This was really satisfying especially the part of separating the large piece of plastic. The thing I find often with the Wii is how many people to this day didn’t know it could play GameCube games
Yes that original model of Wii was incredible for its library, when you consider the backward compatibility for GameCube games and the availability of other games online.
There's a product out there called Citrus Hammer. There are a variety of similar products with the Citrus name. Not the cheap dollar store junk - the professional grade stuff. It's the only product that I've found that will clean/remove smoke and nicotine stains on plastic (and many other surfaces). It won't restore the color underneath, but it will remove both the stain and the stink. It's over $80 per gallon, but you dilute it down by as much as 10 to 1 and lasts a long time.
For anyone out of the loop about his mention of retro brightening I believe he is talking about peroxide products (cremes or 3-12% liquid, the higher the better). You put the items in a bag with the parts either submerged or lathered in a creme and then leave them outside for the sun's UV rays to help break up staining. Works amazingly well from what I've seen. Oxy clean also works from what I've read online in the past but haven't tried myself.
I use 12% food grade hydrogen peroxide gallon on more to cover the consoles inside a clear container. Wrap it on uv lights, cover with aluminum foil and leave it alone for a day or two. Comes out great. I've done a 360 console, dreamcasts
Nice restoration! One tip I'd like to share on cleaning sticky stuff on the circuit board (8:55) like pop or coffee is to use a cotton swab with a bit of water instead of IPA. IPA does not dissolve sticky stuff but water will. I do this and then hit it with IPA after.
Could try a retrobrighting technique for the smoke staining? It does require some degree of setup though. (Edit: lol I made it to the end of the video and now I'm curious to see what this new method is)
Have you considered switching to small makeup brushes (lip brush, eyeshadow brush, concealer brush, etc) instead of cotton swabs? They're softer than using a toothbrush, but I've found that they work better than swabs. They fit around electronic parts, even tiny parts on boards, far better than cotton swabs.They have a longer handle than the length of a swab too. Plus, they can be easily cleaned and re-used for a long time, instead of being used by the hundreds and thousands and being thrown away as waste.
Now that's one meticulously cleaned Wii! The Nintendo Wii was my first ever games console because I could never get on with all the controllers of the previous generation of consoles. I went on to own (what we called at the time) a Wii60 meaning I had a Nintendo Wii and an XBox 360 so had the (very) best of both worlds as the two systems complemented each other rather than being rivals. I was also the top poster on a UK Nintendo Will forum 😎😎
i love to work on the wii, and love to see it here in such detail. I have 15 Wii´s here waiting to be cleaned and repaired. Wii´s are dirt cheap and are perfect for repairvideos.
I bought a Wii but also had a Xbox 360 I spent more of my time on. I began my video gaming life with an atari 2600, one directional stick and a button. NES with a Dpad and 4 buttons was a leap for me. And I never stopped so the 360 and ps3 controllers weren’t anything odd. Now I’m back to pc gaming which naturally is a mouse with multiple buttons and a keyboard with more. But the Wii was a good marketing move for Nintendo to help them stay relevant at the time. It kept them in the console market.
My fat-a** thought the thumbnail was an end-slice from a cookies and cream ice cream cake or something. 😂 Regardless, looking forward to watching you restore the cake later today.
Honestly I wish more systems were like the Wii where the Clock Battery is in a easy to replace spot. So many are sadly buried in the console that they are pain to change.
11:08 that’s why I prefer to use a vacuum over a duster when I’m cleaning out mine or my mums pc I don’t have a work space so it’s done in the living room or my bedroom and I don’t want several months to a year or more of rubbish flying into the air to land on whatever’s in the room, I’ve adapted one of the attachments so I can manually adjust the suction level depending on how I hold the head nothing fancy just a bunch of small holes on both sides that all fit under a finger so I can make a 100% seal if I need to mainly for fans as they are a pain to clean.
