Sittard
On 15 april 2010, the birthday of my 3 year old girl Julie, i was able to buy a Attack from Mars! This is machine is one of the most wanted machines in the pinballscene. Of course also one of the most expensive machines you can buy now a days.
This particular game was coming out a pub in Maastricht called the White Balloons! This game was standing there for over 10 years. Unfortunally the owner died. His wife was trying to hold up the pub, but doing it by herself was to much to ask.
Knowing this fact and knowing she was going to sell the pub i called the company wich provided the pinballmachines.I asked them if they would sell the pinballmachines.
Because of the bad condition of the game they would make an exception and sell it to me for a reasonable price.
On the 15th april i went to Jansen-Hahnraths to pick up the machine. I take a look at the machine and it was bad, very bad. Worser than it was in my memory. But i saw an other AFM standing there, wich was in better shape (only on the outside) and i asked if i couldn't take that one. After a lot of considering it was oké.
Yippie, a better machine, for the same price. I was lucky!
The playfield itself was severly damaged and there were a lot of failures on the CPU but after doing some real cleaning, thouching up, soldering etc etc. I had a good machine to play on, but the playfield wasn't that smooth like it suppossed to be. Nowadays there is a possibility to put in a whole new playfield (€ 700) and make an 15 old year machine as new. The question was of it's all worth, the trouble of buying, getting it, the hours it takes to swap (approx. 60 hours)etc. etc.But with a new playfield, i would have a collectorsitem. And because of several reasons i decided to try it, so swap that thing!!
Last october i got a opportunity to buy a new playfield for my Attack from Mars. Still a very hard decision, i can tell you. In the first place because of the difficulty of doing the swap, with zero experience, a lot you can brake a destroy and of course the $$$. But after a good look at some playfields with my friend Ralph Beckers i bought one and taked it home. I had no hurry to fixed it because of my good working machine, the severe winter and my shortage of storage place!
But on the 11th january 2011, the temperature was good enough to stay longer then 10 minutes in my garage and there was some room left, because i lent one machine to a good friend of my.
So the time was there to give it a try.
For three days in a row, i was working till midnight on the machine, marking, soldering en screwing. Cleaning all the metal parts, sanding them with different kind of grids, starting with 200,400, 600, 800. A lot of work if you know how many parts a pinballmachine have wich you have to sand. But not ones, not twice, but four times, arghhhh, boring!!! An do you know how many screws a pinball machine excists? And how many solderingpoints there are?? Me neither, but a LOT!!
Then in the weekend i had also a tournament in Ommen, up North in Holland! I arranged a hotel for that night, because of the very early start of the tournament Sunday.
On my way i stopped in Arnhem, because of his specialised store in pinballparts! I ordered new ramps for the Attack and some other stuff i needed to make my Attack a real beauty. Happy as i was to see my new ramps i was already driving to Ommen. Got some delicoius pizza and slept in a very nice hotel. A good preperation for a tournaments, unfortunately i forgot that three days of hard work on my pinballmachine wasn't that good, arghh muscle pain every where!! Hopefully a good nightsleep was the solution. Next day i was feeling much better. After a good qualfication, 1/4 finale, semi, it was time to play the finale. But after 8 hours playing pinball, the fatigue struck! I ended up second losing against Albert in the final, but what the heck, i wanted to go home, had my new parts with me and i knew that on monday i could work again on my machine, yes, it's more addictive than playing pinball itself.....
Despite of my first time i almost knew that the swap was good enough to make the game work again!
Working hard for the next days were paying off. Man ow Man, it was looking good!!
On friday january 21th, i asked some friends to come over to play my brand new game! It's a special moment when you turn on te switch because you hope thats the machine is still working and everything is the same as it was. And...................he DID!!! Whoehoeeee!!!
We played for a while and it was good, smoothely, perfect, nice, a real beauty, STUPEFIED, yeah!!
For the first time in my live i could play on a machine with a brand new playfield in it. Oh my god, it was all worth it! The money, pain, stress, sleepless nights etc. etc.!!
Few months ago i bought also new decalas for this machine, the last step to make my attack a real beauty!
The first of July 2013 i had vacation, my mind was thinking should i gonna put finally my new decals on my attack? And so it happened. I started to move all the connectors in the backbox. When it was empty, there was no way back! I put the playfield out and then it was a lot unscrewing. When i do it, i want do do it right, so everthing had to move. THe whole body i wanted to sand. The inside as well the outside. O man o man, what a work. Almost five days i was working on the cabinet. But finally after five days the was a smooth surface. I painted the inside black, the coindoor was completly rebuild en painted as new. I was gonna put the decals on with the dry method
Sharky
Inactive member
11y 13,250 5
Nice work,real beauty