Flame on!

I recently started cleaning, polishing and waxing all of my pinball machines. Most of it went just fine, but when it came to my plastic ramps I didn't dare cleaning them in the 'best' way: flame polishing.

As I searched for information on the internet, I came across several guides. One of the best guides I found was the one of flippers.be (Thanks Aeneas!)

This guide comforted me in such a way that I dared to try it myself.

After finding a useful flame 'tool' (one of my wife's kitchen tools) I started the flame polishing very carefully.

After a few passes (and some cooling down in between the passes) the ramp started to get crystal clear. I was amazed how easy this can be done when having the right information.

As per usual, I forgot to take a good 'before' picture, but I will post my best of that ;)

Before

After :)

Again, it's time

to get Scared Stiff of course, as spoken of before.

The machine is in. I decided to go for a machine that was pretty dirty, but in good shape. Maintenance was needed for sure, but that's no problem at all.

I have cleaned the machine already, and replaced several switches. Also, I put some wax on the playfield for some nice vibrant colors, a shine and extra protection.

The game plays very good, and only a few minor adjustments have to be made.

Only when I have completely finished the work on the machine I will make some pictures and place them here.

Planning = horror

It's hard to plan, at least right now it is. Many factors apply, and finding a good match seems to be very difficult.

Next week I will pick up the Scared Stiff machine, if all works out, and I hope to be able to clean and tune it soon afterwards.

Bear with me, and come back next week for an update :)

Tuning

As I got more comfortable to tune my machines, I ordered some more parts to revise the flipper parts on 2 more machines.

Yesterday I have replaced the parts on the Medieval Madness machine, and tomorrow I will replace parts on the Lord of the Rings machine.

The game(s) play a lot smoother / faster after the tuning :)

I will probably revise the flippers on the Pirates of the Caribbean machine too, but they seem to be ok right now.

Friendly fixes

Yesterday a good friend visited, who actually likes pinball as much as I do. He does not only like playing, but also fixing and adjusting the machines together with me.

Enjoying our evening, we fine-tuned my machines, fixed some problems and played some games afterwards.

It's really great to find someone who cares about the machine (how it plays, how it feels) living close enough to do this regularly :)

Soon we will try to find a nice way to film some pinball gameplay, to show my machines in action. The video's will be posted here as soon as we got some worthy material.

Tommy Gun

What a strange message title.. But anyway, if you pronounce it in a certain way, it would sound like: Tommy gone..

Yesterday, the Tommy pinball machine was picked up. A new owner will hopefully be as happy with this machine as I have always been.

Tommy was the first machine that was picked up by my wife and me together, so it has some extra value added for us.

Bye Tommy, be a good boy...

No more nightmares...

Today, the nightmares of Freddy have stopped haunting my game-room. The Nightmare on Elmstreet pinball machine left the room, picked up by a nice girl from Germany.

I'm glad to see that she is (as I am) a big fan of the movie series, so the machine will go to a safe place :)

The pickup went as good as it ever gets: a nice big car and lots of tools were brought to place the pinball safely for
transport.

This week (Tuesday) my Tommy will be picked up, decreasing the number of pinballs in my collection to 5. Soon I
will buy a Scared Stiff machine, and I will try to keep the collection in this state :)

Decisions decisions

The plan of selling the Nightmare on Elmstreet machine was already there. At first this was started, to create some more space and as some kind of 'cash counter' for the Medieval Madness purchase.

This plan changed into leaving the machine, and putting it in the game-room. (as it was placed upstairs in our house) The machine is very nice and I love the theme and game of it, but I have (once again) been seduced by a mistress...

To even things up in cash, I am going to put up my Tommy pinball machine for sale too.
That's right, it really hit me, see?

The mistress I'm talking about is the mistress of the dark her self, Elvira.
She never left my (and many others') heart. I'm talking about a good old favorite : Scared Stiff.

Soon I will go try to find a nice Scared Stiff machine. The machine will be revised as much as possible afterwards, and mods will be placed to spice up the machine to it's fullest.

