IMG_6208 (resized).JPGI was lucky enough to pick up an Attack From Mars while on vacation at New Year's, I was in the right place at the right time. The machine plays great and is "good from afar" as they say. It was in a guy's personal collection for 15+ years and is due for a good make-over. I got it with a NIB Mirco playfield as well so I will eventually be doing a full playfield swap. I'm not sure if that will be this winter or next but I am excited to try.
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Yay!

This thread will be a bit of a slow burn as I pick away at this project. I am dying to play the game so my restoration will probably be in bits and pieces until I get to the big stuff like the playfield. I will state up front that everthing I know about pinball machine maintenance has been from these forums supplemented by my impulsive nature so if anyone sees me doing something stupid, PLEASE TELL ME! I will probably be asking more questions along the way than providing any to others so I appreciate all the help in advance!

First problem, half the lighting is out in the backbox, culprit after a couple of days of messing around, some toasted connectors. It had me stumped because once I opened the circuit, I measured voltage at each critical point but when everything was connected, no current.

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I replaced the obviously burned J106 first, still no luck.

Then I took a good luck at J103 and realized the wire in position 5 that looks black in the photo below is actually supposed to be white. Mental note, never use black connector housings.

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Once that was replaced, all GI is now working.

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Next up, the backbox tub.

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Lots of busted sockets, duct tape, etc. Once I got the wiring off, it got a good cleaning in the bathtub but yikes, is it yellow.

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Thanks to some advice from Christopher at High_End_Pins, I picked up a can of flat white Krylon Fusion and gave it a whirl. It's -20C out this morning so the garage is out of the question but luckily I have a friend who happens to love pinball with a detached wood shop that accommodated my stinky spray paint (thanks Rob).

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I'm not much of a painter but it went on very easily in one coat.

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The final result blew me away - it looks perfect.

The translite is also pretty dingy (and signed by Brian Eddy and Doug Watson) so I think it deserves to be clean.

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I tried scrubbing gently with Dawn which got off most of the black dirt and then after testing Windex successfully on the edge, I used that for a final cleaning.
Now if my shipments from the US would hurry up I can get it reassembled.
Meanwhile I am replacing all the playfield GI with LEDs so need to remove all the ramps etc.

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I don't think anyone has been under here in awhile.

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Some Novus, elbow grease and I figured I'd try to underlit LED rings, and wow, they are bright. Hopefully not too overpowering once the ramps are back in. We'll see.

I couldn't resist buying a vibratory tumbler after hand-polishing the playfield support brackets and almost getting carpal tunnel.

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$70 Canadian at Princess Auto (our version of Harbour Freight). I figured I'd try it out on the sling mechanisms first so walnut shells and a healthy squirt of Novus 2 and let 'er rip for the night.

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I'm pretty happy with the result. I am just going to start working my way through all the mechanisms, add molex connectors to them, then clean, polish and reinstall.

Next stop, the martians. These guys were looking pretty dingy with black grunge in all their cracks and crevices and especially on their fingers.

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I tried scrubbing with Dawn dish soap and a toothbrush but it didn't seem to do much.

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Some pinside advice from LTG and a bowl of Polident denture cleaner did the trick and it was appropriately green.

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A final repaint of the teeth and eyes and we are sufficiently scary. I couldn't get all the black off the ends of their fingers and toes but I felt like I was risking tearing the rubber with my scrubbing so I threw in the towel before I regretted it.

After a couple of weeks of patient waiting, my packages from Marcos and Pinballlife finally arrived! Time to finish off the backbox lighting.

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I had several broken sockets to replace and bought this pretty cheap IDC insertion/removal tool from Marcos.

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After monkeying around a bit I figured out you just have to push it gently into the slot, the fingers grab the wire and the tool opens the little barbs that are retaining the wire. A little yank and out it comes. Flip it around and the other end inserts the wire pretty nicely. There were a couple of sections of wire that had to be replaced as the IDC connections had partially or completely severed the wire and once it was out, there was no re-using it.

