I knew that after finishing my US Upright OutRun restoration, one of the first things I’d want to do is install the enhanced roms. This has been created by a total legend Chris White of the Reassembler blog. Packaged as the OutRun: Enhanced Edition (OEE), it’s a set of 7 replacement EPROMs intended for use on original arcade hardware. It fixes many bugs in the game, and makes it more fun by adding a host of new features, including a working free play mode, extra high score saving, more music tracks, cheats and car handling modifications, new and old course layouts, and lap time records.
Fitting the EPROMs involves replacing various existing socketed ones, replacing a super capacitor, soldering a jumper lead and setting a dip-switch. Not too daunting, but I’m glad I have a spare working OutRun boardset to do this with!
I was just about to buy the EPROMs and something to write them when a friend and ukvaccer Chopper79 stepped in and offered to send me them pre-written. He had the spare EPROMs and the equipment needed to write them so that was a big help and money/time saver. A few days later they turned up, along with the super-capacitor I bought to replace the current one. The super-cap will ensure the high scores are saved for a lot longer (potentially months) than with the existing one (which in my case didn’t save the scores at all after the machine was turned off)….
All the modifications needed to be done to the top board. The EPROMs are the ones with the square labels on them. The bank of 4 on the bottom right would be replaced, along with one in the middle, and two right at the top. The cap I’m replacing is the green one in the top right…
Soon it was all done. The little red jumper near the sound CPU rom towards the middle of the board was a right pain to solder as it was so small and fiddly. I clearly need more practice (and a new soldering iron), heh…
Connecting the PCB to the cab again and switching on and w00t it works! Going into the Test menu and there’s another sub menu dedicated to the Enhanced Edition. I shall look forward to trying all these out…
I played the game through and entered my high score, switched off and back on and it has been retained, so the super-cap seems to be doing its job too. The free-play on the un-modified boardset is rubbish, it kinda just starts the game randomly and you have to wait until it’s finished before you can start another one, and there are no music previews on the screen where you select the track before starting the race. With the enhanced roms you can hear the music as you browse through the tracks, the game doesn’t start until you actually hit the start button, and there are 3 new tracks to choose from. I made a short video showing it…
Thanks to Chris White for the incredible work he’s done getting this finished. I’m looking forward to trying the new tunes out, but I don’t think they’re gonna be better than Magical Sound Shower. 🙂
The cabinet body has now been repaired and painted, so it’s on to the final stint at last. Next on the list was to put the new t-molding on. The original molding was in bad shape and snapped at the cabinet’s legs. I bought some smooth black 3/4″ t-molding from Arcade World UK and started with the right side panel. When I got to the front of the cabinet I stopped and painted the edges black where the visible t-molding would sit, as the side panels were slightly thicker than the t-molding due to the veneer that had been added on top of the 3/4″ MDF. It’s hardly noticeable that the t-molding is about 1mm thinner than the sides (1/2mm each side), and in places it seems to cover the entire width of the edge anyway, but painting the edges black ensured that you don’t notice it. The other option was to buy some wider t-molding and trim it down, which I thought would end up looking like shit and be more trouble than it’s worth…
I had to use some sandpaper to widen the groove around the repaired/filled feet, because I didn’t fancy them breaking when I bashed the t-molding in with a rubber mallet. So I widened the groove on the ends of both feet so it would fit easily. Once the t-molding had been stretched around the corners to the bottom of the cab, the tension kept it in the grooves just fine…
It wasn’t long before I had both side panels t-molded up. And a huge sigh of relief that I didn’t break the repaired feet…
Time to sort the floor out next. I unscrewed the very tired looking kickplate and sanded it down from low grit to high grit, then continued to wet sand with higher grits, followed by some Maguire’s Ultimate Compound. The picture below was taken when I was about halfway through. It didn’t turn out badly but it had loads of bashes and small dents that I couldn’t get out. It’ll do. At least it’s another original part that I’m keeping…
The old original grey floor matting had blackened with age, wear and abuse. I thought it’d be a right pain to get off, but it peeled off very easily (I took these photos before I repaired and painted the cab)…
The sticky gluey mess it left behind came off with a quick sand…
And soon it was ready for the new matting to be stuck on…
The replacement grey matting was bought from a fellow ukvaccer. It was slightly too big so I measured up and cut it to size with a stanley knife. I then used some spray contact adhesive to carefully stick it down. When I put the pedals and the kickplate back on, it looked the business…
Onto the underside. The cab had been wobbly ever since I got it, and here’s why… a missing leg leveler…
I got a replacement chrome leg leveler from Pinball Mania and made a mounting block for it as the original batten on the base of the cab had broken off…
I then screwed it into the base…
….and tightened it from inside with a nut and a big washer…
Cab de-wonkified! 🙂
Next up was the side art. I got all the repro artwork from Olly at Arcade Art Shop. Putting this on was scary. I didn’t have a helper and they’re big pieces. I clamped them in place, then started at the top peeling a bit of the backing off, then cutting a piece of the backing completely off, then sticking it back down. Then very slowly using a clean rag I pressed it on all the way to the bottom, using the rag to smooth it out and remove any air bubbles. Wow, I love this artwork… really brings the cab to life. I also stuck on the repro monitor bezel map decal that I had received from Wim Outrun….
