The Grasley Garage! It's going to be a one of a kind Twilight Zone!

Pinball Shenanigans·video·30m 29s·analyzed·Apr 9, 2026

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Restoration progress on Six Million Dollar Man and Twilight Zone at Grasley Garage with gameplay tests.

Summary

Mike Dimas of Pinball Shenanigans documents restoration work on two vintage machines at the Grasley Garage: a 1978 Six Million Dollar Man with severe wiring damage and connector issues, and a 1992 Twilight Zone that had been in storage for 5 years. The Twilight Zone is brought back to functional gameplay through MPU repairs and wiring fixes, while the Six Million Dollar Man requires more extensive diagnostics. The episode showcases hands-on restoration challenges, collaboration with other enthusiasts, and playfield diagnostics.

Key Claims

The Twilight Zone machine was acquired on June 11, 2021, and has been stored for approximately 5 years
high confidence · Mike Dimas confirms the date via message from original owner Steve Kerchen; corroborated by the fact that Mike states 'I've literally had this for 5 years'
Mike paid $6,100 for the Twilight Zone from Steve Kerchen, with a $20 tip to him and his wife for delivery, totaling $6,120
high confidence · Mike Dimas directly states this pricing; notes it's a good price given his intent to restore it into a 'one-of-a-kind Gravely Garage masterpiece'
Steve Kerchen originally paid $2,000 for the Twilight Zone and had the seller deliver it directly
high confidence · Steve Kerchen divulged this to Mike Dimas during a message exchange; Mike confirms the information in the video
The Six Million Dollar Man has a completely missing J1 connector on the solenoid driver
high confidence · Mike Dimas states: 'we're missing a connector entirely on the solenoid driver that seems to have vanished completely' and later 'I mean, it might be miswired, but somehow we're missing the J1 connector on the solenoid driver entirely, so I don't know how that is even possible'
Twilight Zone has a gumball machine motor issue caused by a cut wire; the motor is responsible for dispensing balls
high confidence · Dutch identified the problem; Mike discovers a cut wire and notes 'Turns out the wire was cut cuz the motor is shorted or something.' Later fixed via transistor Q32 jumpering
The Twilight Zone is running an outdated ROM version (L-4) that needs updating
medium confidence · Mike asks 'What's the latest ROMs for this game?' and notes 'it's like definitely outdated. There's a home ROM or something, right?' but doesn't confirm the current version definitively
Twilight Zone has overheating issues with the playfield due to design flaws; drill vent holes were added to mitigate this
medium confidence · Mike and Kevin discuss: 'one of the main reasons that this thing breaks is cuz it gets so hot' and note evidence of vent holes drilled in the playfield

Notable Quotes

“The goal is to stick in thousands of more dollars into it and turn it into a one-of-a-kind Gravely Garage masterpiece.”
Mike Dimas@ 7:22 — Establishes the restoration philosophy and long-term vision for the Twilight Zone project
“Check out this mess. We've got cut wires, taped up wires. We've got like general illumination wires kind of just sort of tied together here like this.”
Mike Dimas@ 1:51 — Documents the severity of wiring damage and prior repair attempts on the machine
“For the first time since you guys have had $6 million man, we're going to power this thing up.”
Mike Dimas@ 3:02 — Marks first successful power-up of the restored machine after connector repairs
“I've literally had this for 5 years and uh it's time to see if we can get this thing to work.”
Mike Dimas@ 6:44 — Establishes timeline of ownership and urgency to restore the Twilight Zone
“Holy It worked. We have life.”
Mike Dimas@ 10:21 — Confirms successful breakthrough in getting Twilight Zone to boot after MPU repairs
“Dutch is uh my right-hand man.”
Mike Dimas@ 22:38 — Acknowledges key collaborator's expertise in Twilight Zone diagnostics
“This works way better than Six Million Dollar Man.”