Yo this video was EPIC! I was cheering for you how I imagine football fans cheer for their favorite teams as you began scrubbing 😂 nothing but good, competitive memories from the Wii for me. I hope everyone has a fantastic day!
An inexpensive sonic cleaner would save you an enormous amount of time. That’s what I use. It isn’t as fun as the old hands on cleaning though. Good job 👍
One time my parents threw out my nintendo wii. It was outside in the rain for like a day and somehow it still works to this day. I've had it for over 10 years now!
Yours is not that bad. The metal plate and disc drive was still good and shiny. I once opened a wii with FULL of corrosion inside. Not just that, but with broken heat sink cover as well! The metal plate can't be saved because it was eaten by the corrosion. It's everywhere, the inside of plastic housing has many corrosion stained that can't be clean with water. I just leave it there. Motherboard jangan cakap la penuh dengan karat di sekeliling ground plate. All the components on the voltage regulator side was corroded as well. The chip's leg' the smd cap was turn dark uhhhh very gross. It's like someone throw that wii in the pool, get it back and just leave it at the outside. Luckily it still works tho despite having a really bad luck not like the other wii. Almost 90% of spare parts I got from my the one and only broken spare wii.
Great video! I like the little touch you do of showing which bit you are using from your iFixit toolkit. That would be extremely helpful for someone who has never done this before. I think I know which new method you are talking about that uses a powdered chemical that is much easier to obtain, and is much more precise. I would be very interested to see what kind of results you get. I've also shied away from retrobrite, but this new technique looks much better. A lot of the systems I work on are from the 70's and 80's, and retrobrite can make a significant improvement.
Nothing quite says a fun night like playing Wii (specifically) and smoking a delicious refreshing cigarette, washing it down with a nourishing Cola, of course. I mean, clearly,, if there was ever system made to accommodate a habit that has one of my hands detained by an object burning at 1,400 degrees, at all times, while still giving me a complete enjoyable video gaming experience, it's clearly the Wii. Of all systems. Makes perfect sense. The previous owner of this console makes perfect sense. ;)
3:13 personally I always remove the ribbon cable because in my experience the tab is more fragile than the socket of the one you pulled first. Ones broke the tab😅
So if you do a lot of discoloured plastic it may be worth looking into the UV light plus peroxide solution that I’ve seen others use to clean up the yellowing caused by stuff like sunlight, I aren’t sure on the exacts that why I say look into it but it uses UV light plus chemicals to whiten the plastic back to urs original colour. It may also be worth looking into an ultrasonic cleaning bath to get into parts that are hard/impossible to reach well. I just thought ied mention it, you probably have already considered it but just in case you hadn’t now it’s something you can consider.
I finally remembered to buy that IPA dispenser that you use in your videos. It looks super easy and practical to use, much better than opening the jar and tipping it to get some on my qtip like I normally do. I've never seen another channel that uses one before.
Another great video on Restorish. I love the way you present the videos with voice overlays. Quality is always so well done! Definitely my favorite hardware cleaning channel
Just found you today, so I'm sorry that I'm late to the party. There are no repairs, just cleaning gross electronics. I've been looking for this format for months. Awesome video. You, Sir, have a new subscriber!
Can you please add a link to the description box for that magnetic pad you used for the screws? I cannot tell you how many screws my dad has lost while fixing things because he has arthritis in his hands and has lost some of his dexterity, so he tends to drop small things. I think he'd get a lot of use out of something like that.
Well, when you have one hand free when you're gaming with a wiimote, apparently there are many other things you free hand can do. I wouldn't know anything about one handed gaming though. But apparently you can chain smoke and spill a 2 liter bottle of root beer on your console.