And the final piece of artwork was the road stripe on the front panel. It looks awesome…
Remember that North Carolina license sticker from the front panel? I managed to remove it undamaged so I stuck it on the back next to the serial number plate…
While I was near the back panel, I gave the fan a good clean. Should’ve worn gloves…
Switching the cab on, I noticed that the screen was wonky. It was slightly lower on the left hand side than the right. I don’t remember this being the case before. I would need to unscrew and rotate the yoke slightly to fix it….
WIth the monitor fixed, I moved on to sorting out the power. It’s a US cab with a US plug running 110V. I had a massive external Goldsource step-down transformer that wouldn’t fit in the cab, so that needed replacing. I wasn’t confident enough to try to tweak the existing wiring in the cab to take 240V, so instead a friend sold me a smaller step down transformer that I could mount inside the cab.
The cab is rated at 250W. I’d found out that it only goes anwhere near that briefly during power up, and is nominal at other times. The transformer I had was rated at thermal output 200VA, with admissable instantaneous output of 500VA. That should be OK. I wired it up to a UK plug on the input side, and the US power cables coming from the cab on the output side. It worked just fine.
Following this, I conducted a thorough earth check of all the exposed metalwork. With the UK plug plugged into the step-down, I went around the cab with my meter doing continuity tests. I connected one lead on the plug’s earth pin, and went round all the exposed metal parts one by one touching them with the other lead listening for a beep. Everything was earthed as hoped/expected apart from the metal shaft on the gear shifter. I don’t remember a ever seeing ground lead coming from the shifter, so I made one and screwed it onto one of the bolts on the metal shifter frame, then ran it directly to the earth connection on the step-down transformer. Beepity beep. That’s better, I feel safer now I know everthing is properly earthed…
I installed the step-down transformer at the back of the cab in the bottom left where there was a space almost tailor-made for it. I tidied up the new earth cable from the shifter and ran it along the left side of the cabinet…
The last thing I needed to do was to fix an annoying issue that I’d noticed on the first day I bought the cab. The control panel was wonky. It was sloping down to the right slightly. I couldn’t let this be, it would totally do my head in every time I looked at it. It would have to be fixed…
The problem was underneath the panel where it was attached to the metal hinge. On the right hand side it was loose and the wooden panel wasn’t very secure. And I couldn’t get the bolt out… it just kept going round and round and round…
I took the entire control panel off to investigate. It turns out the t-nut on the far right side had come loose, and the bolt had virtually welded itself to it, so it was just freely rotating instead of tightening and untightening. Using some pliers and brute force with my impact driver in reverse, I got the stuck bolt out and hammered this bugger in nice and securely so it wouldn’t move. I then used a new bolt to secure it tightly to the hinge again…
Phew, that’s much better. My OCD is satisfied. It’s rock solid now, no movement and the slope has gone…
Well the cab is finished… time to get it on the sack truck ready for its short but important trip to the game room…
And here she is in all her glory. I’m over the moon how it went, especially considering it was my first ever restore. I learned loads and I’m looking forward to restoring more cabs in the future as I build up my gameroom arcade…
Thanks for reading. See you on the next restoration project, whatever that may be.