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I probably should have done this first but I'm always in a rush to get started. One quick cycle on the top rack and it was squeaky clean.

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Thankfully I took a couple of photos before I removed the wiring so I could retrace what went where.

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The end result looks pretty good. I did the whole thing in warm white LEDs, I may try a couple of green LED's on the martians but otherwise I like the factory look.

I'm happy to say my first-ever package from Russia arrived!

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Thanks vbobrusev , I can't wait to see it installed.

Now to get rid of the old one. I thought it might take a bit of heat to soften the glue bit once I got a corner of the old decals up, they just peeled right off with minimal drama.

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I think a bit of sanding is in order to clean it up before the new decal.

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Now for paint. It's still minus-whatever celcius here so spray painting is out. It's probably blasphemy to brush paint on these forums but I figure this is going to be under a decal anyway so what the heck.

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I'm happy with that. Also happy that I get to use my polisher again on the support brackets and posts.

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I watched a couple of youtube videos on installing cabinet decals (

). I am going to do the entire cabinet at some point so I figure this is a good small scale test. I'm going with the dry method, mainly out of laziness.

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I trimmed the top edge of the decal backing so it was a very close fit with the panel before starting. I used a bondo scraper with a piece of felt taped to it to smooth it down as I went, no bubbles! Overall it went on beautifully and is a very close size match.

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While I'm at it, time to fix the broken drop target bank.

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And back in it all goes. Nice work vbobrusev , looks amazing!

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Next up, the ball eject and shooter - yuck. This has seen better days.

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Checking out the ball trough, there's a nasty bit of mushroomed metal at the edge, presumably from balls bouncing back and hitting it on the corner.

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A bit of filing and polish with the dremel (best wedding gift I ever got).

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That's better. The trough and solenoid needed a good cleaning and polishing, may as well have at it while it's out.

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That's more like it! Now to reassemble my first flipper mech after polishing all the bits. The switch is a bit tired looking but that will wait for another day. I'm dying to get this thing back together so I can play it.

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Now to get all the ramps and saucers back in, luckily took a few pictures before I took it apart. Minor concern when I found a left over broken ball guide and a replacement and I could not for the life of me figure out where it went.

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I finally figured out it belongs behind the 3-bank target gate and I had already reinstalled both sides so I concluded that the previous owner bought a pair of spares, replaced one and kept the broken one in his box of bits just to confuse me. A couple of hours of pulling saucer wires all over the place and tidying things up and it's ready to play!

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I have to say I was mildly shocked that everything worked right out of the gate except of course I forgot to load the balls back in before putting the glass on and my rebuilt flipper needed a good tightening. It plays great and the colour DMD looks awesome! I will be sticking to some cabinet repairs and backbox rehab for awhile so I can keep playing while I work.

