Finally- EDOT added to my collection

khabbi

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Special thanks to Icanbeyoursuperman (Joe) for making this happen, after several PM's back and forth he agreed to sell his EDOT to me and allow me to continue the restoration of this beauty! Joe is a stand-up guy and made this as easy as it could have possibly been, I felt lucky that he was the seller. I was glad to finally realize that my chase was over.. well, at least securing one, but getting it back to Florida was the next logical thing.

What did I do over my 4th of july Holiday weekend? What any good Arcade collector would do- drive 38 hours roundtrip to pick up a grail!! Let me just say that anyone that knows me well enough in this hobby knows I've been trying to land and EDOT for several years, and while I've been close (oh, so close, lol) I've never been able to make it happen. Finally the stars aligned, I had some extra cash from selling some other games, and the game was located on the east coast near some family, which with all factors considered made this all come together.

I departed on thursday after work from tampa, proceeded to pick up a friend who agreed to drive and take the journey (and actually did ALL of the driving) and headed non-stop to a city just outside of Pittsburgh.. arriving at 1:30 pm on Friday. Yep, that's about 19 or so hours of driving with just small stops/breaks. We arrived at my parents place, and I got to visit (a much needed visit btw) for almost 2 days, until we headed over to Joe's Sunday morning to load up.

My first impression of the EDOT? Holy *^%$ I had forgotten how big this thing is! I had just landed a Star Wars cockpit about 2 weeks earlier, so I had somehow convinced myself that it was about that size, just a little taller. Boy was I wrong!

Loading was somewhat of a challenge, it's long and heavy and with a ramp there's bound to be some bottom cab rub.. Joe and my friend did a lot of the handling, and it certainly helped that Joe had moved this thing before. It's crazy to think the best way to move this is put a towel around the back area and bear hug the game, dead lifting it up and then rolling it on it's wheels. Joe made it look easy.. all I could think about is how the hell I'm going to get this thing unloaded.

Here's a pic of the game as we got it loaded up on the trailer:

trip1.jpg


We must have wrapped this thing like it was the holy grail itself, lol.. a crapload of blankets, shrinkwrap, followed by 2 huge tarps to insure that if we hit any rain the game would be protected. I think it took about an hour to wrap it up, lol.. but I figured with about 1,100 miles of travel to go with unknown weather, it was the only way to make sure it survived. I'm happy to say that we did not encounter any rain during the entire trip, so we never did get to test our super wrap job. lol.

Here's a pic of it all wrapped up, yep, it's a beast!! Gassing up for the long ride home:

trip2f.jpg


A couple of quick stops at the aweful waffle and the trip went smooth.. here's a pic at one of the stops along the way, lots and lots of coffee!!

trip3n.jpg


And after the long journey of 38 hours of driving (YEP, 38!), the game back at the house!! I pulled one of my Trons over to add to the pic:

trip5.jpg


And of course my SW cockpit was sitting right behind it, so why not take a pic of two of the sweetest grails going, side by side?

trip7.jpg


I can't believe I have my EDOT! Stay tuned for the restoration, new sideart to be installed in the next few weeks, and hopefully much more (CPO if I can either find one or convince Rich to make one!).

Oh, and I'll be at CAX this weekend, so if you see me be sure to say hello.. looking forward to my first CAX!
 
Oh, I forgot to add... Joe picked up this machine last december and delivered it from Illinois to PA.. probably another 1,000 miles there. So this machine has travelled over 2K miles in the last 6-7 months :)
 
Congrats. I love the feeling of bringing home that certain game. Just makes you pull up a barstool, sit down, and just gawk at it for a while. At least, thats what I did with my SMB pinball.


Holy hell, that thing is big.....
 
78 inches high i believe.

Gorgeous game - Joe, you did a great job and i am happy to see it went to a good home!

Post some Youtube video of it please! Especially try and capture the allure of the inside - getting lost in another world...
 
I don't know who's crazier, you, your friend, or Joe for selling it?!? It's nice to start with, but will look even more amazing once fully restored. Gameongrafix has CPOs, which I think is why Rich hasn't done them yet, but they're obviously not going to be the same quality as what he might do. That being said, I'd take a not exactly perfect CPO over a chewed up old one any day...if yours is in that rough of shape. Best of luck!
 
It was great seeing a middle aged guy looking like a little kid on Christmas when he finally got here.

I had to let it go as I would not have enjoyed this as much as the next person will. My passion is really in cars and this was something I had hoped to have completed during the winter months. My personal business has taken off more then I had thought it would, while this had gotten put on the back burner. I bought it because I could, not because I would get the use out of it that it deserved.

This is one of the best communities I have been around and one day I may pick up another. My driving simulator just takes up more room than I can spare and this would have sat in the garage. The wait for the pieces and my time schedule just didn't work together. I may have played it 10 times and really didn't dominate the game to well.

I keep forgetting to ship out that side art but it will get there. I just took in an extremely rare car (only 44 in the world to still exist) that I need to have done for this coming weekends show in Pittsburgh.
 
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