Repainting a Neo Geo Cabinet
I picked up a Neo Geo 4 slot cabinet (MVS25-4) from the New England Arcade Collectors Forum in June of 2014. The board was working, had good picture, but the side panels were painted over.
The black paint was peeling like crazy because whoever painted it didn’t remove the red vinyl. As I started to remove the layers of paint I could tell it was painted over several times with red, black and maybe even grey paint. It looked like someone was slowly trying to strip it and bring it back to life and gave up. The bottom half was in decent shape so I left it alone
The red vinyl was destroyed. The best thing to do was to remove it. I started soaking the surface of the vinyl with Goof Off and rubbing it in with a stiff brush to help it penetrate.
After about 30 minutes I could tell the vinyl adhesive was starting to breakdown. I was able to start in with a paint scraper and begin peeling back the vinyl.When I got to the edges of the cabinet I had to remove the T-molding where the original vinyl was tucked under.
Once all of the vinyl and paint was removed I wiped down the sides with paint thinner to clean off any remaining residue. I left it alone for a few days to make sure the panels were completely dry.
I started looking at paint swatches to see how close I could get. Luckily I was able to save a piece of the original vinyl and get a color match. I used a tinted primer and then hit it with 3 coats of the color matched semi-gloss.
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- Cleaned
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- Primed
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- Painted
I ordered vinyl decals from Jasens Customs (no longer selling) that match the original text. I don’t have pictures of the process to apply the decals, but I used the hinge-method which always seems to work well for me. I purchased and installed new T-molding from t-molding.com.
The color match was pretty much dead on. I managed to rip some of the vinyl decal lettering when moving the cabinet so if I were to do this again I would go with a stencil and paint the lettering on.
