I had a bit of free time over the weekend so I decided to apply my custom made control panel overlay to the “new” Golden Tee control panel. As with all good plans, I quickly ran into a few problems.
When I put the new trackball mounting plate on the control panel, I discovered that the new mounting plate and old mounting plate were different sizes. The new plate had about 1/2″ of space remaining between the outer edge and the routed area it was to fit into. While the ideal solution would have been to bondo the space, I didn’t have any bondo handy but did have some Durham Rock Hard Water Putty at my disposal.
Here’s a shot of the control panel with the old button holes filled and the space around the trackball mounting plate filled and sanded:
While I think bondo would have been a better alternative, I didn’t have too much concern with using the putty as the mounting plate is bolted down and shouldn’t shift during gameplay.
Once I had the control panel prepped, I carefully measured and drilled new holes for all of the buttons, including the two new buttons not used on the 2000 Golden Tee board set that was originally in the cabinet (backspin & fly-by). I then installed the overlay that I custom designed in Adobe Illustrator and had printed by Mame Marquees:
I still need to fill the gaping hole in the front of the cabinet where a bill collector was once installed, but right now the game is functioning and playable. That will have to suffice for the time being.
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