Idk, when you first took it apart I thought it was a perfectly restored condition DK Oldies console ;) jokes aside I love seeing people restore electronics like this, even though there are hundreds of thousands of them it's good to restore as many of them as you can, you did a great job
Sub-brighting that console is going to be cool! I came across the same video long ago. Nice that you don't need peroxide to do it. I don't remember where I saw it. Maybe it was Perifractic/RetroRecipes.
thank you for giving up on using the magic eraser! Shiny plastics like the shell of the Wii or PS3 are completely ruined after someone uses it. In my opinion, slightly discolored and scratched is better than whatever you get with a magic eraser and I hate video game refurbished like GameStop that use it on everything
I might be too late to get an answer but i wanted to ask- do you often keep or sell the things you restore? Id honestly love to buy a Wii again someday but after seeing bugs and things in y'alls video im a lil scared to buy from a rando online LOL but i'd happily try my chance at buying something you guys' restored!
I work with TronicsFix, and we have started running a monthly auction on WhatNot. It is possible that a Wii might come up in there. Check out TronicsFix channel for more info 😊
I don't think it's liquid, I used to smoke and I took apart my old Gamecube a few years ago and sure enough, it was gross as heck inside and I can imagine thinking it was liquid if I didn't know I used to live in a house with a bunch of smokers. As soon as you pulled it apart I was like, "Yeah, I remember that." My guess is it's the tar that makes it sticky.
i noticed that when i clean buttons from controllers that i get a sort of white... not residue.. uh.. whats the word... removal? around the edges of my buttons. i am wondering if its because i scrub too hard with the toothbrush? or is it because my soap has degreaser in it? is it just clean enough now to expose worn down parts or the button or have i removed some sortof natural oil from the buttons? if anyone knows please lmk!
Oh muh Gosh what the fudge did this poor thing go through. I have 3 wiis, the current homebrewed one connected to my main Trinitron, and 2 in reserve all GC backwards compat.
14:30 it’s the tar it’s horrid to try and get rid of, no one in the house smokes but my brother ended up needing to stay with use for a year or more after his wife cheated on him and they lost the home they were in, trying to clean a pc that’s constantly pushing Smokey tar filled air though it was a pain, in the end I had to use a powder to stick to the tar so it would rub off the filters and it still didn’t get it all, I didn’t have any IPA and even if I did I was kinda iffy on using it on the thin plastic wire that makes up the filters as what good is a filter with big holes in it.
Yeah I guess not compared to some things, like a PS5. It’s a lot of changing back and forth between bits for the disassembly, and keeping track of what goes where.
This was really satisfying especially the part of separating the large piece of plastic. The thing I find often with the Wii is how many people to this day didn’t know it could play GameCube games
Yes that original model of Wii was incredible for its library, when you consider the backward compatibility for GameCube games and the availability of other games online.
3 of my favorite UA-camrs in one day,tronicsfix,restorish and Macho nacho! This poor Wii was in rough shape
I follow all 3 and I would also add Long Island Gaming, Retro Future and Voultar
There's a product out there called Citrus Hammer. There are a variety of similar products with the Citrus name. Not the cheap dollar store junk - the professional grade stuff. It's the only product that I've found that will clean/remove smoke and nicotine stains on plastic (and many other surfaces). It won't restore the color underneath, but it will remove both the stain and the stink. It's over $80 per gallon, but you dilute it down by as much as 10 to 1 and lasts a long time.
UV led strips might be a better substitute for natural sunlight, since you can position the lights exactly where you need them
Robert right after Steve, what a nice combo !
For anyone out of the loop about his mention of retro brightening I believe he is talking about peroxide products (cremes or 3-12% liquid, the higher the better). You put the items in a bag with the parts either submerged or lathered in a creme and then leave them outside for the sun's UV rays to help break up staining. Works amazingly well from what I've seen. Oxy clean also works from what I've read online in the past but haven't tried myself.
I use 12% food grade hydrogen peroxide gallon on more to cover the consoles inside a clear container. Wrap it on uv lights, cover with aluminum foil and leave it alone for a day or two. Comes out great. I've done a 360 console, dreamcasts
@@dethcrimsonx ya know I never thought of just using a uv light, now that's smart. Well played.
