The Addams Family Pinball

So after 8 years (and having only played my AFM sporadically over that time – as its positioned in a very “loud” part of the house, meaning I can’t play it discretely) I managed to get to “Rule the Universe” today. I got to it on my first ball (plus 2 extra balls) and it was amazing! I was sooooo pumped up, that when I lost my ball, my heart wasn’t in it any more and I wasn’t concentrated, so I promptly lost the next three balls (2 balls plus 1 extra ball) for next to nothing! So I only managed to reach:

27,910,408,910

But hey – better luck next time!

YES!!!!!!!!!!

So that was it. Done. Finished.

And now I have a nice new looking AFM to admire and, above all, to play.

It’s not perfect, but I tried. And in so doing, I’ve learned my limitations. I won’t be getting upset at the bits that didn’t go well, such as the soft clearcoat on the playfield, the laminated decals and the bent bracket (which I didn’t report on as it was just too embarassing). I’m just going to enjoy it. And anyway all the things I did achieve far outweight the things I didn’t!

Here’s some pictures of the finished item (with the siderail protection still on):

Finished AFM pinball machine

I call these the “Martian Legs”

Top playfield

Front view

Playfield detail.

Look at the reflection in the metal railings….

Not bad!

Even the metal return channel under the the apron looks good!

When I was 17 I got my first motorbike, a Yamaha RD250LC. There are plenty of stories I could tell related to this wonderful machine, but one struck me today as I was building the remaining pieces back onto my AFM:

It was actually on the day that I was going to advertise my motorbike for sale in the local newspaper. In those day, there was no internet or eBay, meaning I had to ride my motorbike to town to arrange this “for sale” ad. Well as I was on the way to the newspaper’s offices, the engine blew up. Typical.

So with a Hayes Manual (look it up) together with a neighbour and very good friend (thank you John P) I took the motor apart to get at the siezed piston. In the end, I had to take the motor housing with (now welded) pistons and gaskets to the local Yamaha dealer to get it repaired.

After 6 months I got the parts back and so it was time to put the engine back together again. Even though John was no longer anywhere to be seen, I had my Hayes Manual (look it up) and put the engine back together again all by myself. It took me all of two days of solid work. But finally, I got it all back together again. All except a single washer, which was left over. Now this washer obviously came out of the engine somewhere, but where, I hadn’t got a clue. So what should I do? Take the engine apart again to find out where it should go? No way! I decided to just see if the motorbike would start, without the washer. So I put the key in the ignition, turned the machine on and kick started it (no electonic start on machines of that size in those days) and it started first time! It hadn’t done that even when it was working perfectly.

Needless to say I quickly sold the motorbike (minus the washer) and never heard anything back since……

Back to pinball: Having rebuilt all of the bits and pieces on the top of the playfield, it came to the inlane/outlane separator modules (whatever they’re called). Having built these up, I noticed that the screws were of the wrong length. I had only gone and used the correct screws elsewhere in the machine! But where? Aghh! So close to finishing the machine, but yet so far:

Module with screws which are obviously too short!

It turns out that my Monster Bash had recently arrived for renovation (watch this space) so I took out the screws from the inlane separators from this as a temporary solution and ordered some new screws on line in parallel.

However I was still kicking myself at my stupidity and so deceided to hunt out the correct screws in my AFM which I had obviously installed somewhere in the machine already. Well it turns out I had used two screws in the support brackets and two under the slingshots. So half an hour later and after a little sweat and tears I had swapped the screws out and was able to attach the inlane separators with the correct screws.

DONE!

As reported in an earlier post (https://taf.gozzled.com/?p=1814) one fault originally with the pinball machine was that the strobe wasn’t working. As is common on an AFM, the legs of the Trigger Coil (which are very thin) had broken off. Instead of repairing this coil I bought a new one from a local electronics store (Conrad) and fitted it. And while I was as it, I replaced the strobe bulb also, which came from the same store. I didn’t know if this was necessary or not, but as the bulbs have a limited lifetime, I thought it couldn’t do any harm:

Completed strobe board and bulb

Fitting the ramps proved to be a challenge today. Whereas the wire ramp, cow ramp and lobster ramp all went on smoothly, the middle ramp proved to be problematic.

