This page will show you the condition of my WH20 cabinet when I purchased the game, like most WH20's it was faded and it was another game that I wanted to have a pristine cabinet.

  This one also had some 'home handyman' repair jobs to hold it together as well as some scratches and cigarette burns. The backbox was rougher than the main cabinet and I wanted to patch and smooth it, repaint the blue and also re-decal the sides.

So like my Fish Tales I decided to re-decal this entire cabinet......after completing this one I swore it was the last cabinet that I would ever decal.

Here are some shots of the original cabinet

This first photo shows typical WH20 fade , with all the colour gone from Bigfoot and faded yellows and there is a cigarette burn in the waterfall as well

Heres the easy way to fix a cabinet - once again - just drive a self tapping screw into the side of it.

DEFINITELY not the way I would do it.

Heres the cabinet inside - filthy like all these old games, no-one cares about inside

And finally a close up of the backbox - most of it was like this and worse, so I used a filler to patch all the divots and re-build the bashed edges and then before I applied the new decals I repainted the entire backbox inside and out. I was unable to get a spray colour as a close match so in this case I got some paint colour matched and used a very small and very fine roller to paint this backbox, you cannot tell this has been rolled on and it looks great.

I also REALLY dislike pinball toppers, my WH20 did not come with one but I wanted to patch and paint over all the screw holes on top of the game as well.

Having done cabinets before I knew what I was in for, and its rarely what I would call 'fun'

This cabinet was no exception......once again I went with the hairdryer and paint scraper removal method and one side of this game took 4 nights of work to get it off as it kept 'snapping' into small 10mm or so sections instead of peeling off in nice size sheets, but once you start down the path you cannot stop and I had to persist with it.

This was the side that gave me the hours of 'trouble' but it was all worth it in the end.

That cigarette burn went all the way through. You can see in this shot that I had already cleaned and sprayed the inside of the cabinet black. I also repainted the black at the back where the backbox rests.

Before applying the new decals I sprayed black around all the edges so that if there were any gaps in the corners where the decals meet - then it wouldn't show up as much, maybe I should have used that backbox blue paint I had made up in hindsight.

And here is one of the main sides done. I use the dry method to apply cabinet decals and have the cabinet on its side like in the shot above and I roll the backing of the decal out , smoothing the new decal down as I go. It has never failed me.

I was starting to get pretty happy about this cabinet at this point.

How nice is the colour in this now !

No more cigarette burns for this WH20

Here is the front, I always find this the hardest decal to apply due the big hole where the door is, so what I do is cut a piece of scrap to fit the door hole temporarily while I apply the decal and that allows this decal to 'fall' across what would normally be a gap and helps it remain in place without sagging.

Obviously in the shot below I had installed my resprayed coin door , I even resprayed the bolt heads

You also have to REALLY check where the art lines up around the start button as ANY slight anomaly will show up - especially at the front of the game.

After many many checks before applying, I nailed this one.

Make sure you pay attention to detail - below is the side of the backbox, even though these are rarely seen I polished the heads of the bolts and importantly I didn't overtighten them as that can create dents , wrinkles or creases in the decal around the bolt.

And finally here it is inside the house

VERY happy with this cabinets results

 Dont forget to go back to my main WH20 page by clicking the link below if you want to see this machine restored in its entirety.