Entities

Mike DimaspersonPinball Shenaniganscontent_creatorGrasley GaragevenueSteve KerchenpersonCorey CookpersonDutchpersonKevinpersonMark BraunpersonBrianpersonJamie

Signals

?
restoration_signal: Six Million Dollar Man exhibits extensive prior repair attempts with cut wires, taped connections, improperly spliced general illumination wires, and a completely missing J1 solenoid driver connector. Suggests machine was subjected to non-professional repair efforts.
high · Mike documents 'cut wires, taped up wires,' melted connectors with salvageable male headers still installed, and ultimately discovers entirely missing J1 connector that Corey Cook cannot locate despite detailed harness inspection
?
restoration_signal: Twilight Zone suffered humidity damage from U-Haul storage unit leak (5-year storage period), resulting in battery corrosion on MPU, snapped flipper rubbers, and motor hibernation requiring jumpstart procedure.
high · Mike states: 'this was in my um U-Haul storage when that got rained on and leaked, I believe. Cuz you can see a little bit of like the humidity marks.' Also notes popped flipper rubbers 'probably from me storing the machine for 5 years'
?
technology_signal: Twilight Zone MPU boot issues resolved by reseating switch connectors and battery replacement. One chip noted as previously replaced with socket (non-standard for production). Suggests prior repair history and component fragility.
high · Mike reseats connectors, observes battery damage, notes 'one thing I noticed was that that one chip there that's in pretty rough shape. That's been replaced already. It's got a socket. Doesn't normally.'
?
restoration_signal: Twilight Zone playfield shows warped slingshot plastics, mushed target backing, broken target components, and general wear patterns consistent with extended play or environmental stress.
high · Kevin and Mike inspect playfield: 'We've got some pretty warpy slingshot plastics here,' 'This target has like the extra beefy backing to it, but uh That didn't stop it from getting completely mushed'

Topics

Restoration techniques and diagnosticsprimaryWiring repair and electrical troubleshootingprimaryMPU (Main Processing Unit) repair and replacementprimaryElectromechanical vs. solid-state machine differencessecondaryPlayfield customization and cosmetic restorationprimaryCompetitive pinball tournament participationsecondaryMachine storage and environmental damagesecondaryROM versions and code updatessecondaryKnown Twilight Zone reliability issues (clock motor, overheating)primaryCollaborative restoration community and knowledge sharingsecondary

Sentiment

neutral(0)

