Too Far Gone? Rusted Out Special Edition Mountain Dew Xbox

Robert breaks out the elbow grease hand cleaning this previously submerged special edition Xbox before potentially kicking it over to Steve at TronicsFix.
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All music from epidemicsound.com
0:00 - intro
0:24 - "Fried Liver" - Dylan Sitts
2:36 - "Succulent Success" - Guustaav
4:39 - "Storm Trap" - Giants' Nest
8:31 - cleaning
20:16 - "FICEW" - Far Orange
24:13 - "Portraits" - Siarate
28:52 - test and outro
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[@spydr8521]

What's with the pin gloves ? Afraid to get dirty? Even after it's clean.

[@waleed9128]

Shocked that it actually powered on especially with some capacitors bulged and water damage issues.

[@1989SupraGuyFIN]

Quite surprising, indeed. I bet you, that there's no way more modern consoles would of powered on.

[@scottjarnagin348]

Right?!?! it powered on and I was like 😳"That's not possible!"

[@XanderRowlet]

That rust actually kinda looks like Dorito dust. Pretty good matchup with the Mountain Dew color! Jokes aside, great repair. These consoles can stand up to a lot of abuse!

[@spitt0110]

Yeah! The First MTN DEW DORITOS COLLAB

[@OniKuno181]

that clicking noise is a hard drive related issue, it's dead.

[@Iisakkiik]

Yeah and because the hard drives are locked to the motherboard, it probably needs a mod chip to be able to replace it.

[@daniellorenz5993]

Modchip or you can read the eeprom with a Raspberry Pi pico and lock a ​need drive.@@Iisakkiik

[@scottjarnagin348]

@@Iisakkiik the hard drive is locked to the motherboard..... that's just asinine of Microsoft.

[@nate.hellman]

This was a gnarly clean! I’m amazed at the results. That startup takes me back to the days of OG Halo, CoD, and Dead or Alive 2. 😅

[@KitDoctor]

25+ hours? My man, you deserve a medal, and also to be able to keep the Xbox afterwards. If I worked on something that long, I know I'd get too attached to it to let it go

[@kalicia84]

What an incredible amount of work. I don't think I've ever seen plastic that rusty. Great job! Also enjoyed the walk down your gaming memory lane.

[@bentinho]

I would not have had the patience for this lol. To answer your question, I was part of a traveling martial arts group around that time and locals who were part of the organization would host us at their homes. This particular guy lived in a Chicago apartment building and several of the apartments wired their Xboxes together to play Halo. I'm talking multiple floors of the building. It was very cool!

[@noahboat580]

That dude sounds like the best if he would LAN party the whole apartment building! Im curious how he did that

[@lightyagami3492]

​​@@noahboat580My guess is that the landlord was cool with it and set up a dedicated LAN network so it would work across multiple floors. Based if you ask me 🗿

[@Baldmaxx]

A product that works wonders on rust removal on any surface is called CLR (calcium-lime-rust) remover. I had a similar project like this, and it saved me hours of work. The only drawback is that it's not environmentally friendly. Awesome video, as always!

[@gamehulk]

I've used CLR before, it does remove rust like a champ, but also all the zinc plating too, so I regret using it on one of my projects because all the parts lost their protective coating when all I had to do was scrape off the rust with a wire wheel or something. Maybe just some spot cleaning with CLR would do the trick instead of an overnight soak like I did :P

[@jonathanmartin3375]

Props to you for putting in all those hours of cleaning

[@darthv72]

the clicking is the hard drive trying to spin up. Its dead and needs replacing. Good job cleaning it up though.

[@garnerfishy]

It’s not as simple as you’d think… Microsoft locked the drives

[@SomeAngryGuy1997]

​@@garnerfishy**laughs in modchips**

[@Iisakkiik]

​@@garnerfishyinstalling a mod chip isn't actually all too hard.

[@FishDS9]

Robert, thank you for enduring this time suck of an X-Box. Thank you for the time you spent and all of the elbow grease you expended. Maybe you could open it back up and put some buggies in there for Steve?

