Donkey Kong Restoration Story

(Completed 9/2/2000)

Background:

Always wanted a Donkey Kong! This is one of my top 5 favorites. It’s also exciting that I can play Donkey Kong Jr, and Donkey Kong 3 in the same cabinet. I came about this project in a round-about way. About 5 years ago for some stupid reason I passed on a very nice Donkey Kong for $150. Money was tight then, and I wasn’t really entrenched in the hobby. Since then, DK’s have really jumped up in price, so I had to become more creative in a way to get one. Haven’t found one for sale locally, and Ebay is way too high, so I decided to build one.

Over the past two years I’ve quietly accumulated all of the parts necessary to build it. Got the boards for the games, marquee, and control in a couple small bulk buys. Got an old Radarscope cabinet from Ron “Skygodd” Nagel when he was just trying to unload old junk (that looks like it was a Looping at one point based on the control panel). I traded a Mach 3 joystick for the wiring harness. The rest of the parts I bought from a few reliable sources. The final piece, TIME to restore it, kind of fell into my lap when my family decided to visit my In-Laws. I had to stay home for work, so why not dedicate a few nights to getting it done. As I mentioned on my Donkey Kong page, my goal is to get the game up by Thursday, 8/22/2000. I’m hosting a Sunday School Men’s get-together that night, and would love to make it available for play.

Well, here’s what I’m starting with:

Not a bad start, but notice that the color of the cab is Radarscope Red. Thought long and hard about leaving it the original color, but since I need to repair the wood, I’m just going to do the Donkey Kong Blue. The following steps are needed to get this project completed:

• Disassembled the cabinet
• Strip all existing cabinet paint
• Repair all bad spots in the cabinet
• Repaint cabinet Donkey Kong Blue
• Blast and Paint all black metal parts
• Reassemble the cabinet hardware
• Install the Monitor, marquee light, power supply and wiring harness
• Install the control panel, marquee, sideart, and monitor bezel.
• Install the PCB.
• Install new T-Molding

Looks like a lot, and it is! I’ve got to start somewhere!

Disassemble cabinet/Strip Paint/Repair Cabinet:

I have to admit, I’ve been working on these steps for months. I disassembled the cabinet quite a while ago. Lots of parts, but not hard to figure out what went where. Stripping the paint off of the cabinet proved to be the most difficult step by far. Just completed that on Monday, 8/21/2000. The paint was incredibly difficult to remove. Tried 3M’s Safest Stripper first, since it was less irritating. Left it on overnight, and it didn’t even dull the gloss on the paint. Tried a heat gun, and I was able to remove the paint. However, this was taking WAY too long to do. Finally bought some full strength solvent paint stripper. This pulled the paint right off, but it smelled terrible! After lots of scraping and touching up with the heat gun, it was ready for some repair. Had to do some random nailing of the carcass to make it a little more solid. There’s not much to the cabinet, and the small screw they used for assembly were really stripped through. Next, I used some Rock Hard Wood Putty to fill in nicks and dings in the cabinet, and also to repair some of the damaged corners. The following pictures show the cab after repair is done:

Paint Cabinet:

Painted the cabinet tonight. I did four coats of Glidden semi-gloss. Their Amsterdam color was recommended by someone for a good color match and I have to agree with them. Also painted some black along the inside edge of the front, the back of the cab, and the inside around the monitor area. Check out my progress below. Tomorrow I’m going to sandblast the metal coin door, marquee support and bezel support, then paint them black. Should look really nice!

Teaser!

Couldn’t wait any longer, wanted a sneak peak at what the game will look like nearly complete. Check out my teaser photos below!

Assembly:

Actually one last painting update…I’ve finished the coin door and marquee brackets and they look fantastic. Nice glossy shine. They were a real pain to sand-blast the paint off.

Started assembly today. First up was the monitor. Now, how exactly is the monitor supposed to be mounted. As you can see by the inside shot of the game below, I really had no idea what to do. I really need someone to send me some digital pics detailing the entire inside of the cabinet. Just when I thought the monitor was hard to figure out, I got to the wiring. I’ve got bits and pieces from at least two harnesses, and still didn’t seem to have enough parts. I finally just connected individual jumpers to the pcb itself and it seems to work fine. Later on I plan to rewire a new harness. Depends on if I can figure out how to do it. I’ve got four different manuals, and none of them clearly indicates how to do it.

Well anyway, here’s where I’ve ended up tonight. The game works, and should work fine for some time. However, I’d like to re-wire the inside to make it easier to swap boards, and remount the monitor. I also need to fabricate a cardboard monitor bezel for inside the game. Can’t really tell there is not one, but still need to do it to make it more finished. Also need to add the sideart, a new CPO, and a new plex monitor bezel. Got some nice scratches in the one I have.

Overall, not a bad project. Still wish I had more time to understand the details of the wiring. Will address that soon enough I’m sure. Now on to play…

Final:

I rewired the cabinet tonight, and it works great. I also took the time to mount both the DK and DK Jr. PCB’s into the cabinet so I can just swap the wiring harness connector between them. Pretty happy with the game, and all I need now is some sideart and t-molding!