I'm Mike Dus and this is Pinball Shenanigans. [Music] Okay, it's time to get back to work on Gamatron. I think this is episode three and I have my playfield Ellie proofed. I was going to leave it. I was gone for the weekend for a tournament. Then I realized if Ellie decides to jump up on here, that could be the end of Gamatron as we know it. So I had to make it very challenging and undesirable for her to uh want to jump on Gamatron. So that was my solution and I will reuse these boxes as needed. So, just as a refresher, and you don't know a thing about Gamatron, um I'm going to show you a couple things I discovered. I did some more digging, but just as a quick summary, Gamatron is a conversion kit that uh was issued by a company called Pinstar. That was a company that Gary Stern created in between Stern Electronics and Data East. So basically went from Stern Electronics to Pinstar to Data East to Sega to Stern as we know it today. Actually, that's more like the Stern Electronics logo, but and who knows, there might have been some more variations in between. But so, as you can see, Gamatron is a conversion kit for Bali standard body solidstate pinball machines with normal Ballet size backbox. And so, I just This is kind of neat. I discovered this. This is where I went digging a little bit recently. Um, so the exclusive US and Canadian distributor for Gamatron is Kit Corp. So I decided to look up Kit Corp. And looks like it was started in 1982, which makes sense cuz Pinstar was 1985, I believe. And Kit Corner, Kit Corp. known as Kitco in its first year, was a coin op arcade company that manufactured and distributed kits for arcade games licensed from companies including Sega, Tito, and Jalico. It was created by this dude after the sale of his previous business, Interlogic, to Konami. So, that's kind of neat. And then I went digging a little further and I found a couple flyers that were uh issued by Kit Corp. So, check this out. Introducing Kit Corps pinball conversion kit. What is a pinball conversion kit? An exciting new playfield completely wired and ready to install. A prom change board to turn your old program into a new one. I should put on my glasses. That's part of my problem here. Hey, there we go. A new soundboard to enhance the program. A new back glass and complete set of cabinet graphics to give the outside appearance of a new game. Why buy a conversion kit? To change a valueless asset into a money-making opportunity to take your tired old pinball machine and make it new for half the price. So, that was Kits Kit Corp's sales pitch there. And where did it go? Check this out. An advertisement for Gamatron. Designed by Harry Williams and Steve Kirk. All parts made in America. Manufactured by Pinstar. So, that's pretty cool. So, the status of the cabinet. I'm going to give you show you a little video and some photos shortly. Uh Kevin has been working all day and night on rebuilding the head, patching up the head and cabinet with lots of bondo and taking out all the bru bruises and bumps. And then oh yeah, we were trying to decide which colors to paint the cabinet because uh this is what the original uh decals looked like. So, when you got your conversion kit, these are the stickers. You stick them on your old pinball machine. You got black with a white star and a yellow trim. So, since Kevin decided that it wasn't worth it, well, we decided together to try and preserve the old decals or at least cut out the old star and paint around it. Since it's getting a full complete brand new paint job, we can go with whatever color we want. now. So, I come up with a bunch of different options, including black and uh we had some ideas and before I committed to a color, I busted out the old markers. Jamie and I together did some coloring. And there's one option we got. Oh, yeah. So, I can tell you didn't go with black for sure. We toyed with a couple colors, but dark blue is what we ended up going with. Is a similar color that Kevin did um couple black holes with. And it's a nice dark blue. Maybe not quite this dark, but it looks good. So, dark blue with a white star and black border. Looks all right. And then I flicked on some like white speckle on top of that. It's too big of speckle, but it's just concept to see what that would look like. And I think that's going to look pretty cool. Uh then we got an orange star with yellow border. Uh yellow star with a red border. And we've got red star with yellow border. And the white spackle speckle fleck, whatever you want to call it. Cuz this really does match the playfield. and back glass. So, that's what we went with. And Kevin is making some good progress. So, I will show you just a little video when Julie and I popped over there on our way to Maple Pinball and he was in the middle of building the head. And then, uh, since then, he's been sending me photos of the progress. So, I'll show you all that now. Hey, fellow shenanigans. If you are enjoying what you are seeing, why don't you click on these three dots at the bottom of any video and then find this heart. Click on that and hey, look at this. You can buy me a beer. You can use the slider to buy me 500 beers if you really like. But this is a way you can uh send thanks and I very much appreciate your support. If you do so, your comment will be highlighted and also I will give you a shout out. So, thank you for all your support. All right, Julie and I are on our way to Maple Pinball to
Nice shirt.