Transcript

youtube_auto_sub · $0.000

Okay, part two Gravely Garage, I'm heading back over there today and got two goals. One, try and get the $6 million man up and running. It's got some hackery going on with the connectors, especially around the power supply, apparently. So, we're going to try and remedy that and get $6 million man up and running and maybe even get a play test on it before I head out of town. Secondly, Kevin set up the Twilight Zone last night and it is stuck in factory adjustment. You know, when you turn on the machine and the batteries are dead and it says factory adjustment or whatever it says. It's just stuck in that screen because the diagnostic buttons don't work or at least the exit one doesn't. So, it's stuck in that mode right there right now and also the clock is spinning constantly. So, that's as far as Kevin got with the Twilight Zone, but I think we should be able to get that thing up and running. So, that is exciting and we'll see what kind of progress we can make. I'm Mike Dimas and this [music] is Pinball Shenanigans. This thing truly is incredible. And it would be more incredible if we can get it to work. So, let's uh get under the hood and see what's going on. All right, so this is what we're up against here. Check out this mess. We've got cut wires, taped up wires. We've got like general illumination wires kind of just sort of tied together here like this. White and green are tied together. This uh orange and red are tied together. Somebody was having some light issues at the very least and was trying to resolve it that way. This connector's great. It still has the male header installed on the one side. Oh, and look, it's kind of melted in there. So, this connector is not salvageable. But, you know, we got new MPU, new lamp driver, shopped up and serviced. Solenoid driver and soundboard and new power supply. So, just got to remedy this disaster and then we'll see what happens. Okay, here's some of the shrapnel. And this connector is fully re-pinned. This connector needed to be replaced cuz well, you just saw the other one. And all this has been tidied up. So, for the first time since you guys have had $6 million man, we're going to power this thing up. We're going to plug this in right side up and hopefully don't see any magic smoke. Okay, let's get rid of this towel. Dutch, do you want to have the honors? No, cuz I don't want you to blame me if things go wrong. That's why That's why I offered. Okay, let's see what happens. All right, is it on? No, okay. Like literally this is going to be the first time you're going to see a light bulb, you're going to see any We should get at least get lights. Here we go. We got lights. We have Oh, we do have three, four, five, six, seven. We got seven flashes. We got some signs of life. What I think we got is some weird lamp issues. We've got some locked on lights. Oh, yeah. Look at this. Um what's happening with the displays? No, the displays are missing one. One's not working. Oh. Those are the Those are the player up lights. Mhm. Okay, and the sound was doing something weird as well. Yeah, that display is definitely weird. It must be like there's a working auxiliary display driver or something for the extras. Let's try and coin up. Okay. Okay, so I think it's maybe set to like fake chimes, you know, instead of Isn't there a couple of sound options on this thing? Anyway, let's hit the start button and see what happens. Yeah, it's not the sound chime up sound we were kind of hoping for, but got a free 100 points because something happened. We don't have solenoids or this. No. Pop bumper is triggering that pop bumper. We've had this before. This one's not working. What was the last game we had very much like this? It was Harlem. It's all all kinds of weird issues. This is This very reminiscent of that. Music to my ears. Yeah, here we go. [music] That sounds amazing. Okay, well, yeah. [snorts] Kind of missing Oh, the switches work. Flippers? Oh, no, not even flippers? What? That sling is triggering this sling. Oh, that one's starting to lock on. Okay. Well, We're cutting you off, mister. We have a little bit of life, but it is just barely. So, we got a lot of work to do. Okay, made a post in the Pinball Repair Help Group for $6 million man. We haven't quite solved the mystery yet. We are missing a connector entirely on the solenoid driver that seems to have vanished completely. So, uh while we're waiting on solving that mystery, we're going to check out my Twilight Zone. First time seeing it on legs. I got this off fellow Shenanigander Steve Kerchen and I messaged him today and asked him if he remembered when he brought it to me cuz he delivered it. And he said one moment and then he like very specifically replied like June 11th, 2021 or something like that. So, I've literally had this for 5 years and uh it's