Control Panel Stripping

I have my supplies ready. Some GoofOff and an old metal control panel. I have some sheet metal, blades, and a hole saw for later.







Here's the panel and the Control Panel Overlay (CPO) that I need to remove



Look at the underside, it's swiss cheese down there! But it looks like it's some kind of stardard hole pattern for JAMMA though. Just not Street Fighter 2



Okay, getting started. I hit the panel up with a hot hair dryer and work a corner loose. I grabbed it with some pliers and started tugging on it. As long as you keep heat on it, it comes off in large sections. If you do it cold, it's extremely hard to pull and chips off in very small pieces. As you heat it, it smells like a new inflatable raft.


The back was really easy and came out in a few sections




The curved edge didn't strip very easily and took a lot of scraping with the putty knife to get all the vinyl off.


Once all the vinyl is off, I'm left with a metal CP covered with a tacky residue. It's pretty darn thick and will require some GoofOff to remove... this is where it gets really hard and annoying!



What you do is squirt some GoofOff on the panel, scrub it in a bit with a brush, let it soak in for a few seconds, then scrape off as much as you can and do it again. The directions make it seem like you squirt it on and hose or wipe it right off. That's BS. First off wiping didn't do much because the residue was too thick. You have to scrape it with a putty knife. The GoofOff just turns the residue soft and you can scrape it off. You end up with gobs of the stuff, and it evaporates quickly so you have to work fast before it congeals back to a thick residue again.


The back was easier because it is such a large flat surface, but the front was really hard thanks to all the holes. It took HOURS of squirting, scraping, and rubbing. Only if the residue is really thin can you rub the stuff off effectively. The fumes were pretty thick and dizzying without good ventilation.



When I started running out of GoofOff, I switched to lighter fluid with does work to an extent, but not as well as GoofOff and evaporates too quickly. Plus lighter fluid turns your skin white because it dries it out like crazy. In the end, I finally got a mostly stripped control panel, ready for the new sheet metal.

It's still tacky in places, but I don't care, I got most of it off, my fingers are black and sticky, and I'm out of GoofOff.