Oh, a Banzai Run. That's awesome. How cool. Kevin and Dutch, I think, got one of those Banzai Run shirts, too.
Making a new cabinet.
Anyway, we're going to go play pinball for a couple days, but
check out some Garbatron progress on the way out of town. So, what how do you glue it?
Look at that.
It's starting to look like a head.
Do Do you clamp it?
So, this looks like a new piece.
So, you're going to have to cut it.
Brand new back. I cannot see what I'm videoing.
Makes that noise too, right?
Cut out all these louvers.
I'm not allowed to use cutting tool.
So, I don't know if you can see this in the sun, but how's it going, dude? What are you going to go with?
Is it Is it Is it coming together? It looks like it's working.
Bottom piece.
So, new bottom, new dock, new side. Uh, this is
side.
Nice. Making quick work at this thing.
Yeah, quick work. I've been here all day.
Oh, yeah. Oh,
This is the bottom piece of
Oh, very nice. Look at that. That's some skills, bro.
This is the back piece in here. This is kind of a pain in the ass cuz it's like notched in here. So, cut those out.
Oh. Oh, yeah. Right. Okay.
And have to glue. And these are going to be new triangles.
So, so why does it have these vents?
Uh just for the heat.
For the heat, I guess. Eh,
all the circuit boards getting hot. They got to air out.
Well, it's coming along, man.
Yeah. Royal pain in your nuts, but
very much so.
It'll be well worth it in the end. Hopefully. Fingers crossed. Hi, Puggies.
Hey, you stay in here.
You stay in. Where's your pool?
Hi, buddy.
All right. What's going on with the cabinet?
Ah, we've got some Bondo. you know, such as the requirements of a garbatron.
This may be the most challenging, difficult piece of crap cabinet that Kevin has done to date. You're welcome. Oh, I was just saying this might be the worst cabinet that you've done to date.
Uh,
is it up there?
Can I Can I ask what you paid for it?
Adam's family is worse. I paid too much, I'll tell you that much. Uh, you think Adams that the one that I uh
sold me
that I sold you that was leaked on in my storage unit was
Did I pay too much for that?
Probably.
Yeah.
What is the goop?
This is like automotive bondo.
Oh, it's bondo. So, do you
That's what makes Kevin's corners all sharp and beautiful.
Exactly.
All right. Well,
what kind of
some good progress being made?
