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Part 7: 1985 Pinstar Gamatron Project! Garbatron cabinet is finished!

Pinball Shenanigans·video·30m 39s·analyzed·Sep 9, 2025
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.021

TL;DR

Garbatron cabinet restoration completion and assembly begins.

Summary

Mike Dus documents the completion of Garbatron, a heavily water-damaged 1985 Pinstar Gammatron conversion cabinet that Kevin at Grazley Garage fully restored over many months. The video shows the cabinet restoration process, pickup of the finished product, and Mike's initial assembly work including lock bar adjustment issues and head installation, with estimated total restoration cost exceeding $6,000.

Key Claims

  • Garbatron cabinet was sitting in a puddle of water for an unknown extended period in a basement

    high confidence · Kevin's restoration post and Mike's confirmation of the water damage and smell upon retrieval

  • Total restoration cost will be north of $6,000

    medium confidence · Mike states 'Probably north of 6,000 bucks, but uh that's yet to be determined'

  • The head had to be completely rebuilt because most of it was unsalvageable

    high confidence · Kevin's post: 'The head was sitting in a puddle of water and most of it was rotten... The head had to be rebuilt as most of it was unsavable'

  • Metal polishing service charged $100 for all the metal parts

    high confidence · Mike states: 'this job cost literally $100 to polish up all these metals, so it was well worth it'

  • Garbatron ROM is identical to Flight 2000

    high confidence · Mike examining the circuit board: 'the Garbatron game ROM, which is identical to Flight 2000'

  • The lock bar design requires adjustment because it gets pushed up when locked

    high confidence · Mike's troubleshooting: 'I've determined that the lock bar fits nicely until you lock it into place and then it gets pushed up'

  • An original Garbatron manual may have been included with the machine, with some notes and markings

    medium confidence · Mike examining manual: 'I believe, complete... we might have an original Garbatron manual which is kind of cool with some notes'

  • The transformation converted it from a conversion kit to a dedicated Garbatron machine

    high confidence · Kevin's post: 'It is no longer a conversion kit, but a dedicated pinball Garbatron'

Notable Quotes

  • “Just finished up a cabinet restoration for this Garbatron aka Garbatron for my brother Mike Dus. The head was sitting in a puddle of water and most of it was rotten.”

    Kevin (Grazley Garage) @ ~1:00 — Establishes the severity of water damage to the original machine

  • “It is no longer a conversion kit, but a dedicated pinball Garbatron. I love how this turned out and can't wait to see it finished.”

    Kevin (Grazley Garage) @ ~1:30 — Highlights the comprehensive nature of the restoration work

  • “So, Garbatron is uh out of your hands now. I'm going to go into mine to uh finish the job.”

    Mike Dus @ ~22:30 — Marks the transition point from restoration to assembly phase

  • “It's advertised as it's so easy. You don't even need a soldering iron. No, but you need to spend a week of your life figuring all this crap out.”

    Mike Dus @ ~30:45 — Humorous commentary on the complexity of the conversion despite manufacturer claims

  • “This gives the solenoids a greater voltage and makes the playfield action more lively. So, literally hightapping the transformer.”

    Mike Dus @ ~32:00 — References a performance modification mentioned in the original manual

  • “It's like the whole curb appeal kind of thing, right? So, it's much better as it sits.”

    Mike Dus @ ~42:30 — Reflects on the importance of lock bar aesthetics and ergonomics

  • “Kevin was using um the Eight Ball valley head to uh use as like a stencil for the holes to bolt the head to the cabinet.”

    Mike Dus @ ~48:45 — Shows the mechanical compatibility challenges between different cabinet models

Entities

Mike DuspersonKevinpersonGrazley GaragecompanyGarbatrongamePinstarcompanyPinball ShenanigansorganizationGammatrongameBigfoot BrucepersonFlight 2000gameQuicksilver

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Grazley Garage implementing seal of approval sticker on all restoration projects, creating branded quality mark

    high · Mike notes 'I got the Grazley Garage seal of approval sticker right there on the back. He's doing that with all his restorations now, which is pretty sweet'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Garbatron restoration required significant modifications including transformer high-tapping for increased solenoid voltage and potential heavy-duty flipper switch replacement

    high · Manual instructions: 'Unsolder the wire from terminal 5 and solder it to terminal 9... This gives the solenoids a greater voltage and makes the playfield action more lively'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Garbatron restoration demonstrates sophisticated cabinet refinishing techniques including custom stencil work, powder coating coordination, hand-polishing of metal components, and professional artwork application

    high · Kevin's restoration process including yellow base coat, red overpaint, white speckle effects, gunmetal powder coating, and mirror-finish polishing