Estimated time of purchace of the machine: September / October 2011 :)

A day for odd jobs * UPDATED 04-05-2011 *

Today, I'm going to take care of some small problems existing in my machines being:

- Freddy's 'boiler room' doesn't come up all the way, resulting in a failure of the 'top' optical switch
- Freddy's glove (flipper) needs some fixing, today I'll remove the glove, and take a look on how to fix it
(best would be to replace the plastic blades, for metal blades I guess)
Change levelers on Nightmare on Elmstreet machine
- Lord of the Rings has trouble with the switch matrix probably, when pushing the start button, the right
slingshot fires too :)
- Lord of the Rings left flipper coil stopped working, due to a (probably) transistor failure
- Medieval Madness needs the castle wall to be placed
- A switch in Medieval Madness needs adjusting



Let's hope for a successful day :)

** colors indicate the status of the items. (Green = done, Orange = Work in Progress, Red = Not started) **

Pre-starting a competition

Last week would at first be the start of the Local Pinball Competition, but unfortunately one member couldn't show up.
The rest of us decided to just make sort of a pre-start, by playing some friendly games at my gameroom.

Being with 4 people, we played every machine together, and to make it a little competitive, all players (except for me) played for the NFV Ranking. (you can read more about it here in dutch)

It was a really enjoyable night, which took us quite some time to play through all the machines. (oh my what a pity ;))

A new date will be set for the real Kick-Off, and I will post scores here so if you're interested, check it out soon!

Some Medieval pictures

Here are some pictures my latest pinball machine, some cleaning still needs to be done, but that will take some more time :)

Is this the end?

Yesterday was one of those days, to remember. A day like no other, making a great change for me and the pinball hobby..
I was really wondering: Is this the end? Can it be?

I just still can't believe it, it suddenly is going all so fast. Yesterday started pretty early for us at home. Our daughter was up early, and we were dressed and good to go around 08:30 am. This day changed a part of me, eventually almost making me cry..

What is happening? What is this change?

Well.. me and my wife went for a drive some place north in the Netherlands. We bought the Star Wars Episode 1 playfield there earlier and we planned to meet the same person again.

This time it was a different setting. Arriving at the planned time, we were invited in for a drink, had a chat and then went for business.. This person had a storage room, and was cleaning up his collection. This made me think.. made me think a LOT..

At first my wife thought I was crazy (which I am for sure ;)) but in this case, oh well, it would be worth it for me.

After a long talk, we drove home. You can say I was quite satisfied when we arrived at home.

I'm guessing, this is not the end, but with this I have achieved one of the hobby goals in my life.

Well.. why this vague story, and what did you do / achieve???

No words are needed... just this link

:)

(pics will follow ASAP)

Moving on down

Yesterday me and my buddy Frank moved the Nightmare on Elmstreet pinball machine from my 2nd floor, down to the 1st, and into the gameroom.

After moving it up, I allready knew what kind of a trip it would be. Luckily, I kept my documentation of the cabling so I could disconnect everything directly without worries.

After disassembling, the trip downstairs started... Even without playfield and backbox, the cabinet is pretty heavy, and with no grip at all I was GLAD that I was wearing safety boots.

We slowly went downstairs, stumbled once in a while, but we got there in one piece!

Transporting it to the gameroom was a piece of cake! A bit of the assembling has been done (playfield is inserted in the cabinet again), this weekend I will put it back together completely.

With this move the gap of the Revenge from Mars has directly been filled, and a bit more room is created upstairs again. :)

No more revenge for me

Easy to see in the title, yesterday I sold my Revenge from Mars pinball machine, including the Star Wars Episode 1 playfield and the NuCore system.

It was a great system, and as I said I was really happy with my collection, but hey there's always room for change with me :)

The empty spot will be filled with my Nightmare on Elmstreet machine for now, being upstairs in my home. This way I will have some extra space in the room where it's standing now, and the gameroom will be filled at it's maximum ;)

More info to come soon!

And they're in!

Yesterday I finished placing the mods into the Pirates pinball machine, and today I shot some pictures and a video of them.

Next to the flippers, below the slingshots a cannon is placed on to a 'wooden' underground on each side of the machine.
Just at the end of the left ramp, is a set of barrels in some sand and on the shooter lane a large cannon is placed.

Next I placed a mod into the ship. The mod contains a set of LED's that have been placed into the cannon holes of the ship. Every time you hit the ship, the cannons will 'fire' giving a great effect!