Here's some of the old shrapnel. We're going to go play pinball for uh for the weekend. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] So, I guess you can pretty much say this is no longer a conversion kit because there's No more Bobby or left of that machine whatsoever. It is 100% dedicated cabinet to Gamatron now. So, kind of took the conversion out of the kit, you know what I mean? Uh, just a quick side note, I just thought of something. Uh, my buddy Mark sent me a message and in the previous video I was talking about trying to remove these little nails right here so that I could really clean up this ball guy. There's one nail, two, three nails. But Mark suggested that it might be safer, and I think I like this idea, to remove the entire rail. It's probably like maybe five or six screws under there. Then I can just pop the whole thing off. I can really clean in there. So, that's a good idea. And I probably am going to do that. And I still got to send a message to my buddy Bigfoot Bruce because might need to see if I can enlist your services for some new spinner decals cuz this one is not so great. So that's on the to-do list. Oh, that reminds me. And I made a post in Pinside saying, "Hey, I joined the Gamatron club twice kind of and asked them what the darn trick is to uh taking off this pop bumper cap." I'm guessing it's just squeeze the little red tab under there. It would be weird. That's kind of a weird design. Like if you need to change that light bulb, that is awkward. Why don't you just stick with screws? Let's go check out see if anybody actually replied. Okay, here's my post here. And I sent a few photos of the before. See, there is the Bobby or going bye-bye for good. You've seen these photos before if you watched the uh last episode. That's all that was preserved from the head due to the water and rot. So, I thought uh y'all pinsiders might enjoy that. There's Kevin making up some stencils. And um so Sniper says, "That's awesome. I'm glad two more are being saved. This should amount for 27 of them on pin side, but I think that is the only reply. Wait. Oh, wait. Hold on. I missed this al together. Chosen says, "Whoa, that is wild. I'm really looking forward to your build here. Great score. Are you building two?" Okay. Well, no comment on the uh pop bumper solution, but I'm pretty sure we just got to squeeze some tabs. So, uh, the answer is no. I am going to be building one and then I'm going to be selling off the other kit to help um, you know, the cost of this because with the whole cabinet job getting completely done top to bottom, oh my god, it's going to look so good with the uh, like mirror finish chrome metals. Uh, it's getting expensive. So, I'm hoping to uh sell off the second gamutron to someone else who wants to preserve it, and that will help me uh not be into this gamatron for $10,000. So, that's the idea with that. So, goals for today is to make some good progress on this playfield, clean it up, polish up the posts, reassemble it. I don't know. That's uh that's a little much. I don't know just how far I'm going to get, but let's work on the playfield until uh till I can't work on it no more. I've got lots of time today, so might as well get started. Oh, and the winner of the uh who can find Gary Stern initials on the back glass competition is myself. I found it but didn't realize it cuz I just either didn't have my glasses on or the artist didn't. It's just like that looks like a Q, doesn't it? At first, I thought it was QS, but that is GS for Gary Stern. So, a few of you managed to find that and point that out and uh let me know that it was just my eyesight. So, there's Gary Stern all along. Here comes trouble. Inspector's here. Ellie, what can I do for you? Don't you even think about it. We cannot have you jumping up on this rotisserie. So, I'll jump up on the dryer and then very carefully walk through my plastics without knocking them around. She's been successful at that many times, hanging out at her perch so she can oversee the operations. So, you stay there and um you just stay off my rotisserie, please. In the meanwhile, I am removing every single star post. And then I'm just leaving the posts in their place there so I know which post goes where. Just makes it nice and easy for me. And I'm starting to build up a nice little collection here. Some are muddier than others, but I think they're all going to get a nice ultrasonic bath, and they will clean up very nicely. I haven't really even noticed any with any chips on the bottom. Oh, which hole did that come from? Maybe this one. You know, I think I read in um the pinside thread on Gamatron, people like to remove this post completely because otherwise can be a fairly long player and especially in a tournament setting, you don't want that. So, depending on how long playing this game is, I can't get that out, man. Let's try and push it down on there. There we go. Don't want to create any dimples in the playfield or anywhere. So, that's your difficulty setting there. If you use this hole, then the outline's going to be a little bit bigger. Why are you being so stubborn? But if you use no post, then it can be