & 2 applied to the rear of the bikes to make them slightly different?
If you keep all your cabs in your garage, do you need to worry about them during the winter time? PS: Your cab work is ridiculously great.
I remove all the motherboards and although at the moment they are being kept in a rack in the garage, during the winter they are stored in the warmth. The monitors are a problem, but I keep a heater running - so far so good, but I bet I run into problems this winter having been so confident lol. Thanks mate - appreciated! I just have a good time repairing stuff.
Wow amazing working seeing as i've not check this thread in a while. I'd say do add numbers to the backs of the bike not only to make them slightly different but also to look cool.
I've had today off to do some work: The side of the left hand monitor had a bit of damage. A large chunk of wood had been knocked out. It initially looked worse than it turned out. I thought I was going to have to replace the entire panel, or cut an MDF piece to attach onto the original. In the end, I have a good look at the board and although a lot was missing, it was still relatively stable. So a week ago, I bought this stuff. It's pretty good to work with. I'd tried a few other products before hand and this was the clear winner. I taped it all up, cleaned it off, but did not sand anything down as the paste stays in place better if it has something to hold onto. And throughout the week I built it up in thin layers. Here is is with almost 8mm depth. Until I had built it up to the required depth. By this morning it was looking ready to sand. And I have started to paint it, although it'll take about 72hrs and 3 or 4 coats. Next I have to find somewhere supplying decent side panel artwork. So, the next time you are considering purchasing an old wooden cabinet and you don't think your woodwork skills are up to much, then you can't go wrong with a tub of gloop. So long as you take your time, apply it in thin layers and let the previous layer dry completely, this is a great alternative. I dries to a solid block and sands well.
