1980 Namco Rally-X Cocktail Restoration
My Latest project has been a 1980 Namco Rally-X cocktail cabinet that I received as a birthday present about a year ago. These cabinets seem to be pretty rare as I have done alot of searching and cannot find much information at all. Namco also released the same style puckman cabinet in 1980 (Thanks puckman.net). My Fiance was lucky to find this in a little retro furniture shop down the Gold Coast who were selling it for $500. It needed alot of cleaning up but I really wanted to restore it to its former glory.
Now it wasn’t exactly in working condition when I received it. My first step was to pull it all apart and work out what exactly needed to be done. I had to drill the coin box as I didn’t have the key for it but inside I counted $182 which I was pretty happy about 
Next on my to do list was scan the control panels so I could reproduce the CPO’s (Control Panel Overlay). Luckily a skillful mate of mine was happy to lend a hand by touching up the artwork. Once the CPO’s were completed I had them printed as a vinyl sticker and then laminated for extra protection. Once I received the control panels back I sent them away (along with the legs, base, coin box and glass clips) to be powdercoated. All up the powercoating cost about $180 and the CPO’s were $68. (Before and After pics below)
Once I applied the CPO’s the next step was to add new joysticks and buttons (Sticking to the original colours of course). My joystick of choice was the Sanwa JLF-TP-8YT. Restoring the control panels was definitely most time consuming part of the whole project but they turned out really well. I also had new glass cut and the instruction cards reproduced.
Finally after several months of work the cabinet is back to how it looked in the 80’s. I did however decide to keep the timber laminate part original as it was still in pretty good condition and adds to the look of the whole cabinet. There is one more thing that I need to do and that is buy a new PCB.. but that will have to wait until I find another that works. The current one is playable however there are lines down the screen which annoys me. Well here it is – 1980 Namco Rally-X cocktail cabinet.
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