[@LizActually]

26:25 I freakin’ loved playing as Talim!

[@RestorishOfficial]

You loved playing as her a lot more than I loved playing against you playing as her :)

[@FrozR2024]

Those original Xbox consoles are built like tanks. The error message you are getting is most likely a hard drive error. Either it's totally dead or the files are messed up on it. The best way to fix it now is to mod chip it and change the hard drive, which is what I have done to mine. In fact, I modded it to take a 2TB solid state drive and installed all the emulation and Xbox games on it.

[@SomeDudeDan]

Great video! By the way, you can soak rust stained plastics too in vinegar (or citric acid), it makes it easier to remove the stains. About the LAN parties; we still get together sometimes for a few days to play Halo on Xboxes, and also play a bunch of other PC games over LAN, it is so much fun compared to today’s matchmaking systems.

[@cosmos8569]

Was very referencing to watch the whole process that rust looked like red clay mud, lot of time you put in but great end result Tronics fix put me on to you awesome job!!!

[@noahboat580]

Besides maybe those silent asmr restoration channels, i never seen a console this rusted and needing a cleaning, deservably so with it being that mountain dew xbox. Great restoration, inspiring even.

[@paulrippcord506]

The Original Xbox was the first console I ever bought with my own money, I was the perfect age when it came out and when I was 15 I distinctly remember mowing lawns, babysitting and power washing trucks at my uncle’s truck stop until I was able afford one just in time for Halo 2. Had some great times: KotOR, DOA3, Burnout 3, True Crime LA, Crimson Skies, and the first time I ever broke a controller was playing Ninja Gaiden.

[@niceatpingpong]

When I was growing up, my best friend lived directly across the street from me and we both had rooms that faced each other, so we got this linksys wireless link cable that had a 100 ft range. We were into modding xboxes and there was this hacked halo 2 multiplayer map pack that was released to the hacking scene and we would play that for hours. We would put our wireless modules in our windows and it was just over 90 feet from point-to-point so the experience was flawless. We would go over to each other's house every day after school and each night we would be called back to our houses for dinner, then after dinner we would call each other and play video games until like 11pm. It was a blast.

[@mopsandmuscles7855]

As someone with a background in computer repair, I’m amazed this even powered up 😂

[@fox-vengoss5849]

Thanks Robert for sharing this very long project, i would be happy of my work if i was you, so i hope you do :)

[@anthonyshiels9273]

A proprietary rust remover such as Evaporust or MC-51 works well for dealing with stubborn deposits.

[@davidgoodwin4666]

Fantastic video bro! The video must have taken a bunch of work on top of the clean up job so thanks for making it!

[@bluelight456]

Impressive, when I saw that thing, I thought there was no shot it would turn on. Looks good too, great job restoring a beautiful limited edition.

[@jennyf-eg5gl]

Gee... did this thing sit on the bottom of the lake or something?! Mess. Besides, that's a great job! I am impressed with how much rust you got off the Xbox.

[@TranceCowboy]

Well done sir. That was quite the marathon of rust. That did not look easy. Lol. I always look forward to your cleaning vids, they always put me in such a relaxed mood, and once again you did not disappoint. 😀

[@Elvenhunter1]

Definitely can recommend having a decent size ultrasonic cleaner. Might be a good investment with what this thing looked like. It gets rid of some very VERY hard to clean stuff. I've worked with electronics repair/refurbishment and that thing saved us a lot of time more often than not

[@nitrax8629]

Oh my god... the fact that out of all things to be broken it's the practically unscathed from rust hard drive that didn't work is incredible. This is 100% salvageable by Steve, will need a hardmod to get it running again but it's so close to working!

[@railpao]

You might want to borrow Steve's ultrasonic cleaner to help you on projects like this one, in the future. Still, I'm impressed it powered on at the end. And more so by the amount of rust you managed to removed on the motherboard and psu.

