Ever since playing Black Widow at California Extreme 2010 I’ve been looking to add one to my collection. Finally after a whole lot of patience the stars have finally aligned (and some networking) I now finally have one to my collection.

A great big thanks to Brett and John for actually making this happen!!!

Black Widow Gallery Below

A lot of progress has happened on the Demolition Derby restoration since my first post from back in November. Some of the delay was due to the holiday and family commitments. Another delay was waiting on a couple of pieces of artwork to arrive. However, most of the delay was due to going through so many parts (cleaning, polishing, assembly, etc.). But trust me… The delay was well worth it!!!

Side Art Installation

First things first… Finished installing all of the vinyl side art!

Control Panel Overlay Installation

From there I installed the Control Panel Overlays (CPO’s). The CPO’s were color matched, reversed solvent printed on a textured polycarbonate with 3M adhesive on the back and the steering wheel brackets were die cut out for ease of installation.

They installed pretty much the same as any other CPO so I won’t bore you with tons of details.

Speaker and Ventilation Grill Installation

Nothing special about the speakers and the speaker grills on a Demolition Derby. The game uses two grills for the speakers (one for the red/blue side and one for the yellow/green side) and two grills for ventilation. The new 6×9 Speakers and speaker/Vent grills can be purchased from our friends at TwisterQuarters.com.

T-molding Installation

The Demolition Derby uses approximately 40 feet of 3/4″ black leather T-molding which can be purchased from several places such as GameMolding.com, T-Molding.com and several other online retailers.

Nothing super special about installing the t-molding. I mean, it installs in the routered t-molding slot just like any other game. But the sides of the cabinet are in two sections. One side is hinged so you can get to the inside of the cabinet. The other side is not hinged so getting the molding to install flat is a little tricky. But a plastic putty knife was a great solution to this problem.

Polishing Up Those Corroded Parts

The most time consuming part of this restoration was cleaning and polishing all the metal brackets. For all the zinc oxide parts (two way shifter joystick assemblies, steering assemblies, brass opto wheels and opto board brackets) I used lots and lots of Wenol metal polish. For the chrome on the steering wheels I used a combination of Autosol Metal Polishing Compound and Wenol metal polish.

Control Panel Assembly

Lots of cleaning, polishing and assembling to the control panels. For the steering shafts I greased them up with Nyogel 779 lubricant which can be purchased from ArcadeFixit.com. But other than that not much to discuss other than it took many hours to reassemble!

Steering Wheel Decal Installation

A nice little bonus that come with the CPO’s from This Old Game are four (4) new silk-screened reproduction wheel decals. Small details really makes the restoration look complete.

Coin Door Assembly

Like the Control Panels and the hinges the Coin Door brackets, bezels and coin buckets were all powder coated (but textured).

Plastic coin reject buttons were polished and cleaned with Novus 2 and 1.

Because most of the brass coin door parts were heavily corroded I managed to work out a trade with Steven from ArcadeFixIt.com for several NOS coin assembly parts. To complete the “like new” coin door assemblies I managed to make a trade with Preston Burt Game Room Junkies Podcast for four (4) new coin mechanisms from Happ Controls.

Plastic Bezel and Glass Bezel Installation

Unfortunately, the glass bezel is far from perfect. Lots of scratches on the glass and lots of fading on the art. Lucky for me, This Old Game has offered to reproduce these on glass for anyone who wants one one. In the meantime this one will do just fine.

This concludes part two of my Demolition Derby restoration. Stay tuned for part three in the next couple of days.

Wow, another year has gone by since finishing up the side art for Ice Cold Beer (ICB) but another piece to the puzzle is now complete… The Control Panel Overlays (CPO)!!!

After vectorizing the art a little over a year ago the file was immediately sent off to Rich @ This Old Game. From there Rich reviewed my art and setup the halftones. After a couple of minor revisions and a few test prints the art was ready for production.

After a little bit of waiting for my turn in the queue the CPO’s just arrived and are ready for shipping.

The CPO’s are…

– Silkscreened on Suede textured Polycarbonate
– Color matched to the original Taito CPO (Including Metalic Gold Ink)
– 3M adhesive backed
– Fully Diecut
– Perfect reproduction of the original CPO

Pricing for the CPO’s are $60.00 + $10.00 S/H (Continental USA). If you are located in Alaska, Hawaii or Outside the continental USA contact me for a shipping quote.

Order yours today!!!

Back in July, I had the opportunity to purchase a Bally/Midway Demolition Derby project from Chris Rhoades (Chris25810). Chris had a new CNC cabinet cut locally, he slowly removed the original artwork in order to reproduce new artwork, powder coated brackets, control panels and coin doors but unfortunately he lost interest in this project (one of many) and had no desire to complete it. So, instead of him selling off all the parts and trashing the cabinet I was offered the project first because Chris knew I was one of the few collectors that would be able to complete what he had started in OCD fashion.