Still buzzing from fixing up the dashboard and steering, I was keen to keep momentum so I started with the restoration of the cabinet itself. It wasn’t in terrible condition but there were definitely a few things that needed attention. I started by stripping the whole thing down to the cabinet shell…
The first thing to go was the existing side art stickers as I planned to apply some nice new artwork…
Next I made myself a dolly trolley so I could lay the cab down on its side and work on it. I fitted free-wheeling castors, 2 with brakes. This’ll come in handy for future cab restores too…
I chose to restore the right side panel first as it had the most damage. The dolly trolley was great. It was sturdy and it allowed me to move the cab around whilst working on it in my cramped workshop…
The bottom of this side was where all the action needed to happen. The back corner had some veneer that had become unstuck, and some of the panel itself had been damaged…
The worst part was the front leg. Someone had clearly tried (badly) to repair this themselves at some point…
There were a few spots that needed filling on the top half of the panel, and before long I had done an initial fill with some Isopon P38 body filler…
To restore the damaged leg, I constructed a mold frame out of some spare battens of wood I had hanging around. Worked well as they were pretty much the exact depth I needed. The plan was to squash this mold full of filler, take the frame off and sand it nice and flat….
It seemed to have done the trick…
After some sanding, it was starting to look really nice…
Now the right side panel had been fixed up, I gave it one final sand down, then wiped it down with some acetone, ready for priming…
I got this Kleenedge Tape & Drape from Toolstation. It was absolutely perfect for this job. The blue tape was just the right size for the edges of the cab, and it just draped down to the floor to keep the cab free from paint and dust. I’ll be using this a lot from now on. So much better than just getting a big pack of polythene dust sheets. It was so quick to put it in place…
I used a mini short-pile microfiber roller to apply 2 coats of primer. I’d read some good reviews of Zinsser Bulls Eye 123, so I bought myself a tub of the grey one and used that. It was quite nice to apply, water-based and could be recoated in an hour…
I then rolled on 3 coats of Black Dulux Quick Dry Eggshell wood paint. This was also water-based and went on easily. I put 3 coats on leaving each coat to dry for 6 hours…
First coat looked a bit patchy.
Less patchy with the second coat but one more coat needed.
By the time the 3rd coat had dried, it was looking really nice. It’s almost a shame that most of it is going to be covered up with artwork…
With the right side panel done, I flipped the cab onto it’s back so I could work on the front panel…
It had a big hole near the coin door where a metal security cable-ring had been bolted in. I removed that and filled the hole. The rest of the front panel wasn’t that bad. There were some chips and scratches that would need filling, and two stickers in the top right corner. I managed to get the green one off to save for re-application later, but the red one fell to bits…
After a bit of filling and sanding, it was ready for priming…
Same as with the side panel, I used the Zinsser 123 with a short-pile microfiber roller. I also did the visible parts of the insides of the side panels…
The Kleenedge Tape & Drop came in handy again as I covered up the rest of the cab so I could paint it. I decided to spray the front panel in satin black as it would be more visible than the side panels and I wanted it to be absolutely perfect. I was happy enough with the roller finish on the side panels, but I would have sprayed those too had I had more room. The front panel was small enough that I could spray it sanely. This is what it looked like after 1 coat and then sanded down…
And all finished with 3 coats. Very happy how this turned out…
On to the remaining side panel. This one had similar damage to the other side, but less extensive. It did turn out to be more of a pain though…
The front leg was damaged similar to the other side, and the back corner had cracked and a repair had been attempted (again, badly) with some foamy substance…
The power button was also full of crap so I cleaned that up…
I sanded back the overhang of the corner and sanded down the surface ready for some filler…
I made another mold frame for the damaged leg…
I also had to use some Araldite to stick the veneer back down where it had become unstuck…
Soon I had the filler on and waited for it to set…
Aaaaaand this is where it all went horribly wrong. The filler clearly didn’t have anything to grab on to and came away with the mold frame when I removed it. I guess in hindsight I may have left the filler too long to harden, or maybe put too much hardener in. In any case, it fell away and I cursed a lot…
Attempt number two involved me using some lost head nails to both strengthen the area and provide something for the filler to grab on to. Again in hindsight, perhaps I should have done this to the other leg too – although the other leg was pretty strong and sturdy once the filler had set. Maybe that’ll come and bite me later. I guess we’ll see…
I made sure not to put the nails in where I’d have to use the router to cut the t-molding groove…
To be doubly sure it would work this time, I rubbed some grease around the edge of the mold frame in the hope that it would prevent the filler getting stuck to it…
Phew… it worked! 🙂 The grease around the edge kinda made it look like cookies and cream. Mmmmm….