[@steelcurtain187]

Wow this was a satisfying one. Can’t believe the amount of work involved

[@shuggiemcg1]

I gotta say it even turning on is amazing lol great job buddy! Looking forward to steves video on it!

[@Raven-fu1zz]

Evaporust is definitely my go to for rust, it puts a protective layer on where the rust was so it doesn't rust again, also for the plastics vinegar is pretty ok for some things just not all, also heard a run through the dishwasher with detergent that has an anti rust helps too but I've never done it

[@sak7785]

Honestly impressed that you were even able to get it as clean as you did.

[@jonscouts]

What a repair challenge! You sure found a good one :)

[@ciaduck]

"Gun Cleaning Swabs" have a very sturdy stick, if you need something stiffer than a Q-Tip, they work very well.

[@nickolaswilcox425]

rust like that its surprising how often it doesnt actually touch the traces to any real degree, but that hard drive is toast, thats what error 07 is, hard drive fault, a relatively easy fix nowadays

[@brentreynolds5381]

Super fun vid. Great job!

[@realdragonrude]

I've repaired some crusty original xbox consoles and this by far is the worst I don't think i've ever seen a motherboard that looks like a mix of rust and corrosion

[@chinois335]

Next time you have a project that requires rust removal, try STARBRITE MARINE RUST REMOVAL. It's an incredible product that should definitely help.

[@Marlenaanne]

Amazing job! I have been really enjoying your videos. Your pacing is great, I can really relax but still learn a lot while watching this or playing it in the background. I especially appreciate your attention to detail like showing the label of what bit you are using and when you change them out. I am interested in what different solutions you used during the cleaning. I know I cant use higher % IPAs on the outside plastic because it kind of ruined the sheen on some of my earlier projects. Keep up the great work!

[@timothystevenhoward]

the HALO parties were awesome. I remember one at my friends condo in Detroit we had 2 or 3 CRT hooked up I can't remember if we had more than 2 xbox at once. that was 21 years ago

[@BushyMc_muffin]

a product i highly recommend is: Bar Keepers Friend multi surface cleaner , works on everything just dont use it on anything with a gloss finish,

[@8bitnation419]

Whoa! such amazing restoration. Sad to see such a rare edition of this Xbox in that state it looks unreal. But an Ultrasonic cleaner would have speeded up the process and would have cleaned up those motherboard and the pcb's better also would like to see a removal of that clock cap and some new thermal paste on both the CPU and the GPU, the GPU heatsink will need to be heated up to be removed. Also the metal plates could have benefited from a respray to restore there colours. As for getting the console working some new capacitors, new HDD along with 80 Wire IDE Cables and a TSOP Mod/Modchip would likely have got it working again.

[@bastianwright3402]

For that bottom piece i probably wouldve tried some diluted oven cleaner. Helped me get some stubborn stains off of old antiques.

[@quelthelass3716]

Ive done it in the past with rust on the plastics, i used a drill on the 4th speed, with a brush used for leather and it got really clean

[@CadeCahoon]

Had multiple halo parties. We had cat cable going everywhere. A Tv in four different rooms. It was an amazing time.

[@Shinquapin]

I can't believe that thing powered up and output video lol. I would've taken the time to clean the shell, but the mobo and power supply looked toasted. I definitely saw some bulging capacitors on the mobo, which is very common for these consoles. That might be all that needs replaced. We used to have halo lan parties all the time in the early-mid 2000's, sometimes with the full 16 people. I actually had a small xbox lan for the first time in a while last weekend playing the original star wars battlefront 2, and it was a good blast to the past. Awesome video, and hopefully Steve can fix it! I bet he'll suspect capacitors as the problem straight away, since it's so common with these, and some are visibly bulging already.

[@DrRandom.]

It looked like it was sitting in the middle of a sandstorm on mars or something with all of that red dust!