There are actually three fixing points for the middle ramp: Firstly the two screws at the entrance to the ramp underneath the ramp flap, a mounting point towards the rear of the ramp, where it sits on top of a pillar and finally the far right where the right wire ramp attaches to the middle ramp. There’s also a cut out in the base of the middle ramp, where it sits over a screw. Well try as I might, I couldn’t get it all to fit. So I started making some adjustments:

Firstly I had to countersink the holes in the plastic where the screws holding the ramp to the playfield under the flap go. To not do this would have meant the screws sticking out thereby holding the flap up. I also had to enlarge the holes in the ramp flap in order to screw the screws into the existing holes:

Enlarged holes in middle ramp flap

In order to get the ramp to avoid the screw, I had to make a new screw hole for the pillar, so that the cut out in the base of the ramp went over the screw. Once I’d finished that though, I couldn’t get the ramp screws back in. So I enlarged the cut out on the base of the ramp so that the ramp could sit over the screw at the back. Having completed this, I noticed that the original screw hole for the post was in the right position, meaning that I had made a second screw hole for the post for nothing!

It turns out, however, that this new hole was in just the right position to hold the rear right flasher cable to the ramp with a cable tie, thereby tidying up the run of the cable. So all’s well that ends well!

Middle ramp in its final resting position

Having successfully used sandpaper to make my lockbar shine (see here) I decided I’d like to do the same with each and every ball-guide on the playfield, which I duly did. However this time I took it down to 1000 grit, just to get that extra “shine”. It took forever. However it would have taken a lot longer, had I decided to take it to a mirror shine (I still wanted the “brushed” look but in a shiny version, if that makes sense.) The results were fantastic. Looking at the ball guides closely, you can see the brush effect, but at an angle, they look mirrored. Fantastic.

Top playfield in progress with the gleaming ball guides in position.

So I went to start attaching the parts to the top of the playfield today and noticed, to my horror, that the automotive clearcoat used was not as hard as I was expecting. Under a couple of the posts I had already attached, the clearcoat had started to wrinkle up:

Clearcoat which has been squashed out from underneath the post

There is nothing I can do about this (apart from loosening the posts to prevent the wrinkling from getting any worse) and also to make sure any other posts aren’t secured as tightly.

Well what can I say, despite my best attempts to prevent anything else from going wrong (the last one being my decal issue on the backbox) I was horrified to discover that the decals at the front of the pinball machine had started to wrinkle under the pressure of the legs. The bracket which I had fitted to prevent exactly this problem hadn’t worked:

Score lines in the decal from the legs causing premature wrinkling

So I had to cut around the decal underneath the leg and remove the decal, to prevent further wrinkling. Having completed this exercise, I was pleased that not only was the wrinkle no longer apparent, but also the cut away couldn’t be seen once the leg had been re-fitted.

Leg replaced – a tight fit even with the metal leg protectors

In this post I reported on the sorry state of my backbox lighting tub. As a reminder I had the follwoing to deal with:

How the backbox lighting looks

The two connector solution

Well, having bought the correct coloured wires and the plug-in bulb holders (which are very expensive, by the way) and the correct connectors, I got to work repairing the disaster as was. The result:

Completed light tub, with all bulbs present and correct (sort of)

Reverse of light tub showing new connector

Two things to notice: firstly I only spray painted the front side of the light tub with Rustoleum plastic paint (I love Rustoleum!); secondly, the 4 bulb cluster bottom right (where a plug has come out of its hole in my photo) should actually form a square shape and not the reverse ‘L’ shape as in my example.