Initial D Twin Restoration

[guddler]

Ok, I'll start a thread since there seems to be a bit of interest in this...

As I've explained elsewhere this is not going to be some extreme restoration. My reasons for this are:

• I'm a lazy git!
• I'm quite happy for machines to show a bit of their age (wear / tear) as long as it's not too bad
• I bought this to have something fun to play, not to spend months doing up
• I don't (at the moment) want to plough loads of cash into it

In fact, minty restored machines are (IMHO) unnatural!!

So, without further a doo...

The machine when I went to visit it "on-site" back some time in early September (I think). Not a great shot but I didn't want to stand there like a melon taking too many shots.

And now in it's current state (a big pile of bits! - big, heavy bits admittedly).

As you can see, I made sure before collecting that I had enough space for it (and, honestly, there's plenty even though it doesn't look like it). What I didn't consider is that I don't really have the space to strip it down, clean it and re-asemble it.

SO, the plan is (has to be!) to strip down and clean up the 1 base that you can see in the front of that picture. Then on a nice dry day take some stuff outside and make some room. Then I can place the front part and seat on that base, thus freeing up the room to repeat with the second half.

Once both halves are essentially re-assembled then the fronts / tops can be stripped down and cleaned up. The game itself was working when I tried it so provided it was still working on Monday there's nothing too much to be done (the cab was already powered off and in two pieces on arrival, as per the arrangement

). I'm sure it's fine!

The things that I know of so far:

• Someone's been eating one of the steering wheels - about an inch missing
• Someone's likewise eaten nearly all the artwork
• Ditto all but one piece of padding off of the seats
• LHS monitor was a bit dark - should just be an adjustment tweak
• Something was up with the force feedback on both sides (different things)

On the steering / force feedback I guess I'll get it all up and running, then calibrate it all etc. then just take it from there.

As for artwork. It's probably going to have to remain bare.

Updates as and when I guess...

 

[trm]

Looks awesome and does make me wonder whether picking Hard Drivin' as my one sit down driver was the right decision Having heard about the bit out of the steering wheel I'd love to see a pic of what the feral scrotes have evolved into - you can tell a lot about an animal by observing their bite patterns

On the flip side, I can't think of much worse things to put into my god than something which has been handled by the sweaty mitts of goodness knows how many random strangers! With any luck whoever did the biting is now in an anthrax isolation ward.

 

[guddler]

I did think hard driving was a bit of an oddball one

Choice of game here is more circumstance as anything. Put simply, I enquired if anything was about and this was offered. I did a bit of research and came to the conclusion that the base game looked like a lot of fun and if not, the cab would make an excellent base for a conversion or just a game change with very little effort.

I didn't explicitly set out to get an ID 1/2/3 but as it happens, I'm glad I did!

Am aiming to get one half cleaned up and ready for assembly tomorrow with assembly on Sunday. Hopefully!

 

[g00n3r]

I hope the card readers work, they make the game really.

I've still got my fully maxed out Subaru Impreza STi in my wallet.

 

[whitecomet]

looks like it could be a nice restoration

what version of iD2 you going to be running??? iD3 was the best version tbh out the 3.

looks like you have iD2 stickers on the seat... and a nice iD3 twin marquee.
If you ever wanna get rid of the marquee let me know ...cant have enough iD stuff!!!

Did you have the metal bracket on the bottom back which locks the 2 cabinets together ?!?

will be following this with the regular iD interest at least its not a OutRun2 conversion (YET!! haha)

 

[guddler]

I hope the card readers work too. Makes it more interesting. My general outlook is if it's there, it can be fixed but this is much, much more modern than I'm used to so that probably doesn't apply!

The bracket's there. As far as I know, everything is there! It's got ID3 CDs in it so may as well stick with that. At least until I'm bored with that version.

 

[whitecomet]

yeah iD3 is voted by most people as the best version... takes all the previous elements and improves.

 

[andyman]

My general outlook is if it's there, it can be fixed but this is much, much more modern than I'm used to so that probably doesn't apply!

Hehe, I found this out recently on SS2, after 3 hours of measuring, head scratching and testing, it turned out to be a fuse holder

Will also be watching this one, as it will be my next project, have fun !

Andy.

 

[whitecomet]

Will also be watching this one, as it will be my next project, have fun !

Andy.

really what you planning on restoring??

 

[andyman]

ID3, Not a restore as much, maybe a conversion although at the moment there is no cab for either

Andy.

 

[guddler]

Ok, so I've spent about 12 hours on it today and I've made good progress. As I know everyone always likes lots of pics I've taken a few. They're not great as they're from my phone but they're respectable enough.