time to see if we can get this thing to work. So, fun fact, he divulged to me today that he paid $2,000 for this thing. And the guy's even like brought it into his vehicle for him. So, he didn't even even have to lift a finger. I will divulge that I paid Steve $6,100 for it, which is obviously a great price still [snorts] and a $20 tip for him and his wife to buy lunch. So, $6,120 was exactly what I paid for this thing. So, the goal is to stick in thousands of more dollars into it and turn it into a one-of-a-kind Gravely Garage masterpiece. I got to get a photo of those cool decals from Mark Braun from pinballdecals.eu. Mark Braun? Oh, that's where they're from. pinballdecals.eu. So, yes, this will be a one-of-a-kind Twilight Zone and well, you turned it on yesterday. And oh, there's Brian just texting back. You did a $6 million man for him recently and we hit him up and hopefully he's going to send some photos of his wiring so we can confirm that ours is correct or hacked up. It's probably not correct. Okay, so, turning on Twilight Zone first time in 5 years since owning it. We got the clock spinning around. We got factory settings restored. And you said it's just kind of stuck on that menu because none of these buttons are working. And that's basically where we're at. Uh have a quick look at the before while we're here, too. It's pretty faded. It's a little bit chunky and some touch-ups there. Translate looks okay, a little bit wrinkly maybe. Display looks okay. The play field's not like horrendously filthy, is it? Flipper rubbers have popped off and slingshot rubber. Oh. Okay, this doesn't look too horrible. Got to get some gumballs in that thing. So, all right, let's see if uh we can get this thing to actually boot up. All right, well, this is not a good sign. Got some battery damage here, so that might be our culprit. Okay, so, yeah, one thing I noticed was that that one chip there that's in pretty rough shape. That's been replaced already. It's got a socket. Doesn't normally. So, I re-seated all these switch connectors. I moved these two guys from the lower to the upper um Let's spots cuz they're the same electronically. Turn on the machine and well, the clock stopped spinning. So, just in case coin door buttons now actually work. I hit record. Let's see. Holy It worked. We have life. All right. Let's add a credit. Uh, how do you work this uh European coin door? Okay, service credit. Here we go. Ooh, that's loud. Let's turn down some volume if that actually works. [music] We're alive. That's amazing. I don't imagine we have balls in here or three balls in the coin door that you get so there might be still like locked. Okay. [clears throat] Look at that. It's alive. I'll just have to clean up that MPU a little bit. Oh, power ball. All right. Okay, you want to grab that? It's a little stiff. We don't know that is also a stiff. Ooh, that sounds great. No idea how many balls are in here. What? Throw on some flipper rubbers? Yeah. Uh, yeah, sure. You got a couple. Is that even um proper glass? Let's remove this. This. Have a little look here. It's not like fresh barn find, right? So, whoever had this probably playing it. Oh, upper flipper rubbers snapped too. That's probably from me storing the machine for 5 years. That's all my fault. And this this was in my um U-Haul storage when that got rained on and leaked, I believe. Cuz you can see a little bit of like the humidity marks. We don't really have much good stuff. Well, that's fine. We'll just use what we got on hand just for testing purposes. Oh, you got the super bands. They are the worst. [snorts] I hate super bands. That's why these are not on anything. Yeah. They are annoying to put on and uh they're not great to play with either. It just kind of kills the ball. So, all right. So, we got to watch out. Do you have a rubber here for um slingshot just something so the ball doesn't get wedged in there, anything? Yeah, look at that. Perfect. Okay. All right. Well, let's hit the start button and see what happens. It freaking works. Let's uh try again then. Oh, flippers work. Ah, no solenoid. Maybe I got to close coin door. I need the key. Maybe I could just pull the interlock switch, but whatever. Come on, baby. What? So, all the solenoids do work except that. Oh, I see some fun wiring stuff going on here. Uh, I don't know how to get the ball out of there easily. Let's see what we got. Check this out. BUT HERE, THIS SOLENOID. OH, HERE WE GO. Let's hold that there while it does ball search. Did it work? Hey, it did fire. The ball can't get out of there with that being in that position. Okay. I think we might have to solder that wire on just to see if this thing works. Okay, broken wire soldered. We threw in and confirmed there was six balls. And it just staged a couple. Was it two or three they go in here? There was three cuz the