@LPcrazy_88 thanks. It's not permanent. Nothing is but it should last around 5 years. I'm 3 yrs in. Still looks new
Nice restoration! One tip I'd like to share on cleaning sticky stuff on the circuit board (8:55) like pop or coffee is to use a cotton swab with a bit of water instead of IPA. IPA does not dissolve sticky stuff but water will. I do this and then hit it with IPA after.
Great tip!
Could try a retrobrighting technique for the smoke staining? It does require some degree of setup though. (Edit: lol I made it to the end of the video and now I'm curious to see what this new method is)
Coming soon 🙂
Have you considered switching to small makeup brushes (lip brush, eyeshadow brush, concealer brush, etc) instead of cotton swabs? They're softer than using a toothbrush, but I've found that they work better than swabs. They fit around electronic parts, even tiny parts on boards, far better than cotton swabs.They have a longer handle than the length of a swab too. Plus, they can be easily cleaned and re-used for a long time, instead of being used by the hundreds and thousands and being thrown away as waste.
That is a brilliant idea! I will be trying this soon
@@RestorishOfficial Great! Can't wait to see more. I've only watched a few of your vids, but I will be subbing!
Instead of the magic eraser, try cleaning the rough spots on the plastic with polish like Scratch Doctor. I think you did a trial on a PS3 once.
There was a cockroach living in there. That gunk inside of the wii is probably raid bug spray.
Interesting idea!
Now that's one meticulously cleaned Wii! The Nintendo Wii was my first ever games console because I could never get on with all the controllers of the previous generation of consoles. I went on to own (what we called at the time) a Wii60 meaning I had a Nintendo Wii and an XBox 360 so had the (very) best of both worlds as the two systems complemented each other rather than being rivals. I was also the top poster on a UK Nintendo Will forum 😎😎
i love to work on the wii, and love to see it here in such detail. I have 15 Wii´s here waiting to be cleaned and repaired. Wii´s are dirt cheap and are perfect for repairvideos.
I bought a Wii but also had a Xbox 360 I spent more of my time on. I began my video gaming life with an atari 2600, one directional stick and a button. NES with a Dpad and 4 buttons was a leap for me. And I never stopped so the 360 and ps3 controllers weren’t anything odd.
Now I’m back to pc gaming which naturally is a mouse with multiple buttons and a keyboard with more.
But the Wii was a good marketing move for Nintendo to help them stay relevant at the time. It kept them in the console market.
My fat-a** thought the thumbnail was an end-slice from a cookies and cream ice cream cake or something. 😂 Regardless, looking forward to watching you restore the cake later today.
😂
Honestly I wish more systems were like the Wii where the Clock Battery is in a easy to replace spot. So many are sadly buried in the console that they are pain to change.
Some clock batteries are even soldered onto the board!
11:08 that’s why I prefer to use a vacuum over a duster when I’m cleaning out mine or my mums pc I don’t have a work space so it’s done in the living room or my bedroom and I don’t want several months to a year or more of rubbish flying into the air to land on whatever’s in the room, I’ve adapted one of the attachments so I can manually adjust the suction level depending on how I hold the head nothing fancy just a bunch of small holes on both sides that all fit under a finger so I can make a 100% seal if I need to mainly for fans as they are a pain to clean.
I really enjoy watching these kinds of things.
Yo this video was EPIC! I was cheering for you how I imagine football fans cheer for their favorite teams as you began scrubbing 😂 nothing but good, competitive memories from the Wii for me. I hope everyone has a fantastic day!
An inexpensive sonic cleaner would save you an enormous amount of time. That’s what I use. It isn’t as fun as the old hands on cleaning though. Good job 👍
15:01 That water was so dingy! On another note, this was the first system I could play that wasn’t just button mashing.
lol but you are so good at the button mashing games!
One time my parents threw out my nintendo wii. It was outside in the rain for like a day and somehow it still works to this day. I've had it for over 10 years now!
That is amazing!