Before committing to the purchase I had to get past my largest obstacle (besides getting the wife’s blessing and getting it through the doorway) “logistics”. I mean, Chris is located in Minnesota and I’m located in Michigan. I “technically” could’ve contacted a freight company but the expense of shipping a project game just doesn’t make sense. But luckily for me, Chris’s friend Allen (alejandromad) was heading towards Michigan and we were able to work the logistics out at a minimal expense.

Pile-O-Derby back in Minnesota

Dropoff Location – Battle Creek, Michigan

Demo Derby Cabinet and Parts Loaded in Van

When I arrived home it was time to empty out the van. I stacked multiple boxes and parts in the garage and immediately hauled the cabinet into the basement. Unfortunately, the cabinet was a much tighter fit than I had originally thought so I had to remove the door and remove the weather stripping (and a little elbow grease) but we got it safely down there. I believe this may’ve been the first time I’ve ever been told by the wife that I was “Seriously Messed in the Head and that I needed serious help” and I almost think she might be right!!!

Demo Derby Parts Safely In Garage

Exterior Door Weather Stripping Removed

Demo Derby Cabinet Officially in its New Home

After the cabinet was hauled to the basement I discovered a small battle wound which happened somewhere between Minnesota and Michigan. Just a little bit of filler and a small piece of “pica vinyl” and it looks good as new.

Demo Derby Cabinet Repair

Before I discuss the artwork installation I wanted to discuss how this artwork package became a reality (Readers Digest Version). Back about three years ago when Chris purchased this project he painstakingly removed the original artwork. From there, he had it scanned and turned over the scans to his sister-in-law to vectorize. Then eventually he turned the files over to Rich Lint at This Old Game which he color matched, solvent ink jetted and applied screen printed clear coat to the artwork. The end results are top notch and best of all, Rich and Chris printed enough to go around!!!

As far as installing the art. Well, it’s pretty much the same as any other installation. You just need to measure, measure again, tape it to be sure it doesn’t move and apply the artwork. The biggest difference with this restoration (more like an official Chris Rhoades snap together Demolition Derby restoration kit) versus other restorations is that there are 10 pieces of artwork / vinyl that needs installing (actually 12 if you count the Control Panel Overlays). So, this time I decided to start out with the sides then I will come back again in a couple of nights to do the rest. This will force me to “take my time” and avoid any accidental goof ups.

What did I do different this time? Instead of doing the typical “wet method” when applying art I decided to use a 4″ Soft Rubber Roller by Speedball. Rich and Chris have sworn by this method for some time now and decided this would be the perfect project to try it on. So far I really love the results!!!

That’s all I have for now. Check back in a few days when I finish installing the artwork and start assembling the cabinet!!! I really look forward to smashing some cars with my kids!!!

Side Art Installation

Rubber Roller Makes Vinyl Installation Much Easier

About a year ago I picked up an Pepper II in order to complete my Exidy Row. Unfortunately my Pepper II was pretty trashed and was missing side art. But lucky for me Rick Ford (RoadRunner) was kind enough to loan me his New Old Stock (NOS) side art in order to reproduce the art for my restoration project.

When I received the art months ago the first thing I did was look over the art to decide how I was going to tackle the project. Lucky for me the art was fairly simple and not tons of details. One thing I did notice that unlike Atari art the line work wasn’t very clean and I was very surprised how bad line work was including the rounded corners (if you can call them that). However, it had a lot of character and I knew it was going to be next to impossible to vectorize the line work without loosing the original feel of the art. So, I decided mixing both raster scans with vectorized art was the best way to handle this project.

First, I did a 300 DPI scan of this art and knock out all the color fills and halftones along with some minimal retouching. After I felt the lines were cleaned up as much as possible I converted it to greyscale, then to a bitmap then saved it as a TIF. By saving it this way it allows you to import this image into Illustrator and add vectorized fills behind the black line. The final art will be solvent ink jetted so vectorized fills will give you lots of control when color matching.

After I had the line work imported into Illustrator I added my vectorized fills.

Next I rescanned all the halftones at 600 DPI and also converted and saved each halftone to a bitmap TIF (as I did with the raster line work). This allowed me to import each halftone into the Illustrator document and add a color fill to the halftone.

No Halftone Fills

Black Halftone Fills

Color Matched Halftone Fills

Next I did a little color matching and add a high resolution scan of the “Exidy” logo.

A couple of test prints to make sure the colors were as close as to the original as possible. Be sure to check out the images below comparing both the NOS artwork to the reproduction artwork and I think you’ll agree… It looks great!!!

Original

Reproduction

Original

Reproduction

Original

Reproduction

Original

Reproduction

Original

Reproduction

Original

Reproduction

Original / Reproduction

Original / Reproduction

A great big thank you needs to go out to Rick Ford (RoadRunner) for loaning me the NOS artwork and Rich Lint from This Old Game for help with color matching and printing the artwork.

Unfortunately, my restoration hasn’t been started but at least the side art is now complete and available now!