ceramic ball went in there, the power ball. So, this might actually work now. Let's give her a play test and see. Didn't let me plunge it. It just auto launched, but whatever. I'll take what I can get right now. This is uh functioning. Pop bumpers, flippers, the magnet. Let's try and uh get a multiball going. Did I kick out work now? Here we go. We're going to get the uh It's working, dude. Amazing. Do I spell gumball? Lock. Let's see if that works. Yes. Oh, it doesn't want to let me plunge balls for whatever reason. We'll figure that out eventually. [music] Here we go. Gumball. That works. Okay, we've got the power lit now, so I can test the uh oh-oh, now what's happening? Something in the gumball I think might not be working. Balls go into gumball, but they don't come out of the gumball machine. I think that's our issue. And ball search doesn't want to resolve that. So, I guess we're stuck in the Twilight Zone, but it's working a lot better than it was like moments ago, so There's your There's your before. Oh, it's giving me a chaser ball. Let's try the power constellation ball here. Yeah, it works. Yes. That is awesome. Okay. multiball. All right. multiball play it. Try and get one tap. Oh, no. Last chance. Yeah. All right. Well, that's pretty awesome. A lot more functional than the $6 million man thus far. [music] All right, Dutch to the rescue. He knows his Twilight Zone inside and out and said, "You got a motor problem. Maybe the wire's off." And check it out. Sure enough. Should be a simple easy fix and we should be back up and running in no time. Actually, a long time cuz it takes like an hour for that station to heat up. Got some pretty warpy slingshot plastics here. But look what Kevin has instead. Bam. Nice and flat. They kind of look newish. Maybe they're new. Yeah, it's just new old stock. A little dusty, but bam. Looks like a homemade plastic here. We'll have to replace that guy. Yeah, this guy's a little broken. Does Oh, yeah. That one's in rough shape. Yeah, I might have to just spring for a new set. This one's a little bit warpy, too, but not too bad. But yeah, it's got the prototype post plugs. Is that only for early Twilight Zone playfields or as far as I'm aware. I think it's like prototype / early production. Yeah. I think. Don't quote me on that. The rest looks pretty Did they drill vent holes? Oh. Oh, yeah, because one of the main reasons that this thing breaks is cuz it gets so hot. So, I think you're right about that. This target has like the extra beefy backing to it, but uh That didn't stop it from getting completely mushed. All right, let's see what happens. Oh, I guess we need the plug. Here you go. Got that wire soldered up. And now Turns out the wire was cut cuz the motor is shorted or something. Yeah, blowing fuses or something. See if uh we get some balls spitting out. [music] Oh, yeah, we got to turn that down again. All right. Come on, gumballs. This should be going by now, I think. Uh I don't know. Maybe we got to You would think it would reset automatically. Yeah. Hmm. Start a game, see what happens. Uh I'll turn that down first and then try to do a gumball test. [snorts] Okay, we're going to go straight to gumball test. And Nada. What? Oh, man. I thought it would be a simple fix. Okay, Dutch found that Q32 is responsible for the motor. So, let's jumper it. And look what happens. It actually works. So, does that mean the transistor's bad? What does it mean? Okay, I guess as Dutch said, the gumball machine just needed to get out of hibernation because now in gumball test, it works. So, the last and official test. Oh, and this gate is just being little sticky and that's why it's auto launching. It's not making it to the shooter lane. All right. How do we get the power ball action happening? How do we activate the gumball machine there, Dutch? Oh, okay. Gumball. All right. I knew that was for multiball, but yeah, here we go. Load gumball. And Look at that. Just needed to jump-start that transistor. I got to do a little gameplay video of Powerball. Dutch is uh my right-hand man. Uh-oh. Oh. What have I done? You broke up my cradle. Oh, here we go. Powerball jackpot, come on. Your back ramp. Oh, you almost got it. Hey, I got it. Yes. There it is. Powerball jackpot should be what? 50 mil? Yeah. Bam. That's Mania jackpot. This works way better than Six Million Dollar Man. Oh, I almost had another. Oh, Trying to multitask. Okay, here we go. Here we go. One more powerball. Jackpot near the right ramp. Right here. Right ramp right there. Boom. Two for the price of one. Oh, come on. Oh. So close. I can't see. There we go. I can't see. I My elbow was completely blocking you. Start playing. Oh. Wrong one. You got to hit that. Oh, we need to All right. Well, It's very hard You get the point. Oh, that was almost a drain ball. Hard to play from this perspective. Oh, not