As a former smoker, I know exactly what it smelled like
Yours is not that bad. The metal plate and disc drive was still good and shiny. I once opened a wii with FULL of corrosion inside. Not just that, but with broken heat sink cover as well! The metal plate can't be saved because it was eaten by the corrosion. It's everywhere, the inside of plastic housing has many corrosion stained that can't be clean with water. I just leave it there. Motherboard jangan cakap la penuh dengan karat di sekeliling ground plate. All the components on the voltage regulator side was corroded as well. The chip's leg' the smd cap was turn dark uhhhh very gross. It's like someone throw that wii in the pool, get it back and just leave it at the outside. Luckily it still works tho despite having a really bad luck not like the other wii. Almost 90% of spare parts I got from my the one and only broken spare wii.
Great video! I like the little touch you do of showing which bit you are using from your iFixit toolkit. That would be extremely helpful for someone who has never done this before. I think I know which new method you are talking about that uses a powdered chemical that is much easier to obtain, and is much more precise. I would be very interested to see what kind of results you get. I've also shied away from retrobrite, but this new technique looks much better. A lot of the systems I work on are from the 70's and 80's, and retrobrite can make a significant improvement.
Nothing quite says a fun night like playing Wii (specifically) and smoking a delicious refreshing cigarette, washing it down with a nourishing Cola, of course.
I mean, clearly,, if there was ever system made to accommodate a habit that has one of my hands detained by an object burning at 1,400 degrees, at all times, while still giving me a complete enjoyable video gaming experience, it's clearly the Wii.
Of all systems.
Makes perfect sense. The previous owner of this console makes perfect sense. ;)
3:13 personally I always remove the ribbon cable because in my experience the tab is more fragile than the socket of the one you pulled first. Ones broke the tab😅
Fantastic restoration. Two thumbs way up 👍👍
Many thanks!
What is with you and steve wanting to lick strange things on consoles? Honestly! 😂
Lol
Degreaser works wonders on cigarette smoke residue
So if you do a lot of discoloured plastic it may be worth looking into the UV light plus peroxide solution that I’ve seen others use to clean up the yellowing caused by stuff like sunlight, I aren’t sure on the exacts that why I say look into it but it uses UV light plus chemicals to whiten the plastic back to urs original colour.
It may also be worth looking into an ultrasonic cleaning bath to get into parts that are hard/impossible to reach well.
I just thought ied mention it, you probably have already considered it but just in case you hadn’t now it’s something you can consider.
I finally remembered to buy that IPA dispenser that you use in your videos. It looks super easy and practical to use, much better than opening the jar and tipping it to get some on my qtip like I normally do. I've never seen another channel that uses one before.
Use Salon Care 40 Volume Cream and it will Brighten That Hush Puppy Right up
Another great video on Restorish. I love the way you present the videos with voice overlays. Quality is always so well done! Definitely my favorite hardware cleaning channel
Thank you very much!
I was about to attempt this tomorrow. Now im terrified😮
Can’t believe that warranty sticker was stuck over a user serviceable access door for the button cell battery.
Just found you today, so I'm sorry that I'm late to the party. There are no repairs, just cleaning gross electronics. I've been looking for this format for months. Awesome video. You, Sir, have a new subscriber!
Welcome!
Can you please add a link to the description box for that magnetic pad you used for the screws? I cannot tell you how many screws my dad has lost while fixing things because he has arthritis in his hands and has lost some of his dexterity, so he tends to drop small things. I think he'd get a lot of use out of something like that.
Good call! I'll try to remember to add this to the description in the future
geni.us/gZ67O5Q
Well, when you have one hand free when you're gaming with a wiimote, apparently there are many other things you free hand can do.
I wouldn't know anything about one handed gaming though. But apparently you can chain smoke and spill a 2 liter bottle of root beer on your console.
lol
Idk, when you first took it apart I thought it was a perfectly restored condition DK Oldies console ;) jokes aside I love seeing people restore electronics like this, even though there are hundreds of thousands of them it's good to restore as many of them as you can, you did a great job
Sub-brighting that console is going to be cool! I came across the same video long ago. Nice that you don't need peroxide to do it. I don't remember where I saw it. Maybe it was Perifractic/RetroRecipes.
