TAF saved from Pinball Hell

Dear members,

I thought I should share my story here on this forum as I can never be thankful enough to Farsight for bringing my love of pinball back.
After getting involved with The Pinball Arcade I suddenly felt this need to own my all time favourite table, The Addams family. This is not just a pinball machine for me, it is an icon, a symbol of an era. Something that just even looking at it makes me happy. I know it sounds stupid, but hey, what can I do. I know of course that when you say things like "it is a symbol of an era ect." people would instantly think of the United States and the American culture but for us it had also represented the era in my country just after the system was changed from communism to democracy, arcades were opening, thousands of pinball machines were imported. I can remember playing pinball for long hours after school (Pólus Róna, Kecskemét). Out of all those machines I loved TAF the most. (sorry for the history lesson )
Anyway, after 3 month of posting adds in different places and looking up different websites luck hit me finally and I could manage to purchase an old Addams Family Pin back in June. I can't describe you how happy I was when I acutally bought this old, used, banged up machine. The price was great compared to western prices, but in terms of the amount of work needed to be done, was not a very good deal either. But I could not care less if I'm honest.
You can still find pinball machines in great numbers in Eastern Europe but then I have to admit it was not really easy to find an Addams Family that was up for sale. The number of private collections are gowing and the price is going up quickly too.

This machine was in very very bad condition. It had been used on sites for many many years with very minimal maintenance. Wrong coils, plastics, weak flippers, damaged playfield and inserts; dirt and filth everywhere you looked. Awful cabinet with full of deeps marks, the corners of the backbox were missing or badly damaged, faded paint, pictures say it all I think.
Here are some pictures of the original condition:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/24/001ysl.jpg
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http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/213/006za.jpg
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/690/007tyn.jpg
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/827/008gtq.jpg
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/716/009hte.jpg
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/89/010qwf.jpg
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/821/011pui.jpg
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/685/013yuc.jpg
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/542/014uk.jpg


The only reasonable choice was a full restauration. I will post some pictures tomorrow about the process. Thanks for reading!

Oh wow...you have your work cut out for you with that one. Good luck!

Thanks!

It's all done, the full restoration took about 3 month. I will post some pics tomorrow!

Thanks for sharing your story with us. I hope it brings back good memories every time you play it.

Wow, that thing saw some abuse! Can't wait to see what months of restoration does for it!

It's tomorrow. Now show us some pics!

Here are two shots taken yesterday. Please note there are many small things to be done on it so it's not 100% ready.





I will post some before/after photos of the newly done playfield, looks very nice imho.

Holy **** thats amazing!!! GREAT job restoring it.

Very nice collection as well

smooverr said:

Holy **** thats amazing!!! GREAT job restoring it.

Very nice collection as well

Click to expand...

Thanks!

The collection is not mine unfortunately
It's that guy's who's been working on it.

How much a resto like that cost?

Hard to believe it's the same machine. Stunning!

SKILL_SHOT said:

How much a resto like that cost?

Click to expand...

Depends on a lot of things like are you willing to do any actual work on it or you hire somebody to do all of it. I was able to save a lot of money on manual labour. PM me and I'll run you the numbers.

Kolchak357 said:

Hard to believe it's the same machine. Stunning!

Click to expand...

That Bride of Pinbot on the second picture was saved from a barn (no, I'm not exaggerating, it's been in an actual barn for years, the lower part of the cabinet was eaten by goats(!!!), words couldn't describe that condition and yet, look at it now... I don't think there is such thing as a totally wrecked pinball machine that cannot be saved.

Finding some plastics can be tough though.

SKILL_SHOT said:

Finding some plastics can be tough though.

Click to expand...

Oh definitely, I mean it is getting really difficult to get certain plastics for TAF too (outlane plastics for one). My pinball guy can make exact copies of plastics IF he has some good quality photos and the old piece available.

Some more pictures:

Nice!

...Can I have it?

Hey guys, I've made a gampelay video, here it is:


Should be HD but for some reason it isn't..

So did you decal the cabinet and touch up the playfield or was the playfield a reproduction?

Carl Spiby said:

So did you decal the cabinet and touch up the playfield or was the playfield a reproduction?

Click to expand...

My main goal was to preserve the game's originality in every possible way. Luckily the decals were not that bad so we could apply a little touch up and that was it. You really can't see the difference unless you are looking at it from 1cm distance. Playfield is also original, we had a lot of work with it fixing all the damaged parts (like the thing kickout hole) and damaged inserts and then 3 layers of superhard clearcoat was applied. It had to dry for a month then we carefully polished it out to make the playfield's surface as smooth as possible and it was done.

Let me know if you're in London, you're welcome to try it out!

I'm jealous.