[@andrewarmstrong5266]

This is colour way is absolutely stunning but the rust damage inside the empty shell is heart retching, if this was mine and I found in that state I’d be mourning lol

[@jerryjohnson4618]

Wow 😮😮

[@heejinscloud]

I always loved the original xbox, I had one when I was younger just sitting in the corner of my sister dresser amongst our clothes (they were everywhere as I was very messy as a kid) but I have no clue where it is right now. one of the three probably happened: my mom sold it or threw it away or my dad still has it since he kept all the toys my siblings and I had as kids and also hoping he still has my childhood Gameboy advance that I miss so much.

[@Manhattan_]

Can't wait for the next installment of this beautiful XBOX!

[@LariviereChris]

What a job!!! Insane result

[@jacober8214]

WOW! That poor poor xbox! fantastic work.

[@MikesArcadeMonitorRepair]

Multiple caps on that motherboard are bulging and one of them looks like it’s actually opened up. I would have at least replaced those before powering it up. But that being said, great job on cleaning it up.

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

For the tamper proof sticker, you should've removed all of it and placed it into the proper adhesive backing to be glued at a later time.

[@nintendope1]

You should add one of those cheap electric toothbrushes you find at the grocery store to your arsenal. I think it's called Spin brush. The top head spins and the bottom head oscillates. Great video by the way.

[@SiCVoltage]

You did it sir. Omg that’s amazing work

[@Hustlexz]

Same here man. I’m a few years behind but I lived in a rural area where broadband internet wasn’t an option. I was able to play games like Quake 3 and CS pre-source online on my 56k but eventually Valve changed the net code on CS and my ping went to 500ms and that was it for me I gave up on gaming for years. Totally missed out on the OG Xbox and halo days. 😢

[@hmello3250]

you should get an ultrassonic cleaner.

[@Blessed-whiff81onPSN]

Probably inside Mountain Dew that’s where it was

[@alexlefevre3555]

What Steve didn't tell you was this was of course his sauna Xbox. Seriously, though, the metal frames in these like to rust even when not used in a 491% relative humidity environment. I would have restored the shell and replaced everything else... I salute your effort good sir.

[@Blessed-whiff81onPSN]

The owner probably misunderstood and put in Mountain Dew

[@wolfman210]

I was a Nintendo and PlayStation kid growing up, so my first Xbox experience was when I got a 360 S to replace my YLOD'd 40 GB fat PS3.

[@ankor1066]

Just a suggestion Whink's Rust Stain remover also helps get rid of rust stains. But overall great vid!

[@niceatpingpong]

I saw a video recently on evaporust and I think that would be good here because it's PH neutral (ish) so it attacks the rust, but not the base metal. I forget the channel, but the guy also makes his own version for pretty cheap and for someone like you who deals with a lot of rusty stuff, it may be good to look into. EDIT: also, that front bezel on the disk drive that says XBOX comes off and I bet there's some schmoo under that as well, so it may be good to take that off next time, especially since I could see the potential for some rust to become dislodged and end up in the laser.

[@iamnotbritish]

as i was watching your effords into cleaning the bottom case by hand, i couldn't help but wonder how effective could a drill with the brush attachment be? i always see them in car deepcleaning videos when a person is working on carpets and seats, et cetera, that's where i got the idea from.

[@ImPurum]

Jeez mate. It's difficult to see a beautiful collectors edition in this terrible condition.

[@Mareka6969]

That motherboard is the perfect candidate for a MakeMhz Kit.

[@user-bh1tj8df3l]

I translated the description title into my native language and it looks very decent. Of course, I can't expose here the "nice words" that when receiving that kind of job would accompany it in a low voice... lol.

[@FaddyMatty]

Halo lan parties were the freaking goat. Not sure if you would be willing to use them but a rotary tool with some brushes would of sped up your cleaning process. There is also a aerosol called liquimoly electronic spray that works good for cleaning rust and corrosion off plastic and can be used on pcbs.

[@sir_christmas_leopold_duckson]

You're more dedicated than I am. I'd have bought one off ebay, swapped the shells and called it a day.

[@BATMAN-nb6nc]

Robert, that was a great one. Got my Halo Xbox to play Morrowind.