Beautiful
First
You have an unfair advantage, but we'll forgive you for making great content.
For the stickers on a Wii WD40 only takes a few minutes to remove it.
26:12 a toothbrush could have helped cleaning the gunk that’s still present in the slit here
Magic eraser works good for me.
Watching bc I have a dog that pissed all over my wii and he's almost going to meet the lord lol
😂 Oh no! Best of luck as you try cleaning it
You should deep clean a wii remote, I think that would be interesting.
thank you for giving up on using the magic eraser! Shiny plastics like the shell of the Wii or PS3 are completely ruined after someone uses it. In my opinion, slightly discolored and scratched is better than whatever you get with a magic eraser and I hate video game refurbished like GameStop that use it on everything
I would be very interested to see you clean some n64 carts. I have many that are quite used, and covered in sharpie.
Maybe Goof-Off/Goo Gone ?
I might be too late to get an answer but i wanted to ask- do you often keep or sell the things you restore? Id honestly love to buy a Wii again someday but after seeing bugs and things in y'alls video im a lil scared to buy from a rando online LOL but i'd happily try my chance at buying something you guys' restored!
I work with TronicsFix, and we have started running a monthly auction on WhatNot. It is possible that a Wii might come up in there. Check out TronicsFix channel for more info 😊
What size of thermal pads does the wii take
I don't think it's liquid, I used to smoke and I took apart my old Gamecube a few years ago and sure enough, it was gross as heck inside and I can imagine thinking it was liquid if I didn't know I used to live in a house with a bunch of smokers. As soon as you pulled it apart I was like, "Yeah, I remember that." My guess is it's the tar that makes it sticky.
Interesting
i noticed that when i clean buttons from controllers that i get a sort of white... not residue.. uh.. whats the word... removal? around the edges of my buttons. i am wondering if its because i scrub too hard with the toothbrush? or is it because my soap has degreaser in it? is it just clean enough now to expose worn down parts or the button or have i removed some sortof natural oil from the buttons? if anyone knows please lmk!
Oh muh Gosh what the fudge did this poor thing go through. I have 3 wiis, the current homebrewed one connected to my main Trinitron, and 2 in reserve all GC backwards compat.
Another great video a question not related but is there anyway to get yellowing off a cardboard game box?
Not that I know of. But I haven’t researched it. I am curious now.
14:30 it’s the tar it’s horrid to try and get rid of, no one in the house smokes but my brother ended up needing to stay with use for a year or more after his wife cheated on him and they lost the home they were in, trying to clean a pc that’s constantly pushing Smokey tar filled air though it was a pain, in the end I had to use a powder to stick to the tar so it would rub off the filters and it still didn’t get it all, I didn’t have any IPA and even if I did I was kinda iffy on using it on the thin plastic wire that makes up the filters as what good is a filter with big holes in it.
👍
That's alot of screws?
Yeah I guess not compared to some things, like a PS5. It’s a lot of changing back and forth between bits for the disassembly, and keeping track of what goes where.
Bro has to work on dkoldies
I would've just invested $20 on a replacement shell instead of cleaning that one.
that's roach dookie homie
the fan vent before... so gross!
I wouldn't mind if the lettering was removed I think it would have been worth it otherwise amazing restoration
Dont use the magic eraser. Will reck the finish. 😢
Is Dawn better than Simple Green?
I dunno. I might have to try a side by side comparison.
When a system is this gross, how's the smell?
Edit: Haha! You answered my question at the end 😅
Have a bunch of them I fixed. A shame that are not supported by Nintendo anymore.
the wii is almost better than a Raspberry pi. but pretty darn powerfull. and cheap.
Second
Why dawn soap 🧼 just wondering and is there any other soap 🧼 you recommend other than dawn soap 🧼.
Promo_SM