evil. And it was definitely that at the beast two years ago, but I put up a pretty good score. I honestly probably put up a top 10 score on uh that gamatron. But in the last two years at the beast in Buffalo, I haven't qualified for anything. Two years ago, top 24 in classics and top 24 in the main advanced. I was just outside on both. If there was if I if I was eligible to play in B divisions, then um I would have made both. This year, Tolas expanded it to the top 40 in classics and Maine. So, I thought, "Oh, sweet. I'm going to make both this year. No problem. Easy peasy." Guess what? I made neither. And I think I was just outside. So again, if I wasn't restricted to A, could have potentially played in the B division in both. So am I really an A player? I don't know. Feeling like like a a B player lately, even at Maple Pinball this weekend. There was two tournaments. One was a pump and dump, one was a match play. I did manage to qualify for the finals in both, but I didn't really uh didn't really hold my own. I would have liked the final four finish in one of the two tournaments, but I got like a I think eighth and ninth. So, it's not horrible, but it's very B playerlike. I don't think that helped my Ontario provincial standings either, which was kind of what I was hoping for to boost myself up a little bit to ensure that I make the provincials, but I don't know, I'm somewhere around 18 in Ontario right now. Need to be top 24. And the Ontario Open is happening in November. uh maple pinball. It's going to be a weekend with like five tournaments and a good opportunity to get some whoppers. So hopefully I can have a good finish there. Uh okay, that's cute little collection. And they're all shorties. None are tall, so I don't have to worry about that. Couple more to go and then uh I will start removing this rail. probably remove this and pretty much darn near removed everything. So, why not keep going? What? No, you can't go outside. We had a little scare the other day with you. But guess what? We got a tracking collar coming for you. And uh that may even show up today. So, if you do go for a little tour, we'll be able to track you down. on you little turkey. Okay, starting to remove this side rail. There four screws. Just loosened them all up. And as soon as I loosened the last screw, check it out. They kind of like sagged on me. So the weight of the playfield I guess is basically I don't want to have it have this rail removed for too long. I don't want this playfield to develop any warpage. Where did my screwdriver go? So, I think what I'd like to do is remove this rail and clean up the playfield, under it, beside it. Clean up this metal. What do we got? Oh, this screw here is in my way. and then reinstall it right away. We're not going to leave that off. So, move that spinner out of the way and should come off. Look at that. Good call, Mark. Oh, what dropped? Oh, just that screw. Okay, here it is. I probably dropped the other one, too. No. Okay, let's not lose my screws. Which reminds me, I am listening to uh Albert Agar's Agars um Pinwell Nerds podcast as I'm working on this. So, he's always fun to listen to. Old buddy, old pal of mine. So, this is uh what it looks like now. And what the playfield looks like. A little bit of sawdust, miscellaneous debris like the Prime Primus album. All right. So, let's get that back on there. All right. I cleaned up this edge here. Just a little bit of a cloth. A little bit of a magic eraser, little water, little Windex. And then I cleaned up this metal guide here. I just used um magic eraser at first and then was a little scared to take a steel wool to it, but apparently that's the thing to do. Just some very fine steel wool. And I used it on this meteor playfield here just as a bit of a tester. I can never remember where you're supposed to use your green scrubbies and where you're supposed to use your steel wools, but uh I'm sure there's science behind it. I'm just kind of winging it. But I think Kevin told me steel wool and I think Mark Valuke told me steel wool. So didn't seem to scratch it up. So, install that and then Oh, hi Ellie. And then uh start working on other stuff. All right, it is installed. Went on just fine. Look at that mirror finish. It's beautiful. I got to do that to all my lane guides now. So, have a look at the top of the playfield here. I'm going to work on that next. Probably just do like this top third. Also, for the pop bumper, I think I'm just going to remove the whole assembly and then work with it on the bench. I think that'll be the easiest. Oo, that'll be a good candidate for um ultrasonic cleaner, too. And have a look at these targets. I had those same white targets on Viper. There's one red one and three well used to be white ones. So I'll clean those up. Those they're still going to be nicotine color when all is said and done. But I'm going to work on this top portion now. Okay. Uh making some progress here. Just using a little bit of Lysol and glass cleaner. Nothing fancy. Cloth and magic eraser because the playfield is very like spotty. I give you a sample here. like you know moldy mildwy spots. So the magic eraser is