[@Randomii666]

It's incredible that in a console which looked like that, the only apparent issue is a dead hard drive.... which most likely died from drop damage

[@RileySkye100]

I would definitely recommend an ultrasonic cleaner for motherboards in that dirty condition in the future. I have seen pretty good results that save a lot of effort.

[@Azoic101]

That's insane,was not expecting the xbox to even boot. For the most the hdd is dead but a simple modchip and a new hdd should get her working again.

[@gregleach4956]

Most definitely had halo parties with the boys! Both Xbox and 360!

[@CaelThunderwing]

07 indicates a Hard Drive Issue. specifically the console detected a drive but the drive isnt responding back its unlocked/ready. most likely SOME water seep'd in and either completly F*d the spindle motor or RIP those platters. w/o a prior existing EEPROM Dump from when this was working, your going to haveto manually dump it OR tsop flash to get around this. the OG Xbox w/o modding, will not boot from an -at power on- unlocked hard drive.

[@thazsar]

What a great restore!!!

[@mattwestling164]

That’s not rust, it’s just Cheeto dust. Gotta have some good snackage with your Dew while gaming.

[@RestorishOfficial]

Lol

[@Earthgrand234]

I'm wondering if a degreaser would have gotten that caked-on rust from the plastic pieces off. Also for something like this I wonder if a ultrasonic cleaner would have been good to use.

[@drivervito3539]

Nice work 👍

[@scottjarnagin348]

9:24 - Oh man! I hope your Tetanus shot is up to date!

[@keithgoldston2859]

Without looking wasn't 07 a hdd error lol ahhh the good days of working on these things

[@Deathvalley1980]

Well done

[@spitt0110]

I actually got to experience a halo party, i Didn't have an xbox but i had controllers. And i remember we ran the cords through the floor so there was 2 teams upstairs and 2 in the basement

[@dreamcazman]

Good job, I'm amazed it sorta worked, probably a dead HDD and capacitors required. I understand you needed to clean everything for the channel but personally if it was my system, I would've just cleaned the outer plastic case and replaced the guts. Too much time and effort involved when an Xbox can be bought for less than $50.

[@uzolee]

Well done! I think WD40 removes rust, then with a degreaser cleans that off too.

[@therealkarl88UF6BRXQ]

Good job ! You will need a modchip to be able to replace the faulty hard drive

[@donalddowning4830]

i useto do land partys all the time even did it with the 360 with halo 3

[@frankurmom8741]

This is my first working xbox. I just got it like 2 days before this video came out

[@12345.......]

Ahhhh, I see im not the only person to store my Xbox at the bottom of my salt water dish tank

[@Th3Fly1ngCow]

Yep my neighbor hood group would always LAN halo 2 and 3 man good times

[@RedneckOgre9000]

Some wannabe mobster made that poor innocent XBox sleep with the fishes.

[@pokemaniacalex8031]

Honestly, this Xbox seems like all it needs after that extensive cleaning is to be recapped, and the hard drive replaced. The weird sounds, the error screen, and the fact this thing even works to the point it gets to that screen all point to the main failing being the hard drive. Thos platters must be rusted to hell almost as bad as the bottom metal cage. Steve should be able to fix this no problem. He'll also want to replace the thermal paste and clock battery, but that pretty much goes without saying, honestly.

[@bryanvandyke]

People asked me to come over, because I had all the ethernet cords and switch. I made all the ethernet cables by hand at like 12\13. We had this 8 port 1gb switch that my fathers company had worked on. I made LAN parties happen haha. I miss the hell out of the halo 1 and halo 2 xbox lan parties.

[@PAUL-hf3ex]

an alltrasonic cleaner would be great esp.........for the main board

[@corybenway6562]

After opening it. I would have considered a donor console. Clean the green case and replace all the internals. 25+ hours or getting a used console for $40-50.... Unless the Mt dew edition had a bigger HD or boot screen.

[@RidinWithMyLocsOn]

well done!

[@SqualidsargeStudios]

A thing that worries me is the “unremoval” of the clock cap, and its ability to corrode traces when it leaks ant it will have leaked by no