Bally logo Steve Kulpa's Mata Hari
Pinball Machine 		Bally logo

A while back, I got a large lot of pinball machines from some guy's warehouse here in Knoxville. Most were major project pins but there was a Mata Hari in the lot that looked pretty good. It was missing most of the circuit boards and the backglass, but the rest looked pretty good. I got a new MPU from Chris Munson and found a real nice backglass on ebay. I had the rest of the parts on hand so I fixed it up real nice and sold it to a friend of mine. I always liked Mata Hari and wished I had kept this machine for myself, but at the time, I was just trying to sell off all this stuff I had. Then in February 2003 I asked her if she'd like to trade the Mata Hari for Black Hole, and she did, so we made the trade and now I have Mata Hari back at my house.

It's a real nice machine and plays a lot like Power Play, so I guess that's why I like it so much. I don't have any "before" pictures of this machine from when I first got it, but trust me, it was gross. Stored in a warehouse with no playfield glass, it was filthy dirty. I cleaned it up real nice and waxed the playfield, and it turned out pretty nice. There's only a little wear on the playfield so it looks real good. The cabinet has some scratches and some flaked paint, but that's OK. It could really use a new coin door too, but I'll deal w/ that later.

Check out the backglass
 
Considering I bought it off ebay - it's real nice


And a nice closeup of the writing on the dagger


Here's a close-up of the playfield

There's a little wear by the left drop target bank and
some along the bonus inserts, but that's about it


The first thing I did when I got this home was to strip the paint off the legs and repaint them. There were quite rusty so I just used the wire wheel on my bench grinder to remove the old paint and rust. Then I painted them w/ gray hammertone paint, and buffed up the levelers so they looked brand new.

Then I cleaned up the playfield but it didn't need much. My friend had only put 500 games on it in the year and a half she owned it, so it was still pretty nice. I gave it a new ball, and replaced the battery pack on the MPU board with a memory capacitor. I then fired it up and played several games. Nice machine!

If you're looking for parts for your Mata Hari, or other Bally machine, you might find some here.
I also do Bally board repair work. If you need some work done, look here



Here's some more information on Mata Hari, if you're interested. If you own a Mata Hari machine but do not have a manual for it, some of this stuff may be of use to you.

Rubber Ring
Chart 		Rules of
Play 		Mata Hari
Features 		Dip Switch
Settings
Coin Door
Adjustments 		Diagnostic
Procedures 		Fuses Solenoid and
Lamp Info
Mata Hari
Parts List




Here's a custom score card I made for my machine. I printed it on my color printer using photo paper and it actually looks pretty good.


If you don't have Adobe Acrobat Reader, then go and get it.


Don't for get the flyers:

Thanks to An Ugly Flyer Reference Site for their nice collection of pinball flyers, including Mata Hari

   
   

And thanks to these ebay sellers for the pictures:
bakestamp, theperfectpicture, belajio-art, Photo Cave, and barneam



[Steve's Page] [Pinball]

Created 2/3/03 - Last Modified 6/30/06 - Steve Kulpa Mail Icon Hermitage, TN
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