So, first thing that I did was finished off cleaning the outside of one of the bases. That's the top of the seat section, both sides, the bottom (yes, the bottom!), back - well, you get the idea. The base is in two sections. One half houses the Naomi 2 stuff, the other houses the power boards, motor boards and some other boards - this stuff is all new to me, it's made about 20 years too late for me to really know WTF it all is

So, this is the Naomi end, the business end if you will, all stripped out and cleaned up. Pretty boring picture really but there we are...

I then stuck the PCB board on the desk, removed everything, cleaned it all up, cleaned up the wooden base and re-assembled. At one point I thought I was going to regret doing so but I did crack the casing open on the Naomi motherboard to clean it out as the vents were clogged up with dust, particularly in the areas near the fan. I didn't go mad as I'm wary of cleaning fans up too much. It's amazing how much the dust and dirt holds the things together. Many a time I've cleaned a fan out, only to have it rattle to bits afterwards. That said, a bit of a clean up was in order.

The quality of all these photos doesn't really show just how clean it now is!

I chickened out with the other half since I don't have a useable wiring diagram so this side was done "in-situ". Hoovered out and then wiped all over. Still came up pretty clean IMO.

It would be good reference for me (and anyone else) if someone could LMK what the PCBs are!

And here we are, the whole base awaiting re-assembly...

Hold that thought. More to come in a mo...

 

[guddler]

So, I'm lucky enough that the wife was interested in giving a hand, so while I was doing stuff like cleaning out the motherboard etc. she was getting to work on some of the metalwork.

In this pic the two base plates have been cleaned up and added back on. The grey plate has loads of boot marks on it from peoples shoes. Nothing we had seemed to want to clean that off which was a shame. There's not dirt there though, the rest is spotless. And the black side is really clean. Some parts don't desperately look it in the photo but that's just due to general wear and scuffing. I tried novus and t-cut and neither wanted to know so I think the only way to get them really good would be shot-blast and powder coating and as I've said, this isn't that kind of restoration. It's really clean. That's good enough for me. It's a part you put your feet on FFS

This isn't a very good photo but here the pedals have been added. She's done a really good job of the covering plates on those (the next photo shows it better). At this point I realised the earth connection between the grey foot plate and the pedals is missing. I've searched high and low for it - even emptied and searched the hoover and bin and it doesn't seem to be here. Will have to rectify that at some point. In the mean time, no playing with bare feet in thunderstorms!

What I did with the pedal assembly was to dismantle it enough to get rid of all the dust, dirt and crap but with out stripping it right down. Same as the fans, I didn't want to clean all the stuff off that makes it work (grease etc.) since I don't have any new stuff to put on and I didn't want to suddenly find stuff became loose afterwards. Plus there were some very large springs in there that looked like they'd be a bugger to fit back in! So nice and clean without being extreme about it.

This next photo with the remainder of the base cleaned up and bolted back on shows it all much better. Nice and spangly clean - looks like an orange rusty bit on the right hand side. It's not, it's the reflection of a crappy energy saver bulb

Almost there...

 

[guddler]

So, just for a change I remembered to take a "before" shot. Kind of! Here's one of the "heads" in all it's dust filled glory. Eeeww! Thankfully there's not that much liquid spillage gone on, but there is some down the side of where the card reader bolts on.

The next step was that I stripped this all down. I took the back and the top off (already done in the photo) and removed the top brace. I also removed the two sides. Obviously that had to be done for cleaning but it's amazing how much weight that lost and how manageable the whole thing then was.

I've cleaned up the bottom section where the frame attaches to the base (the U shaped bit) and bolted it on. It's not the ideal way to tackle it but due to space restrictions, it's the only option I have. It does mean that I need to really cover everything up to make sure that I don't get everything that I've done so far all dirty again.

Here we are then, ready for tomorrow's efforts...

 

[guddler]

And finally, for Tim's viewing pleasure - THIS is what bored, feral, teenagers (presumably!) can do these days...

Sadly there's no known cure for that than a new steering wheel. Oh, and a shotgun for whoever did it

 

[whitecomet]

haha... when u said a bite mark i thought u meant teeth imprint... lol... dont they feed them up there!!

 

[Alpha1]

ID3 is a great game! I bet you got that twin for a song to (you bast hehe).

G00n3r might have a spare wheel if you ask him. You just need some side stickers by the looks of it - shouldn't be too hard to sort from Sega (maybe?)

 

[guddler]

No idea if it was "a song" or not but it certainly seemed reasonable to me.