really helping with that. You can see the side rail. That's where I started cleaning up here and it's really working good. So this is the after. I did Dremel all of the lamp sockets. Then I use my little mini compressed air gun to dust everything off, blow out all the bits and pieces. I gave the targets a clean. I removed this metal and clean that. Looks like a mirror. this target here. This target. And let's go upside down. That target there. Oh, I did find that one kicker head is broken off there. So, these are uh unique kicker heads. They look like that. Never seen that style before. So, oh, looks like this one is the more OG style. What about up here? Oh, interesting. All three of them are the same. So I guess um some were with the nylon heads and some were made with the uh these metal heads. Fun fact, things are looking good. After I do the bottom half of the playfield, I'll take some novice to this. But yeah, she's cleaning up real nice. The only like kind of uh indication of wear or anything other than the kicker head is this one post for the spinner. Someone stuck in a little piece of plastic there just to try and uh you know beef that up a little bit. So I'll do toothpick and wood glue. But it is cleaning up nicely. Like there's hardly any ball swirl. I'm not going to apply too much pressure with the magic eraser here cuz I don't want to cut into any potential clear coat. But it's looking real nice. So I'll keep plugging away and do the bottom half. Now, let's uh let's have a quick peek at the before. Little bit of ball trail. But a lot of the times in the yellow painted areas of playfields where you see the most ball swirl and wear and the reds, the blue is looking like perfect. So, that should all clean up very nicely. Okay, I just found a cool little Easter egg I want to share with you. So, do you know what a Kirk post is? Well, I only heard of this maybe a few years ago, and I thought it was a modern term. Hey, I wonder if it's in the pinball dictionary, but just resting on the Kirk post. That is the Kirk post, the post between the flippers because Steve Kirk, who designed these games, stars included, uh, like to put a post between the flippers. So, it got termed a Kirk post, but let me just check the pinball dictionary. Okay, this is the new pinball dictionary, and it's a lot more different than the last time I was here, and I don't even know how to search it. I typed in Kirk Post. I didn't find it, but nonetheless, I'm going to show you the little Easter egg I found. Kirk post trademarked printed right on the Gamatron playfield. So, that term goes at least back to 1985. That's pretty cool. Okay, I think I am pretty much finished with my first go over. Have a look at that. turned out real nice. And I saw my first signs of wear. Look, a little bit of white in the yellow there. Maybe from where the flipper was rubbing or something. And it's a little bit of scratching going on right there. I don't know what that's all about. I haven't used anything abrasive, so I can't Maybe that's just from storage. You know, something might have been rubbing on it if both these playfields were, I don't know, clustered together. No, I guess that's not true. Anyway, who knows? It's a mystery, but found some wear. However minimal it is, but as you can see, everything is pretty clean. So, now I'm going to go over the full play field with Novvice 2. you must valuke all of your mini posts. If you know, you know. This is a cool tool that Mr. Mark Valuch sent me. Well,
the back of the shed.
Uhoh. Bad kitty. All right. Well, we don't have our tracker yet, I guess.
All right, I'll come to the rescue. Ellie escaped again. Little turkey. She went under the fence to Jay the neighbors and out behind his fence because a tree fell through his fence. So, now there's an opening back there. And um that's where she goes. We found her little escape route. But I think I've uked all the posts that I can volu. Oh, wait. Hold on. The Kirk post needs to be valued. Wait, it's a different kind of post. I can't that one. All right. Pinball Nerds podcast is done. I've moved on to the JBS Pinball podcast. as I novice and polish up this playfield. I think I'm done. And it's looking pretty damn good. Polished it up with a dry cloth. Got to polish for a while to just get rid of the uh sort of fog. Once the fog clears, it looks good. And I think the cabinet is going to look amazing having the red star with the yellow border and the fleck little like galaxy stars look to it. And this blue is pretty similar to what the cabinet will be. This might be a little lighter. It looks a little bit darker on the back glass than it does on the playfield, but the paint color on the cabinet, I think, is just a little bit darker. But I think it's going to look killer. So, I think what I'll do next is throw all my star posts and lane guides in the ultrasonic cleaner. And while that's doing that, I will going to swap this uh shooter gauge with this one here. Doesn't have the rust spot, so I got to take off the apron in order to access that. And I just got to kill like 20 minutes um doing miscellaneous stuff while that uh stuff is cleaning in the