Contra Cabinet Restoration - Part 3 - Removing Rust and Repainting

Coin Door.
Remove paint to expose rust.

With the completion of the main cabinet, it is now time to move onto the smaller details! Everything inside this cabinet (save for the PCB - phew!) that was made of metal had some level of rust attached to it. The coin doors, every nut & bolt, even the speaker grills!

The first step was to strip the powder coating/paint off of any metal object and then see just how much rust I was dealing with. To do this, I used CitriStrip. This stuff works like magic. Place the object to be stripped in a shallow tray, coat the object in CitriStrip (I found a paint brush works best), wait the recommended time, and then use a metal scraper/wire brush to remove the paint. Repeat until all paint is gone.

Why would they make it smell good
 if the fumes are still toxic...?
More importantly, does it taste as
good as it smells?

Once all paint was removed and the rust is exposed, I used super-fine #0000 Steel wool to sand as much of the rust away from the metal as possible. I do not have access to powder-coating so I needed to find an alternative. A poster on KLOV recommended using Rustoleum Hammered Finish Spray paint and a top coat of Rustoleum Satin. The results weren't exactly like that of an original powder coated door but they are satisfactory to me. If you decide on going this route then you must make sure that the Hammered Finish layer cures completely before spraying the top-coat. You will end up with a strange spider webbing effect if you do not let your coats cure completely.

With the the brunt of the work taken care of it was now time to move onto replacing parts. The coin door locks were easily replaced using cam locks bought at home depot. Another lock was purchased for the new back door that I made. I decided on using a reproduction control panel overlay rather than hunting down NOS. The new overlay was ordered from Game On Grafix and I was extremely satisfied with the product. The original marquee light was not working so it was removed and easily fixed by splicing in a cheap replacement. New buttons and microswitches were ordered to replace the old damaged leaf-style buttons. I decided on using the original sticks and just changing the microswitches because the sticks were found to still be sound.

Next step: Putting it all together and final touches!