Unfortunately it needs more than just side stickers. It needs:

1 x base side sticker

4 x side stickers

2 x seat back stickers

2 x instruction stickers (top of monitor)

2 x upper card reader stickers

2 x lower card reader stickers

So, give or take, 2 x complete artwork sets.

And that's what I know of so far.

Right, back to the scrubbing!

 

[g00n3r]

There's the Naomi psu, psu for the card reader, ffb driver board, sound amp and the jvs i/o board.

All pretty simple stuff (except the driver board), I believe Suzo can repair them as they are a lot less complicated than the earlier Rally/Daytona pcb's.

Deffo a 'song' trade price is about what you've paid, but they don't come up that often and traders will want at least £1000k for one in that nick. I've scrapped 3 or 4 twins now as the parts are worth more than the whole machine.

 

[guddler]

Right then, spent another 10 hours or so on it today and made good progress. I didn't take many photos though as I just cracked on with it. I need some space back in my office to be able to work tomorrow!

First up is the monitor end all cleaned up and awaiting re-assembly. I've not connected all the wiring back up at this point. I did that afterwards. Took me about half an hour to work it all out as we took it apart in such a rush and even now there's a power socket with nothing connected to it but everything's working ok so, meh! Hopefully AnDyC's going to point me in the direction of a wiring diagram so I can try and work out anything that I've missed.

Next, we cleaned up the side panels, speakers and the top brace. The side panels were a bitch and took ages. There's a little yellowing towards the top but really nothing too bad. The worst bit is a big knife mark all the way in a big arc on both sides. I'm guessing where the ID2 artwork was removed? Obviously it won't show if I manage to get new artwork for the cab but otherwise it's a bit of a pain.

Next up the monitor surround was cleaned up and the monitor itself was given a wipe over. Nothing drastic but enough that I don't get covered in black crap every time I pick it up. I have to say, I knew the monitor wasn't going to be fun due to it's size and weight but this was an absolute sod. It refused to line up with the bolt holes for some reason. In the end I had to remove the bolts from the top brace, fit the monitor and do it all back up again afterwards. Lots of swearing I can tell you!

Have since decided that the monitor surround needs another going over. There's still dirt in all the speaker grill slats!

 

[guddler]

Next up was the control panel. I was getting very tired by now so this was a "best effort" once over. It's pretty clean but I have no doubt it will need to come off again at some point anyway so it'll do for now. I pondered how I could fire it up since the wiring for the coin tower is in the other side and the machine is set for linked play. In the end I settled for a bit of a "heath robinson" approach. The coin tower is just sitting on the floor and I've fished the wiring out of the "joining up" bit to temporarily enable me to get into test mode etc.

Eventually worked out how to un-link the games (Seat No. 1 / 2 / Undefined is far from obvious!) and fired her up to see how it was...

I have to say, at this point things got a little disappointing because the monitor really is pretty poor in this side. I'll come to that in a bit though. Only casualty so far has been the fan in the base. As predicted, after cleaning it out, it died. I've got a brand new one here somewhere but until I clear a bit of space, where is anyone's guess. Had us going for a while trying to work out what the god awful noise was. Realised in the end it was the fan desperately trying to turn and disconnected it.

So, on first play, the steering is all over the place, as is the force feedback. I knew all that. That monitor was too dark and out of focus (I also knew that). Unfortunately, after a bit of adjusting I can't get the monitor very good at all (ignore the black and white nature of the pic - that's the camera). As soon as I give it any brightness it bleaches out and smears. That in itself really shouldn't be an issue though. In the MTC9000 world that's a sign of caps going south so I imagine this will be no different and I really don't mind working on that stuff.

What is a pain is that the convergence is waaaay out at all the edges. So badly so you can't read your scores and stats etc. I'm hoping that's electronic too and not the tube, but I fear it's probably the latter? Maybe I'll have a word with Ordy during the week on that one. Monitors of this size and frequency really are new ground for me.

Anyway, moving on, the steering, brake and accelerator were all adjusted up in the game menu and that resolved almost all of those issues. One issue remains on the steering front and that is that at the end of a game the force feedback sounds like it's trying to self destruct and this being my first driving game I've no idea why! You can solve it by moving the wheel to the left or right against it for 10 or 20 seconds until it shuts itself off. The steering wheel is a bit loose which won't help so I'll look into that and take it from there. During game play the force feedback is spot on. You even get proper rumbles whenever you go over the rumble strips in the road so god knows what it's up to at the end of the game

So here's a general pic of it up and running. The seat is dissasembled ready for cleaning up. For this side, we have the seat and card reader to go. Then it's a break for a week or so while I concentrate on work, then onto the right hand side (slave side).

guddler2010-11-22 00:06:44