I picked up a cheap Caribbean Cruise in need of some love.

Fortunately in spite of a mouse nest on the playfield, the pf is in pretty good shape and is cleaning up well. Also, I bought it in unknown working condition because the power cord had been cut. I wired a new plug into it and was happy to discover it's working.

It needs new rubbers and a good cleaning, but more than anything the cabinet needs a lot of work. The lower cabinet had gotten wet and is musty and moldy. The woodgrain laminate was also peeling in many places.

I stripped the laminate and decided that the top part of the cabinet is salvageable. I don't care for the woodgrain, so plan to paint it black.

The bottom part of the cabinet is going to be completely remade. I have already cut out the new panels in MDF and hope to do the router work tomorrow.

The octagonal top part of the cabinet comes off easily after removing 6 screws.

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Here are some pics of the teardown of the lower cabinet. The white is baking soda that I sprinkled all over to help with the smell. I'll be happy when I can throw it out.

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I finished routing and transferring holes for the carriage bolts.

Everything is working out well so far. I successfully dry fit everything together and confirmed the top fits on.

I still need to glue and fasten it together. Then I'll apply primer and paint.

For the top, I'm going to sand it down to wood and remove all the ahesive from the laminate before painting.

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Cabinet assembled and primer applied.

After painting I'll install the wiring and interior hardware.

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I hit a bit of a snag with the painting... I had sanded the top down a lot and thought I had removed all the ahesive, but apparently didn't. Some of the paint is just a sticky mess now.

I had tried using an ahesive remover before painting and it wasn't working well. That's why I ultimately went with sanding.

I may try to chemically strip the paint and sand some more. At the end of the day, I could just remake the top, but its a little more complicated than the bottom and was something I had hoped I wouldn't have to do.

I stripped paint and sanded the top down more to remove the adhesive. I probably could have gotten away with painting again, but decided to try some black woodgrain vinyl that wasn't too expensive. It looks OK. I might eventually try painting or even do some kind of more robust veneer if the vinyl doesn't stay on well long term.

The game is wired back up and working again. I'm waiting on some Titan silicone rings that I just ordered before it's playable again. I'm also bathing some of the rustier parts from the pf in rust remover.20150719_184353.jpg

I apparently didn't take enough pictures before I took this apart. I ended up with a few screws and wire holders left over... I think the pieces go in the upper cabinet.

Would someone who owns one of these be willing to snap a few pics of the inside of the upper cabinet with the playfield lifted up? I can't find very many pics of the inside and the few videos on YouTube don't pan around enough on the inside to see everything.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Jim

That would be much appreciated. I'm not in any rush. It's not that big of a deal. I installed wire holders where I'm pretty sure they go and all the wires seem secure and out of the way enough, so I'll just hold onto the extra bits and install them down the line if I can figure out where they go. I did install a few holders up top, but I'm just not seeing additional screw holes for the extras.

Also, I'm pretty sure they're in the upper cabinet, because I did take enough pictures of the lower cabinet and populated all of those back in.

Thanks!

This might become my go-to game to bring to the Louisville Arcade Expo. I don't think I've seen a cocktail pin there before (Joust doesn't count). It was cheap enough that I won't cry over damage in transit, and it might end up being easier to move out of my basement. We'll see.

I officially threw out the old moldy panels from the bottom cabinet. It's great to be rid of them!

I'm waiting on some additional rings and post sleeves to come in from Titan, and then I'll be about finished with this restoration for a while. I screwed up my order of rings and missed one 3" ring and the post sleeves. Fortunately I had a 3" left over from my JP rings and put that in for the time being so I could finally play this game. I'm really liking it so far.

Oh, I also still need to get a couple of new locks for it.

There's not a lot else I want to do to the game other than maybe try to figure out how to take the glass top piece apart without shattering the glass. The black paint on the underside of the glass has gotten kind of weird and blistered where it makes contact with the wood in some spots.

I also didn't make any of the the wood pieces in the inside for holding the cash box and may do that at some point, too.

Based on serial numbers, I believe I have #299, and based off of a tag on the transformer, I believe my game was actually manufactured in 1993. Were these still being made then?

It's funny to own it along with Super Mario Bros and hear a lot of the same sound effects. The sound for the spinners is the turtle shell sound! There are a few other duplicate sounds, but that's the one that stands out the most.

I'm definitely not that experienced when it comes to carpentry and the different materials that are available. I was mostly going with MDF because I had a 2'x4' piece already and Home Depot conveniently sells it in this size so I can transport it in my car and not have to bother with tracking down an employee to cut a 4’x8' piece down for me. I only needed to buy 2 additional 2x4 pieces, so that kept my costs down, too.

My table saw and various routers did fine with the MDF. I actually used 3 different routers: one mounted to a table, a larger hand-held one and a smaller trim router depending on the type of cut and bit I needed to use.

If I wanted to stay as true to the original as possible, I'd have gone with a less dense particle board, but it wouldn't have been as convenient.

I don't know what impact, if any, there would be from making the bottom out of a lighter material, but I assume it's good for it to have some heft to it so that it properly anchors down the top. I wouldn't want it to be able to topple over easily.

When I detach the top from the bottom, the bottom is light enough for me to carry in spite of being MDF, so I'm fine with having used this material and would do so again.

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I couldn't just leave the top glass alone. It's definitely possible to take it apart. After a lot of prying, I got half of the metal edging off. I'll go at the other half when I get a chance. My goal is to clean up the flaking black border and repaint. I'll also probably give the wood a fresh coat of paint. Hopefully I can get it all put back together and looking better than it did.

I'm hoping to get my 2nd order of rubbers in to finish up this game. I'll post pics if so.

I did end up getting the top glass totally apart, cleaned up, and repainted. I gave the wood a good sanding and repainted it. I scraped most of the black border off of the glass and repainted. It's not perfect, but way better than it was.

Another fun mod I did was add clear lighted flipper buttons and put a light behind the start button. I only had red lights on hand for the flipper buttons, but would ultimately like to make them pink.

This game looks great with Titan rings. I did yellow in most spots with some pink and pink post sleeves and flipper rubbers.

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Here are a few gameplay videos:

After putting a lot of time on this game, I'm still really liking it. Once I finish out my game room, CC has a perfect spot to go where no normal pin could.

My 2 complaints about the game are:
1. The skeet targets are offset from the skeet lights to the point where if you aim for the light, you'll likely hit the wrong target.
2. This seems like a software bug and makes me hesitate to bring this game to an expo. At the start of a ball if you plunge it and it happens to drain without hitting any switches, the game won't recognize it and eject another ball or end the current ball. The only remedy I can figure us turning the game off and back on. The game needs some kind of ball search. This has happened to me several times, so I know it will happen at an expo.