I still have a sticker with some text that needs to be placed on the left ramp, but I will need to remove the ramp for it. I will do this soon, in combination with some cleaning of the playfield.

I'm really glad I placed the mods, take a look and see for yourself :)

Cannon on the right

Cannon on the left

The barrels

Cannon in the shooter lane


Ship with firing cannons

Mods are in, now to place it all :)

At the moment the news rate isn't that high. Of course my time is a bit more scarce these days, but the other cause of this is that my collection is really stable at the moment. (Who would have thought that would ever happen ;))

Well, the news for now :

The mods are all in, most of them are easy to place items, except for the ship lighting mod.

I don't have much time at the moment so it will take a while before I can place them all, but when done you will see it all for yourself :)

Planned mods *Update*

I'm thinking of ordering some very nice mods for my Pirates of the Caribbean machine, to make it even prettier.

The mods are coming from a site called BackAlleyCreations.com, so if you're interested check them out. When I have them, and have placed them, I will post some pictures ofcourse :)

*Update*

Order has been placed, some nice models to spice up the machine, and a LED mod for the pirate ship (to light the cannons)! Pictures will be posted after installing the mods!

Update

Most people around me already know about this update, but since my last post is from August, an update fits nice here.

On December 4th, my wife and I became proud parents, of our daughter Elodie :) The new pinball wizard is in good health,
and all goes well around here, just a bit less time to spend with the pinball machines nowadays ;)

Still my hobby will continue as normal as possible, and I've been repairing some small issues of the Revenge from Mars machine lately. My NuCore setup was updated to the latest 2.0 version, making it possible to use the tournament option online!
Furthermore, some switches needed some adjusting, and a diode needed to be soldered at the 1-bank drop target to make it work like a charm again.

I would like to send my thanks to BigGuysPinball for making such a great effort to build NuCore, and maintaining it like you do, just amazing!

See you next update!

Took me a long trip to realize...

It's been many many times.. Every time I bought a pinball machine, one other name came up too.. Strangely enough I never bought the machine.

I'm talking about Indiana Jones: the Pinball Adventure by Williams (1993). Because I finally decided I wanted to go and buy the machine, I had to sacrifice another. Being honest with myself, resulted in choosing the latest pinball machine I had acquired : Spiderman. (WHAT, you just bought it!!?.. I know I know.. ;))

While selling Spidey, I searched for the Indy pinball machine. Eventually, I found one, being really nice.. After mailing a while with the seller (being a great help / contact in this) we came to a 'deal', and I could prepare myself to pick it up. Preparation was REALLY needed as the machine had to be picked up in the east of Germany, being a whopping 470 km drive (one way trip)...

After thinking how to handle this, a good friend 'accepted' to join me on this roadtrip. (Thanks SO much Frank)
On Sunday 1st of August we went for a drive.. a LONG drive.. We left at 7 am, expecting some traffic jams due to the holidays. A 'few' hours later we arrived at our destination. The machine was in a basement, with stairs not built to move a pinball machine, as a matter of fact I'm amazed that we made it up with the pinball (weighing 264 lbs <-> 120 kg).

We placed the machine into the car and after handling everything else, we drove back, finally arriving home at 9:30 pm... We dragged the machine into the gameroom, and called it a day..

Pictures of the oh so great pinball machine have been taken, I hope you will enjoy them as much as I do ;)

Star uh.. Cat?

Some time ago I played the Star Wars machine again, which is at my brother's home.. Nicely enough, the cat wanted to play too :)

Pictures of Freddy

It took some time, but here are some pictures of my Freddy (Nightmare on Elmstreet) pinball machine:

Freddy's Home...

After a long drive (more than 3 hours in total) Freddy has been brought home!

The pinball is looking good, and playing nice. As I wanted to place it on the 2nd floor, it was quite a challenge...

I disassembled the machine for as much as possible, to make it less heavy, as the machine needed to be lifted straight up the
stairs. (I should have done this with the Star Wars machine, when taking it to my brother's apartment :P)

The machine found itself a great spot, and I will make some pictures soon, but I've been busy fixing a small issue on it. The display was showing some garbage from time to time. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGOdiqrxKYQ)

After getting some help from other dutch pinball players, it seemed that the +5V leading to the display could be a problem.
The value of it was above 6V so I adjusted that back to around 5V, which fixed the problem :)

Check back for some pictures later, first I need to explore the machine completely ;)

It's just a nightmare

Taking it slow is still active, but somehow it's just not me to do that :P

I decided to sell some audio equipment, which I wasn't using anyway so I planned to do this before. To fill up the space, and spend the money (it just doesn't stick to me :P) I contacted someone for another pinball machine.

