Okay… Fastforward several days to the undercoated backbox.
I didn’t get any pics of the repairing/wood filling stages, but basically I paint stripped the and sanded the backbox with 80 grit sandpaper before filling all of the damaged bits. I then sanded the car bog back smooth, again with 80 grit, and the polyfilla I used 120 grit, then refilling any bits I missed and sanding back again. After that I sanded the whole thing down with 120 grit paper, then 240 grit and then finally 320, before, dusting it off and giving it several coats if the Dulux undercoat.
After that had dried (next day) I sanded the undercoat with 320 grit sandpaper, then with 400 grit before spraying on the basecoat. I used an off white for the basecoat, as it matched the original hue pretty well and I think an off/antique white looks much better on these older games than a real bright white. 2nd pic shows the results.
The 3rd pic shows the paint I used, along with the silver/grey webbing paint that I used to recreate the webbing effect that this game had on it. The game actually had webbing AND dots on it, originally I wasn’t game to use the webbing paint and just added the silver dot pattern using the old toothbrush trick.. dipping the brush into the paint, holding the brush a foot or two from the cabinet and flicking the bristles with a icy pole stick or piece of plastic etc ( I ALWAYS test this first onto cardboard before going anywhere NEAR a newly painted cabinet!!).
Then I remembered I had the webbing paint that id bought years ago to do MIBS, but wasn’t game to use it as it looked too thick when I tried it onto cardboard. Well after some experimenting, I found the best way to spray it on was hit the spray nozzle with short, sharp hits with the heel of my hand, while standing back about a metre away from the cab. This allowed me to get the webbing on without being too heavy or thick.