Time Pilot Restoration – Control Panel Rebuild

I’m not used to get a fully working game as a project. It’s nice to start with restoration tasks instead of repair tasks. Since the control panel was in the worst shape of anything on this game, it made a good starting point. Get the tough stuff out of the way so the rest of the project is easy! The panel was in terrible shape. The overlay was chipped away on the edges and the exposed metal was severely rusted. The joystick barely moved with all of the packed in dirt and grease. Even the buttons were really scratched and faded.

The first step was to remove the control panel from the cabinet, and remove all of the controls from the panel. This was a pretty normal task, except for trying to figure out how to take apart the Monroe joystick to remove it from the panel. After trying to figure out how to take it apart for a few minutes, I noticed that there was a cloth dust ring that filled the joystick hole in the panel. It was hiding the fact that the hole was large enough to pass the ball of the joystick through the hole. Usually a joystick shaft needs to be removed from the top of the panel so the switch assembly can be removed from the bottom of a control panel. This time I could just pull the whole joystick from the bottom of the panel. I still needed to figure out how to disassemble the joystick to properly clean it, but for now I can work on the panel itself.

I’ve never seen this kind of dust cover before. It’s a nice idea, but it looks like it held a ton of dirt and who knows what else! Probably all kinds of scary germs in it too! The other problem is that it held all kinds of moisture in it, causing the top of the joystick assembly to rust in a matching pattern. That’s got to go!

Once the controls were removed, I had to remove the control panel overlay. It looked like it was falling off on its own so maybe it would be easy to remove. Usually I use a heat gun and putty knife to scrape off overlays. I tried first on the front of the panel. The overlay was so thin and cheap that it melted with little heat. Made the removal of the front very difficult. I started on the top surface next, but that was even worse. I ended up testing a razor scraper and it worked really well. The adhesive was so old and deteriorated that it scraped right off. There was a ton of dried adhesive left on the panel to deal with next. After I removed the overlay I sanded the panel down until it was really clean and ready for a new overlay. I had to sand a ton of rust and adhesive away, but it was so dry it came right off.

The front removed, but wasn’t fun

What a mess!

Nice and shiny!

The next step was to clean the controls. The buttons were pretty nasty, so I pulled out three red buttons from some spare parts I had. They were in really nice shape and the red looked better with the overlay I bought. I cleaned these buttons in my small Harbor Freight ultrasonic cleaner to make them look really nice. The joystick was going to need some cleaning. It was caked with dirty grease and didn’t even move properly. It was a Monroe joystick, which is almost all metal. The ball was a bit worn out, and the shaft was severely rusted. I started rebuilding it by disassembling it. It took me about an hour to figure out how to take it apart, and to actually get the lock rings off of the shaft to actually take it apart. They were really small and had to be taken off in a certain order to allow access to them. The larger one had to be removed so I could compress the joystick spring to expose the smaller lock ring. Felt like defusing a bomb or opening a puzzle box.

Hard to tell here but it actually is really dirty

Lots of metal parts to clean

Once the joystick was disassembled, I cleaned all of the parts with brake cleaner. It took a while to soak them enough to break through all of the grease. The parts cleaned up really nice and had no wear. I chucked the joystick shaft into my cordless drill so I could clean it properly. I used a pad of scotchbrite to remove all of the rust from the shaft. Then I used a soft cloth with Novus 3 to buff out the worn ball. I followed with Novus 2 to shine it up. There was some minor pitting in the surface that dulled it, but it looked 100 times better than it did before I started. After cleaning everything, the reassembly of the joystick was really easy. After reassembling, I greased the assembly with white lithium grease. It’s much less dense and won’t gum up like the old grease.

Right after cleaning off the shaft. Looks great!

Starting to come together. I love the all metal assembly

The next step is to install the new Control Panel Overlay (CPO). I ended up buying an NOS “alternate” CPO from Quarterarcade.com instead of a reproduction of the original design. I saw a picture of one of these CPOs installed on another collector’s machine and I really liked how it looked. Had much more yellow in it which I felt was a better match to the other cabinet graphics. I applied this to the clean panel by first lining up the holes in the overlay with the holes in the panel. Then to finish I trimmed off the excess overlay. Turned out great. After applying the overlay, I reassembled the controls on the panel and ended up with a really nice, new looking control panel. Now to clean the cabinet…

Here is the new overlay. Nice!

All done. I really like the look of this panel and can’t wait to put it back on the cabinet!