This time no other machine leaves, and the 'new' machine will be a Gottlieb "Freddy: a Nightmare on Elmstreet" from 1994.

If all goes well, it will be in the collection next Saturday. Pictures will be posted then!

Taking it slow

Except 1 lighting mod for the Pirates machine, no news since the last updates..

What's up? Well building the collection and modding it all costed a lot of money. I am thinking of buying some more mods, but it will be spread out over the next months.

The mods will probably be:

- some of the custom made mods for the Pirates of the Caribbean machine (http://www.backalleycreations.com/bac%20poc%20pinball%20addons.html)
- some of the custom made mods for the Spiderman machine (Not available yet)
- lighting kits for the 2 other Stern machines

Other than that, I've allready got some figures to put into the Pirates machine as well. That will be the first step I think, if I find a good way to place them.

Next to modding, I need to stabilize and align the monitor in the Pinball 2000 machine. It's not quite centered, and hasn't been attached to the cabinet in any way yet.

So in short: I'm still alive but just taking it slow :)

More Mods

Spiderman is just in, but today I received the order lighting mods from PinballLife.com (which is a really good shop in the US).

The mods include several lights for 2 locations in the game:

The Venom area, and the Green Goblin area. A few bulbs and flashers were replaced to get a really nice effect, making the characters come to life yet some more!

Seeing is believing, but photo's won't do the mods justice, therefor I will try to make a video soon to show the effects in full glory!

For now, just check out these pictures coming from the PinballLife website:

Green Goblin mod

Venom mod

Green to red...

It's happened.. Shrek has left the building, and along came Spidey!

After a good meeting with the seller, we put the Shrek machine into his vehicle .(first taking the box containing the Spiderman machine out offcourse ;))

Unpacking the machine was nice, as this is the first New In Box machine I ever got.
Next to this, it seemed to be that my 'normal' Spiderman machine turned out to be a Limited Edition Spiderman machine, with webbed siderails and some extra plastics!

I'm very happy with it, now to find some more time to check the game out to the fullest :)

Some pictures (bit low-light) below:

Shrek ready to leave..


The box, containing the Spiderman machine

The machine itself :)

Webbed siderails

Head of the machine

Incy wincy spider

Next Monday, it's time... Shrek will be picked up and be put out of the collection. But to be honest, I don't really mind, because a brand new Spiderman (New In Box) will be put back instead!

I'm really looking forward to it, and I will try to make some pictures of it all.

Perhaps it will take some time to put up the photo's as I will be pretty busy playing the new machine ;)

What else is new...

Well as changing as I can be, I'm going for another change in the collection.

Most likely the change will involve the Shrek machine to go out, and a Spiderman machine to go in...

If anyone's willing to buy the Shrek, drop me a message :)

Update on Star Wars playfield

As I was having some problems with the lamps on the brand new Star Wars playfield, I tried to split up the problems:

- The flashlamps didn't work, a fuse is clearly out
- The lamps in Lamp-Matrix A aren't working at all

For the first problem, I have to wait for a delivery of fuses. As I think I fixed
the problem causing the short-circuit in the flashlamps, replacing the fuse should be enough.

The second problem turned out to be a simple one, after searching a lot and thinking of what it could be, I found out that the connector for this series of lamps connecting to the playfield had some problems. After fixing this the lamps shine bright once more :)

Today, if the delivery is in, I will replace the fuse, and the balls as these are the old ones of the Revenge from Mars. When fully functional, I will make some pictures and maybe a video of the complete system including the built-in NuCore.


** Last update **

Everything works fine again, and looks amazing :)

Star Wars Episode 1 NIB arrived!

Last Saturday we (me and my wife) drove to Amersfoort, to pick up a NIB (new in box) Star Wars Episode 1 playfield, for the Pinball 2000 machine!