not bad. Uh wait. No, just regular. Regular Power Mania. Oh, we got it. screen for Power Mania. Okay. Clock millions. Let's lay nail that target up the middle. Bam. Now the clock died. Oh, It made like a quarter rotation a minute and That's the one thing that we haven't fixed yet. And the one thing that's broken on almost every Twilight Zone. Including ours. Yeah. It's hard to keep maintained, too. It's like aftermarket boards and stuff, but work with varying degrees of success. What do you have? Oh, that was cool. It doesn't have the prototype magnet. Just the one up there. Hold the flipper up. Bam. I just snuck that up at the last millisecond. At this rate, we're going to get to freaking Lost in the Zone, but I wasn't planning for this. have one mode under our belt. Yeah, but we're playing so amazing. It's also ball three. It's not looking great for us to It's not looking great for us to start, but 14 modes in one ball. We can do it. 14 modes. Place your bets. Well, number 14 being Lost in the Zone. Is the light bulb out? It's probably a a lot of light bulbs out. But I'm thinking a few. I spotted one. There's like Oh, yeah. Okay. Half the seven main playfield. Two million is a Let's do it again. Is Why is the power lit for eternity? Is that normal? No, because it's ramps, but our mode we just got was Battle the Power, right? Okay, it's over. I'll have to check my ROMs. What's the latest ROMs for this game? Uh it's like definitely outdated. There's a home ROM or something, right? Yeah, I think yours is L-4, [clears throat and snorts] like [music] Oh, flipper bonus. Cute. Look at that. I remembered. Extra And a match. Knocker works. Beauty. Okay, so we had some pretty good success with Twilight Zone. Six Million Dollar Man, not so much, but Corey Cook of London Pinball is headed over to the Greasy Garage fairly shortly, actually. And hopefully he'll be able to sort that out. And if so, then I can maybe do an update follow-up report what the F is going on with that thing cuz I mean, it might be miswired, but somehow we're missing the J1 connector on the solenoid driver entirely, so I don't know how that is even possible. Anyway, that is all for now. We'll see you guys on the next one. Okay, this is part three. I'm going back to the Greasy Garage. I got to bring a couple things over there, including Where is it? Where is it? I found this upstairs. Well, Jamie did. Cuz I was telling her about my gumball machine on my Twilight Zone, how I was looking for some marbles. Bam. Chinese checker set we bought to give away as a Christmas gift and never did. So, I got that. Check this out. Oh, I just spilled it all over the place. Robby the robot, he's in like 10 pieces. Don't know why, but that's how I got him years ago. And um Oh, look at this. Clock decal. So, I'm going to drop off this stuff. Wait, hold on. There's more. I should pay attention to the road even, potentially. Make sure I'm not straddling lanes. Blue shooter rod. Cuz the one that's on there right now is like an old Bally Stern with a point. That ain't going to fly. Also going to the post office to ship Gametron combo board, the original, and flash manual. But anyway, I'm going to drop off that stuff. By the way, we had 25 players at our Forked River tournament last night. And guess who took it down. Oh, yeah. Final game was on Rock, by the way. And I haven't played that in like 10 years. And it's just one game, final four. Player one finished with a million and change. Player two finished with a million and a tiny bit more change. I was like at 800,000. I got right up to the point where I was close to passing. And I played for like 5 minutes and literally managed to score less than 1,000 points. I'm like, "Where are all the points on this game?" But eventually, I finally scored some points. And uh Corey was player four. He didn't catch up, so uh there you have it. I just brought all these goods for Twilight Zone. We got some gumballs, clock decal, clock boards, shooter rod, Robby the robot. I have to assemble him and LED him. I literally had this for like probably 7 years. And instead of this ugly coin door, we're going to go with the OG one that I found in the basement. It was missing all the switches and wires and everything. But I got that wired up and hopefully that will work. All right. So, Corey was here and like I said, found the missing wires hiding in the harness and it has got this connector all wired up, but uh still got a lot of work to do, but at least that's resolved. Kevin has started disassembling the Tales of the Arabian Nights Davis still's old machine. This is his old shop job with all the purple action. And uh Kevin is very, very excited about swapping this playfield. It's going to be so fun. Are you guys chilling in the sun? Hey, who said I was going to pet you? All right, fine. I will. All right.