After some sanding, it was nice and smooth and was looking pretty good…
Cutting the t-molding slot was scary as feck. I put a thick board of plywood between me and the router when I used it just in case, haha. I needn’t have worried though, it missed the nails…
WIth the second side panel prepped, it was ready for priming. Rinse and repeat… same as the other side…
First coat of paint rollered one was patchy, but from experience I knew not to worry…
After 3 coats it looked great. Job done…
That was another long one! The cab’s ready to reassemble now, and do the finishing touches like applying the t-molding and artwork etc. See you in the next part.
In the previous part, I restored the pedals. That turned out to be an absolute doddle compared to the dashboard and steering mechanism. Buckle up. This is a long one…
I disconnected the dash from the cabinet and put it on the workbench to take a closer look. As well as it being really dirty and greasy, it had a few problems…
The A gear on the right wasn’t too bad, it was just covered in grease. The blue B gear on the other hand had 2 teeth missing and was held together with a cable tie. The steering springs were also held on with cable ties…
The C gear was absolutely caked with grease and had 3 splits across it…
You can see the 3 splits clearer here. There’s also broken weld in the left corner of the stopper tray, so the tray was loose on that end…
The D gear attached to the pot had a small split just above the grub screw hole…
With the steering column and gears dismantled, I got a clear photo of all 4 gears. A and D were on their way out… B and C were completely knackered…
The steering springs had cable ties on them to help keep them attached at the ends where the metal posts had worn away on the arm plates…
I had 1 decent-ish arm plate, and one broken one. You can see that in the photo below – the one on the right is missing the top section….
The last remaining problem was a missing small metal rod that holds a small roller in the top metal section (I think it’s called the roller bracket). The two rollers seem to assist the smooth running of the metal frame on the wooden control panel unit when the shaker motor activates. I don’t think this will be a problem as the other roller is performing the role of both of them, and didn’t seem worn at all…
At this point I had everything taken apart and organised so I could remember what order to put things back. I used the helpful diagram from the Reassembler blog to assist me. The gear shifter and pedal assembly were nothing compared to this…
I didn’t have the use of my friend’s ultrasonic cleaner this time, so I used Autoglym Engine Cleaner, rust remover, toothbrushes and a heavy dose of elbow grease to clean all the metalwork…
Here’s another shot of the roller bracket where the missing rod is. Here’s before it was cleaned…
And here’s after the cleaning…
And here’s a before and after of the shaker motor. That came up really nice…
I needed to sort the broken arm plate. Luckily a nice ukvaccer from New Zealand offered to send me a bunch of spare parts he had for free (thanks Michael). This was a saviour as it contained 2 non-broken arm-plates. He also helpfully sent me some more green cable-ties. 😉
So now I had 2 working arm plates… but there was a problem: The bit where the springs attach was worn away on both of them, so much so, that the springs were not attaching well enough and were loose and prone to falling off (hence the cable ties)…
Time to call on my friend Ed with his tig welder! We welded the spring-retaining post on both arm plates so that they wouldn’t fall off…
Here’s how they turned out after using an angle grinder to cut new grooves where the ends of the springs slot into…
I had everything ready now to rebuild the steering. For the A and B gears, I got a mild steel reproduction gear set from giz10p. These are super quality and will probably outlast the cab! For the C and D gears, I found some replacement 3D printed ABS plastic ones on ebay. They’re not metal, but I’d been told the A and B gears are the usual ones to break…
The original springs were ok, but a little bent. I got some reproduction ones from ArcadeFixit. These are the same tension as the originals…
Time to put it all back together. First, the main steering column with the new metal A and B gears and the welded fixed up arm plates…
Then the new C and D gears and the shaker motor back on…
Moving on to the rest of the control panel, the front of the wooden frame was disgusting…