The meeting with the seller went very smoothly and nice, and after making some pictures we went back home. In the evening we placed the playfield into the Pinball 2000 cabinet, with only 1 little drawback: removing the autoshooter button of the Revenge from Mars game.

The switch of the shooter had to be removed to place the plunger of the Star Wars game, but removing it took some time. The switch had to be pulled out with some force, but eventually we got it out without breaking it :)

After connecting and placing the playfield we booted the NuCore system, and it all works fine. The game looks and plays really good, and as a Star Wars fan I completely love the game.

One more drawback after playing some games: in transport one of the connectors of a flashlamp got bent, contacting the second connector of the lamp, resulting in a broken fuse and a lot of lights not working. As the fuses in the machine are different in size compared to the Stern machines, I didn't have a replacement for it. This week I will replace the fuse, and everything should be fine again.

Some pictures of the Star Wars can be seen below:


The complete box

Stickers and backglass art


The playfield :)

Final stages

The NuCore system is ready, in place, and every function is working now (had some trouble with the jukebox of NuCore, but it works perfectly now)

I connected the power cables of the Revenge from Mars machine to the PC and Monitor, after I set the PC power supply to 115V, I can close the cabinet soon..

Just one more thing to do: Put a second PC power supply in, and connect it to the Audio Amplifier to prevent static noise.

In a few weeks I will have the Star Wars Episode 1 kit, and I can't wait for it to just slide into the machine and work smoothly with NuCore as intended :)

I really need to make some new pictures, and post them here so you can see how it looks like now.

NuCore system operational!

The NuCore system had already been installed earlier, but some testing needed to be done now. As the original PC cabinet needs some modification to fit in the new parts, I decided to hook up the PC in a normal cabinet.

I put the PC next to the Revenge from Mars pinball machine, and plugged in all the cords, including the NuCore hardware, turned on the pinball machine and the PC... and started praying :P

So far, so good, the machine was working and NuCore was responding to the button input of it.

To use the original Audio Amplifier, I had to solder some resistors and a stripped stereo audio cable to it, so I did :)
Next step was to plug the cables into the Amplifier, and the stereo cable into the PC. After another start of it all,
the sound was playing very well over the speakers!

I made a short shaky movie and some pics with my phone, to show you how the rickety setup looked like while testing:






The NuCore board

The Audio Amplifier

UbuntuutnubU

I bought some PC gear last week, and the NuCore module is in, so I decided to start the installation.

The operating system on the PC needs to be Ubuntu, some version based on Linux. I didn't have
any experience with the system, but there was a CD and a user manual with the NuCore module so no
worries there. Or..?

The install went pretty fine, and everything seemed to work great, but after looking around, the video card
wasn't working properly.

After trying a lot, and asking experts on a forum, I finally got it working.

Next step to do now, is to modify the Audio Amplifier of the original Pinball 2000 machine (Revenge from Mars) so I can connect it to the PC.

I have to do some difficult soldering (at least for me it is) and connect another PC power supply to the Audio Amplifier. I can connect it to the PC power supply powering the PC, but it seems that the sound would get a 'hum' in it, and we don't want that!

Last part that has to be done after this, is to modify the original PC case of the Pinball 2000 machine, so the new PC parts fit into it. I hope to get all this working and done this weekend, but this last task might be more difficult than I expect.

When I finish the system and got it working, you will read it here :)

Mars divided

The Revenge from Mars machine has been put together again, and plays and looks really nice again!

Next step, is to setup a PC system, with a NuCore Emulator in it, and with that I will buy a New In Box Star Wars Episode 1 playfield!

The NuCore system will detect the playfield that has been connected, and so I can turn one machine into another, in just a few minutes! I think the total setup will be ready in about 2 months (including buying / shipping / building the PC etc.) so be sure to check out the pictures when I'm done!

Revenge Revision

The Revenge from Mars machine was crying out for new rubbers and the shooter 'broke down' recently... 2 reasons to start revising it.

I ordered some gear to be able to finish it all, hopefully I will receive it tomorrow, then I will put the machine back together ASAP.

Here are some pictures I took with my phone during the 'dismantling' of the machine:


Everything in place


Connectors of the machine just before removing the playfield



Removing the 'ball catching' system



Cleared some more here :)



Time to remove the evil looking martian



Overview of the playfield so far



Cleaned the flippers


More will follow offcourse, the machine will shine again! :)

Practice makes... My goal far far away

Well I don't know what it makes, but I might not be able to practise enough on the other hand.

