Massive (filthy) find in South Carolina

[wottle]

So, while waiting on my PCBs for my HDI-45 adapters, I loved onto the next batch that seemed to be in decent shape, a pair of IIci and a pair of IIcx machines. Unfortunately, one of the Iicx machines was battery bombed, so I'll have to see what I can salvage from it (I've already pulled the headphone jack off because one of the IIci had no audio output and it turned out to be a failed jack thinking headphones or speakers were plugged in.

But, I have 4 cases in various phases of the cleaning an restoration process. I thought it would be good to show side-by-side of the progress and maybe give an idea of just how rough these machines were.

 

[splorp]

I get itchy just looking at these images.

 

[wottle]

I get itchy just looking at these images.

A little auto body shop filth never hurt anyone, right? Right?!?

 

[wottle]

So, I've finally turned on my outside water again, and the process of washing individually in the bath tub wasn't working for a variety of reasons, so I decided to give the pressure washer a try. Surely a high powered stream of water would get rid of all the surface dirt and get me a good surface to retro-bright (or sun-bright), right?



So, it helps, but there's still staining on the surface that the pressure washer simply would not remove.

So I got more aggressive with a melamine sponge. I know I'm sanding the surface, but at this point, it's the only thing that has been effective in removing the staining. So the approach now is to do that to the outer cases, and then leave out in the sun for a few days to see if the worst of the yellowing dies down. So I have what appears to be a Mac 6100 graveyard in my driveway currently:

I'll update in a few days if the sun cooperates here in South Carolina.

 

[wottle]

OK, so sun-brighting has been going well. I've been able to get a bunch of cases clean. However, since the spring weather is cooperating, I decided to get started on my pressure washing of my driveway. And it has me convinced that these machines were not just dirty, but they were likely covered in paint overspray. The pressure washing that left these machines still dirty was able to get my driveway looking like this:

Was also somehow not able to get these machines clean. Currently. I pressure washed the cases to get the surface dirty off, then followed up with a healthy amount of magic eraser scrubbing. After a few days in the sun,. it becomes apparent where I missed the dirt, so it's another round with the magic eraser (I bought a 100 pack for a reason).

Here you can see the difference between a case that was outside for a few days, and the compact Mac case that I just cleaned up.

And here's a Classic II that I had cleaned up. I put 303 protected on it after the sun-brighting and I'm hoping it will help slow the re-yellowing.



If anyone is looking for a Performa 200 (this Classic II anded up being in better shape than my Performa 200 case, so I'm keeping this one), or an SE in the Charlotte, NC area, let me know. I'm about to have a couple available...