But not for long…
The back of the plastic dash and the plastic instrument panel were equally as disgusting…
The front of the plastic dash was actually pretty clean, apart from around the steering wheel and shifter plate…
They also cleaned up quite nicely…
And the small cracks and scratches around where the shifter sits are hardly noticable with the new shifter in place. I decided to leave the cracked/missing piece of dash around the right mounting bolt hole. All in all this dash was in great condition, and it was original. It is very thin plastic and I didn’t want to tempt fate by trying to repair it and making it worse. I didn’t want to get a repro dash and when you’re playing the game you hardly notice it anyway (half of the damaged area will be covered up by a black washer anyhow)…
I added grease to the gears, put the dash plastics back on, bolted it all together and went through the testing menu to set the correct steering value for the pot that’s connected to the D gear. Then I went for a test drive, and it was spot on! The steering centered beautifully and everything was really smooth and perfectly calibrated. Very happy!
Phew… that was a long one, but a lot was accomplished! Shifter, pedals, and now the steering was sorted. Time to move onto the cabinet itself. Feels like I can see light at the end of the tunnel now. See you in the next part.
Having finished restoring the gear shifter, I moved on to the accelerator and brake assembly. It was fully working, but the pedals were worn and a little rusty, the front plate was scratched and bumpy and the paint was coming off, and the whole thing was dusty and grimy. It looked like it hadn’t been cleaned for 40 odd years…
I started to disassemble the whole unit. The two pots and their brackets were absolutely caked in age old dust and grime…
After taking the pot brackets off, I took another closer up photo. You can really see the disgusting state it was in, including the spider webs…
Nearly got it fully taken apart… here is the base of the pedal bracket and the two bumpers… yuck…
The accelerator lever and gear…
…and the brake pedal and gear…
Soon I had the entire pedal assembly taken apart and ready to clean. There’s a lot of parts!
A friend of mine had an ultrasonic cleaner. I’d not used one of these before but it worked wonders on all the dirty parts. For those that don’t know, you fill it with water with a tiny amount of liquid soap in it, dunk in your dirty parts, and switch it on for 15 mins or so. It makes a heck of a high-pitched racket, but it cleans stuff amazingly well…
Back from the cleaner, all the parts are looking sparkly and ready for reassembly. Without the ultrasonic cleaner, I’d have used Autoglym with a toothbrush on each individual part. It saved me a lot of time…
The front-plate, or “lid” as Sega calls it in the manual, was pretty scratched up with the paint coming off in areas…
The front of it was even worse…
First off I sanded all the paint off and got it as flat as I can. I started with a coarse 40 grit, and moved up to about 320…
I then used Isopon P38 body filler to fill all the scratches. Once this had dried I sanded it smooth ready for priming…
First coat of high-build primer sprayed on… the high-build was good because it filled any tiny scratches that the filler missed…
After the high build primer, I sprayed a coat of grey-primer, then 2 topcoats of black satin. I did the same to the pedal bracket as that was pretty banged up too…
There were a few other parts that needed repainting too. This is the collar, I suspended it on a piece of string and spun it as I sprayed it to get a nice even finish…
I also sanded and re-sprayed the black bolts used to mount the pedal assembly to the front panel…
Moving on to the pedals themselves, this is how they came up after the ultrasonic cleaning. A lot of dirt and grime removed but still a bit of rust to get off, and loads of scratches. Looks like they were originally chrome plated…
I got a quote for re-chroming the pedals, but it was stupidly expensive, so I decided to clean them up as best I could myself, starting with the accelerator pedal. As with the gear shifter shaft, I began with 40 grit, and moved up through grits 80, 120, 240, 320 and 400. Then moved on to wet sanding with 600, 800, 1200, 1500 and 2000. Then I polished it with some Maguire’s Ultimate Compound to try to get a nice shine. Came up pretty good I think…
The same process was followed on the rest of the pedal metalwork. That’ll do nicely!