I've set a new goal : Reach Far Far Away on the Shrek pinball machine...

To reach it, a set of 6 goals need to be completed. As I've only managed to finish one or two of
them, I'm wondering if I can make it happen at all :P

The goals which are clear to me:

- Score 5 Puss jackpots
- Finish the mirror
- Make 10 Repay your Debt shots
- Get Donkey Super Jackpot

Less clear are:

- 15 Multi JPS (I'm thinking 15 jackpots in multiball, but in which multiball then?)
- Swp wiz 25M (I guess it has to do with the swamp items.. but that's all I know for now)

Anyone willing to give me some advice on beating this goal, you're welcome to contribute :)


the goals...

Needing to work things out..

Again, a few parts of some pinball machines fail. Not really hard to fix, but it will cost some time again :)

To start with, the starter for the lighting in the backbox of Lord of the Rings wasn't working any more. I allready fixed this by placing a new one.
Another problem I allready had with the machine, was hard to find, but easy to fix.

The machine was acting strange from time to time, activating wrong switches (e.g. : when shooting the ring spinner, another switch was responding).

I eventually found out that this was occuring due to the pinballs that had become magnetic. So the easy fix: put in some nice carbon-core pinballs :)

In the Revenge from Mars, the ball launcher isn't working properly. I think I have to replace the coil sleeve here, the coil fires the ball, but the plunger part isn't returning to 'base'.

Next to this, the Pirates of the Caribbean machine needs some cleaning, and the boat is sometimes not dropping the sails, resulting into not completely sinking into the playfield. I'm not sure how to fix this one, but I'll figure it out for sure.

For the cleaning, I have to remove a large number of items to clean nicely. This is not on the list of most fun things to do, but the priority is high for me now!

Now only to find some time... to be continued soon :)

Think think think...dream dream dream...

There's always something to dream for, but what if you're not able to work out your dream?

At the moment, I have 6 pinball machines, 2 of them are not at my place because I don't have
enough room for them. It's not really a problem, but still I would love some other pinball machines!

My mind keeps returning me to a few nice machines:

- Indiana Jones (Williams)
- Cirqus Voltaire
- Class of 1812
- Medieval Madness

Thing is, financially, it can be a matter of time before I can afford one of them, but room is hard to create if you don't have any.
All of this is just a luxury problem, I know.. I just keep thinking: why dream, if you know it can't be done?

That's why I keep on thinking... and thinking and thinking...

If I ever have a sollution I will post it here, in the meantime I'll just keep dreaming ;)

Happy New Year!!!

To all of you offcourse! Let's make it a good year, for me hopefully full of pinball and musicmaking :D

Snow and cold? No reason to stop moving!

Yesterday it was snowing and it was pretty cold, but we had decided to move the Star Wars machine to my brother's new home. It all started pretty easy, loading it into the car, and driving to the apartment. But then, we had to climb 3 stairs with it...

At first there were 2 straight stairs, but partly outside. As it was snowing before (it had stopped) and it was freezing, some ice was on the stairs. We tried to remove the ice as much as possible because we didn't like the idea to slip with a pinball machine in our hands :P

After climbing the first 2 stairs, there was no way back. The third staircase had a corner, so due to the width of it, we had to turn the machine. This was harder than we thought, but luckily we were with 3 people, 1 up front and 2 carrying the back of the machine.

Well it took some effort, but the machine has arrived in good shape! I'm sure my brother will have lots of fun with it there :)

Game on!

Busy busy busy

As you might have noticed, I'm really busy lately..

Most likely, the Star Wars machine will be transferred to my brother next Saturday, after that it's time to finish the gameroom completely :)

These days I've been busy with rehearsals (music), creating some graphics for
the NFV magazine, and helping a friend with soldering. Nice things to do, but
I didn't have that much time left to modify or even play the pinball machines.

Ah well that time will come soon I'm sure!

Signing off...

Pictures

Here are some pictures of the gameroom as it is now, and some pictures of the modifications to the Pirates of the Caribbean machine so far:











New floor: (Sides need to be finished)



Pirates 'mods'