ultrasonic cleaner. So, I'll be back. Okay, just uh bringing the ultrasonic cleaner up to temperature. Got all my star post and lane guides ready to go. Not sure if I'm going to throw in some clear plastics or not yet. Or maybe these metals, the um one-way gates. Maybe I'll throw them in there. That can't hurt. So, I don't really record while the ultrasonic cleaner is running. I learned because it messes with the audio. So, while everything's cleaning, here's another thing I can do. This ball guide here. Have a look at that. I'll clean that up. install that, do the shooter gauge, and maybe clean up this metal, install that. There's a few little things I can do, but yeah, maybe I'll throw the uh gates in there as well, including that guy. I haven't really used my ultra sonic cleaner in a while, so I kind of forgot what temperature I should use and how long I should put it in for, but I think it was around 20° Fahrenheit and about 5 minutes and seems to have done the trick. I rinsed them off. Supposed to do that apparently. I mean, they weren't really filthy to begin with. They're just a little bit dusty and muddy. But I'll give these a wipe and a dry. Look at that. Metal's cleaned up pretty nicely, too, for only 5 minutes. But it took like 20 minutes to heat up the stupid thing. And I don't even have a whole lot of water in there. So, I don't know if that's normal. This is what How many liters is this thing again? Uh 6.5 L. So, how long does it take your 6.5 L ultrasonic cleaner to heat up with maybe half the water in it? Mine was probably 15, 20 minutes. And how long do you put in your plastics for? I also read while I was cleaning that you're not really supposed to mix metals and plastics. Is that true? How long should you put metals in for? How long should you put plastics in for? Uh, and then I'll have to put that information somewhere where I'll actually remember it next time. Okay. I actually blew out the water out of every single star post. Some tasted better than others, but everything's pretty dry and pretty darn clean. So, that was a success. Now, I think I'm going to install these. I forgot to show you. Cleaned up and swapped out shooter gauge. And how do you like that metal now? That's pretty. Okay. Did I even give an Ellie update? I went out hunting for I went into several people's backyards and I couldn't find her. But just like 10 minutes ago, I heard Jamie talking to someone or something. And sure enough, it turned out to be Ellie. She made her way back from her little adventure. But I've got most of the star posts installed. Now I'm at a crossroads. Let's turn this light off. Warm white or natural white for LEDs cuz I wanted to install the lane guides. But in order to do that, I've got to put in LEDs. So I'm not sure which way to go. I think they both look good. It's really very yellow, this warm white, which really replicates incandescent, but this natural white is more outer spacey, I'd say. So, picture that or that. So, I got to decide. But if I can hold off for a little bit and you guys can vote and let me know what you think, I'll take that into consideration if I can just keep doing other stuff in the interim. So, I'm going to put on a few rubbers. Maybe most of the rubbers. Still got to clean these switches with my Dremel. would like to get some LEDs installed, but which way do I go? Well, did you have a nice little adventure? Where did you go? I got more crap up there. I'm sorry. You should be able to navigate just fine. Yeah, you had a little adventure. You were gone for maybe an hour, but you know where all the good food is at, don't you?
All right. All right, I think I'm going to wrap it up for the night. This is where I left off. This is where I'm leaving off. This is where I'm clocking out. I've got all my star posts installed. And I've got pretty much all my rubbers installed. That's just dry fit. Don't worry, that's not going to stay there looking like that. Spinners I got to deal with. I still got to adjust my all my kicker uh my slingshot switches, but they are all cleaned up. So, as you can see, some LEDs are installed and some are not. Got my lane guides installed. You guys don't know what color I went with, but I did not want to wait. So, I jumped the gun and I installed LEDs. But see these guys here and here and here? These LEDs do not fit. No LEDs are going to fit down there. So, I had this issue on I think it was Black Hole or maybe um Mars God of War. So, I had to drill out these holes. And I think I may do that. So, there's two, four, six, eight. That might be it. Eight holes I'm going to have to just bore out just a little bit. This guy's installed. My oneway gates are installed. One gate was being a little stiff, but I squeeze the little ends together and it's good to go. This guy. And yeah, it's a pretty good dent. I'm happy with the progress for tonight. What is that? Is that another bit of wear? What is that? A little chip or is that art? I can't tell. Might be a tiniest little bit of wear. What do you know? Found another tiny bit. So, that's it for tonight. That was a good dent. And uh should have time to uh do some more work tomorrow. So, good job me.