Putting it all together, and I’m very happy with the results. When this baby is back on the front of the cab, it’ll look the business…
Well that’s the pedal assembly restored. Happy with that! In the next part I tackle the dashboard, and fix up the steering mechanism. See you in Part 4.
I chose to tackle one of the smaller parts of my newly acquired OutRun US upright first – the gear shifter. This was in a pretty bad way. The shifter plate had been bent and it had 3 massive bolts pushed through it to keep it together. Something had obviously broken and the bolts were needed to keep the whole shifter assembly from falling apart…
After taking it out of the cab, as I expected I could see that the 3 bolts were used to hold the top parts of the shifter together. It looked like the shifter plate was supposed to have 4 threaded legs, but only had 1 remaining. The other 3 must have broken off, so someone had drilled 3 holes through the top of the shifter plate and put some replacement bolts in. It did the job, but it was ugly as heck, and it didn’t solve the bent part…
I found a really helpful diagram of the OutRun shifter unit on the Reassembler blog. This was a godsend and helped enormously. I started taking the shifter apart and soon came across the first tricky bit… the dreaded spring pin…
This little bugger (part 045-0018) was really stuck in there, and I needed to get it out so that I could fully take the shifter apart. It had been stuck in there for so many years, it was just not budging. I had some advice from previous OutRun owners on ukvac (thanks Eddie) and I bought a set of pin punches and tried at first to just whack it out…
This worked to some degree, but it was really slow going and not really moving much at all…
In the end, I used a combination of penetrating oil, pin punch, heat gun, and, well… brute force. It took a while and when it finally came out the pin was broken into 3 small bits. I needed another one, so I carefully measured and ordered a 5 pack of 3mm x 20mm roll pins online.
Once the shifter was in bits, I could finally see which parts were causing the problems. I had a bent Shift Lever Plate (part KR-1311) with 3 missing legs. Luckily ArcadeFixit.com in the US had a NOS one in stock, so it wasn’t long before I had a replacement… with no bend… and all 4 legs…
I also needed a new Hi – Lo Plate (part KR-1317). Unfortunately I couldn’t find a NOS one, or even a nice condition used one anywhere. Luckily there’s a guy called Wim Outrun who does really nice reproduction parts for OutRun cabinets… so I ordered one of his repro plates. It’s beautiful! Wim’s a really helpful guy and has given me lots of advice during this project. I think he loves OutRun even more than me…
Now I had the gear stick out, I could finally see the full condition of it: rusty and scratched!
First I used some rust remover to get the rust off the shaft. After that I started with some 40 grit sandpaper, then went to 80, 120, 240, 320 and 400 grit. Then I went on to some wet sanding with 600, 800, 1200, 1500 and 2000 grit. Following that I buffed it up for about 10 minutes with Maguire’s Ultimate Compound. It came up pretty nice. It’s not perfect, and here you can see a couple of dents in the shaft that will have to stay. Luckily you can’t really see them under the gear stick knob. I’m pretty happy how well this came out though…
Next I scrubbed all the remaining metalwork with some Autoglym Engine Cleaner and a toothbrush, and carefully reassembled them, remembering to grease up the bearings in the shaft holder. Came out really nice…
Mounted on the dash it really looks the part 🙂
So that’s the first part restored, and a success I think!
And it still works!
Next up I decided to attack the dirty and grimy pedal assembly. See you in Part 3.
Back in early April 2019, someone on the ukvac forums posted about an OutRun arcade cabinet that had come up for sale on ebay. It was the US upright version, and was in good working condition. I’d been after one for a while and couldn’t believe my luck when I looked in the listing and saw it was in Dover, just a few miles from me. The seller had listed it for auction but had left his phone number on the listing. It seemed like fate so I gave the guy a call, went over to see it, and within 24hrs he’d accepted a cash offer. I got myself an OutRun!