Work has been progressing, haven't been posting so time to catch up with working on the backbox and back of the cabinet. It's pretty beaten up and looks like at some point a ratchet strap wore a big groove into the backbox when it was being transported. Corners are in rough shape too so they will need some rebuilding. Ultimately when I swap the playfield, I plan to put new decals on the cabinet as the one side is pretty badly faded but for now I will just get it repaired and do some painting to make it look presentable.
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I decided to try out the bondo - man this stuff is stinky indoors! I won't do that again inside.
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I used a very aggressive double-cut file to remove most of the bondo before sanding it flat. I have tried to find anyone in Ontario who can re-screen the backbox text but not luck so I think for now I will just mask the existing text (which is pretty rough looking) and paint over the repaired area and see how it looks.
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For the corners, I read Vid's guide and tried the aluminum dam trick to fix this one badly damaged corner.
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Learning from the Bondo high, I used 2-part epoxy for less smell. It worked ok although I should have angled the dam outwards a bit as the finished epoxy is a bit undersized. I will add some wood-repair epoxy putty to bring it up to size. It seems pretty easy to work with so I am using that on several of the less severe corners, it seems to harden quickly, no crazy smell and files/sands well.
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It's kind of like Mighty Putty but without the green to white technology, you just cut off a bit, knead it and apply it to tow an 18-wheeler.
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For the back, I'm just sanding the rails, filling the big dings and repainting.
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Since it's still winter, I'm just using a foam brush and applying very thin coats to try to avoid any brush marks. It worked ok, I'm pretty happy with the result. The bottom section of text was pretty rough so I ended up just painting over it too as it looked weird with 2 languages, a gap, then another. If anyone "knows a guy" in Ontario with that silk screen, send me a PM! The latch polished up nicely and I painted the metal cover of the cord as well as all the carriage bolt heads flat black.
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Now for painting the corners. I bought some water-mixable oil paints and used them successfully on my Diner. They are very easy to mix to match colour, clean up easily if you screw up but they take forever to dry. I used a heat gun this time which sped the process but was still days. I bought a 12/0 brush (whatever that means), it seemed right and made a fancy palette (felt a bit Bob Ross).
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The silk screened dots made it a bit of a challenge but once I got the hang of it, laid down a base of the right colour and then added black or coloured dots to suit, it came out pretty well. Lots of repair was required at the top and bottom and you can see the colour match isn't perfect but good enough to decal over later.
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If you look at the Alien's right eye, you can see the match isn't great (yet), needs to dry and I will have another go.

Now to tackle the legs. These are pretty rusty, particularly on the back sides.
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I had read about Evaporust on these forums but had never seen it in Canada. Lo' and behold they sell it at Princess Auto! One free shipment later (ok, I bought a couple of other things) and we're off to the races.
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I struggled with how to soak long skinny legs and came up with this idea to use a towel to create a dam in a large plastic tub. I draped a garbage bag over the whole thing and just put each leg in one at a time in the channel it created. Did it work? Holy cow did it ever!
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You know how sometimes you buy stuff and it just doesn't quite cut it, this is exactly the opposite. I was cautiously optimistic and was blown away by how well it works. No smell and it did an incredible job. When the legs came out they had some black spots where the rust was that were easily wiped off. I rinsed them, shined them up and they are spectacular. There are still pits in the chrome where the rust had started but I figure as long as I keep them dry, they should look great. Even the back sides came incredibly clean, not as shiny but smooth and tidy.

I have a hard time soldering with the playfield elevated and with all of the messing around I am doing with the mechanisms, I figured I would just add Molex connectors to everything with a coil and many of the switches that are attached to things that I will want to remove. It really didn't take long to do each one and then I numbered them all with the appropriate number from the solenoid or switch table for ease of troubleshooting. It has already been handy with taking flipper mechs, the aliens, etc on and off for cleaning and adjustment. I figure this will also be handy when it comes time to swap the playfield.
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Time for some pop bumper repair. Things were feeling pretty loose and I guess this is why.
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No two had the same combination of link plates, washers, nuts, whatever.
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The locknuts were very loose allowing all the link plates to rattle around and eat their way through the plungers and the legs on the ring assembly, thankfully didn't break the ends off. New bits all around and everything is nice and tight.

I decided to start prepping the new playfield by clearcoating the back of the playfield. I gave it a light sanding and then masked off all of the cutouts and inserts so that there was no chance of any clearcoat leaking through to the front while I was applying. I am using a brush and water-based varathane to keep the smell down in my basement.
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The masking took quite awhile but I know that if I skipped an insert, I would be sure to drip in some clear and regret it.
I did about 6 or 7 very thin coats to avoid brush marks and I'm pretty happy with the results, not shiny but nice and smooth.
I also added all of the T-nuts to top and bottom, I was paranoid to hammer them to I made up a pulling tool, see here for details:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/show-and-tell-your-diy-homemade-tools/page/16#post-6888472
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