It was in quite good condition, pretty much all original from what I could see. It even had the original Sega steering wheel badge. I play tested the cab before making an offer and it seemed good – the steering was a bit off but I was confident (hah!) that it could be fixed. The side art wasn’t the normal style with the car either, so I assume that got damaged beyond repair and someone had put some repro sticker art on it. Some bits of damage to the cabinet (biggest bits were at the end of both of the feet – you can see this in the photos above and below), but on the whole I’ve seen far worse. The cab was solid, no water damage, and the boardset worked. I was happy…
Here’s a photo of the back. Nothing terrible here, apart from a grotty fan with 40 years of accumulated dust and crap in it…
And it still had the serial number plate. Serial number 221221. Nice.
There was also a “Processed by The Arcade Lair” sticker on the back. I have no idea who that was, whether it was an operator/arcade or a repairer, but it’s nice to see a bit of the cab’s history. If anyone knows anything about this company, I’d be interested to know…
Here’s a close up of the exhaust fan. Ewww…
The marquee was fully intact. I have no idea if this is original or not, but it looks in good condition, and it lights up fine when switched on…
The plastic monitor bezel was in almost perfect condition. I’ve been told this is very lucky as most get split/broken or have cigarette burns all over them. This one has no splits, cracks or scratches, and only one single cigarette burn, but it’s right where the map decal would go, so if I can get a replacement for the missing decal, it would cover the burn mark up…
The dash itself was in very good condition. The green start button worked and lit up fine, although the start decal above it was missing. The steering wheel was in great nick and had the original wheel badge. The plastic dash was virtually unblemished, apart from a crack and damaged/missing area where the right bolt should be. I’m guessing this got damaged by the bolt being tightened too much. There were a few small cracks around the gear shifter too… it’s very thin plastic. The shifter itself was also in a bit of a state…
Close up of the damage near the right hand side mounting bolt hole…
And here’s the gear shifter. It was bent and has clearly needed repairs in the past, as it had 3 rusty old bolts impaled through the Hi-Lo plate, presumably preventing the whole thing from falling apart…
The front panel had a bunch of chinks and scratches in it, but nothing that some filler and a fresh lick of paint wouldn’t solve. The pedal assembly front plate was scratched up, and the pedals were a bit rusty and in need of a spruce up. The floor matting was dirty as heck. It was black… the originals were grey. The metal kickplate had lots of scratches and dents in, nothing unusual there…
Another sticker showing some of the cab’s history… “North Carolina 96/97 Dept. of Revenue Video Games Machine License.” The license expired in May 1997… oops….
The coin mech/door was in good condition and had all the keys. It was just a bit dirty. Nothing a good clean won’t fix…
And the coin counter read 71730. That’s a lot of goes…
Moving on to inside the cab. The WG monitor was working, but filthy. The degaussing coil had fallen off the frame too…
Under the dash, the steering, gears and shaker motor were all there as expected, but really grimy and greasy. All four gears had splits in them and would need replacing, which is not uncommon…
The coin mechs, service panel and coin box were all present and in good condition…
The PCB stack looked pretty good and was nice and clean. The game was fully working, and I’d been told by the seller that the board didn’t have the suicide chip that was common in these machines…
The PCB serial number sticker was still there, and I’ve no idea who Brady Dist. are, but some more of the cab’s history there…
It even still had the dip switch settings sheet mounted inside the cab…
The pedals were working, but were very dirty and grimy. No mouse nest in there, it wasn’t that bad, but still… eww….
And the power supply. It was a US cab and had a US plug running off 110V. The seller included an external step down transformer so I could run it off UK mains, but it was a massive ugly thing. I’d want to replace that and either fix the power supply wiring to take 240V, or mount a smaller step down transformer inside the cab…
So I finally had an OutRun! Man I used to love this game in the arcades! I wanted to fix as much as I could so it looked nice and minty again, but I also wanted to keep as much of it original as I could. This seemed like a pretty good first restoration project for me. I’d want to fix up the dash and steering, the gear shifter, the pedals, clean up the cab and put some new artwork on it. I’d also want to put the enhanced roms on there so freeplay works better, and so it would save high-scores etc.
The first part of the restoration I chose to do was the gear shifter. See you in Part 2.