Transcript

youtube_auto_sub · $0.000

0:00
[Music] Okay. What's today? It is the uh 7th. All right. Let's go check the garbage schedule. It's September 7th. Yep, it is garbage day. Oh, that reminds me. Garbatron is done. I better go pick that up. I'm Mike Dus and this is Pinball Shenanigans.
0:29
[Music] Okay. Okay, I thought it'd be cool to share Kevin's post in the uh Ontario Arcade and Pinball Collectors and Beyond, I know it's a mouthful, group on Facebook. If you want to see all of the uh restorations Kevin does, just go to this group. He posts every single one, lots of photos, and you can really see the full transformation. Um let's uh read what he has to say here. Just finished up a cabinet restoration for this Gamatron aka Garbatron for my brother Mike Dinus. The head was sitting in a puddle of water and most of it was rotten. I made tracings of the artwork and I stripped the conversion decals off and sanded the cabinet down to bare wood. The head had to be rebuilt as most of it was unsavable. I fixed all the bumps and bruises and we decided to change the colors to match the back glass so it went dark blue. I laid out the artwork and painted yellow, then red, then added white splatter to make it more spacey. The legs were sent to get gunmetal gray powder coating, and the side rails, lock down bar, and coin door were high polished. New leg bolts, levelers, etc. It is no longer a conversion kit, but a dedicated pinstar gamutron. I love how this turned out and can't wait to see it finished. So, here it is. How amazing does that look? I haven't yet physically gone to see this or pick it up yet. I don't know how I'm going to edit this video, but we may be seeing this before I see the real thing. So, who knows? But that's it right there. Finished product. Looks incredible. So, let's just scroll through a few photos here. Oh, and Kevin did the hand polishing of the shooter rod and housing himself. I busted out his buffing wheel, but he did that so that everything matched all nicely. It looks amazing. I can't wait to see it live in the flesh. So, we'll just kind of scroll through. There's about 70 photos. I think that's the max you're allowed. And oh, yeah, there we go. I got the Grazley Garage seal of approval sticker right there on the back. He's doing that with all his He's doing that with all his restorations now, which is pretty sweet.
game
Vipergame
Eight Ball Deluxegame
Power Playgame
Superior Metalscompany
Ontario Arcade and Pinball Collectors and Beyondorganization
Internet Pinball Databaseorganization
3:03
Fullon dedicated Gamatron. There's a lot of I mean, of the Gamatrons that are out there, how many are conversion kits, how many are actually changed to dedicated? I love the color choices we ended up going with. And I just happen to have these uh red cabinet protectors, so that worked out pretty nicely. Really, really matches the art on the back glass and playfield beautifully. This splatter job, it's pro. Adds a layer of depth and dimension. Really brings the cabinet out. Oh, look at that. That is mirror finish. Now that he's done it possibly his first time, I imagine he's going to do it now every time cuz it just looks so good. So, here are the before photos. Yep. That was sitting in a puddle of water. Who knows for how long, but it was drenched when I got it, and you could smell it. There's the remnants of uh Bobby or the donor cab. That decal was not salvageable. I mean, we were originally going to just cut it out, leave the star, paint around it, but even the star itself is just real fugly. So, we just couldn't let that slide. It's a gamutron. I mean, come on. It's going to be an expensive Oh, look at that. You can really see the whole Bobby or action right there. It's going to be an expensive uh job when it's all said and done. Probably north of 6,000 bucks, but uh that's yet to be determined. I still got to add boards. That used to be the head. Wow.
5:02
Slowly trying to get salvaged. Artwork getting sanded off. that was was left of the head. And then the process of rebuilding it, cutting out all of these uh air vents. I haven't seen these photos yet, by the way. I've seen, you know, a couple here and there, but I haven't seen the full Monty. Look at that. Just as good, if not better than new. Lots of Bondo
5:41
paint going on. Kevin did a great job making these stencils. Like he's a pro at this now. Starting with the yellow. Even that alone looked really good. I thought, damn, maybe I should have went with yellow. But so now he's taping that off. You can see just that little lip there is going to stay yellow and then boom red.
6:13
So that was finished product pre spackle. There is speckle spackle flake fleck whatever you call it going on.
6:31
And oh, taping off to paint the neck black. It looks like assembly time.
6:40
That's the lamp panel going in. Back glass going in. I still got a lock and key for the head. That's pretty sweet. Those are off and drilled out and missing. And then there we go. Back to the finished product. All right. Well, I'm going to go pick this bad boy up and uh bring it home. Hey, doggies. Are you ready to check out Hey, doggies. Are you ready to check out Garbatron? Are you? Are you excited? He looks so excited. He looks so excited. All right, let's go see what we got. All right, let's go see what we got. Shame. Shame. They're chilling. They're having a good They're chilling. They're having a good time. All right, where is it?
7:22
Ah, there it is. Let's check this out. Ooh, that is shiny. Superior Metals did a good job, eh? Mhm. Cuz they were kind of humming and hawing about, "Oh, we're not going to be able to polish these metals." Do they ever say why? Oh, it's just there's a few scratches. Oh, it's just there's a few scratches. So, just It's not that they couldn't, it's just how far do you want to go and how shiny do you want them? Okay. But yeah, anything Okay. But yeah, anything is better than what it was. So, you wanted it like an actual near mirror you wanted it like an actual near mirror finish, it would have been Yeah. Well, uh, this job cost literally Yeah. Well, uh, this job cost literally $100 to polish up all these metals, so it was well worth it. Yeah. You got maybe a tiniest little scuff that you can see here and there, but uh, you did a nice job polishing the shooter rod and, uh, housing as well. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I didn't provide that nice brand new spring. It's looking good. Just as good, if not better. Live in the flesh. So, Garbatron is uh out of your hands now. I'm going to go into mine to uh finish the job. I noticed in the photos we've got the Grazley garage seal of approval there. So, another masterpiece in the Grazley garage completed. Garbatron is seeing the light of day. How many years did it spend in that basement at Paul's place? I'll shut the door so the doggies don't run out. It was in a dark, dingy basement for many, many moons, but uh it's coming home to go into my dark, dingy basement now. Hey, fellow shenanigans. If you are 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. Ellie, what do you think about the news machine? Huh? You gonna inspect it? No. Okay, time to take a break. All right, Gamatron has made it into the basement. Jamie helped me get out of the car. Jay, the neighbor, helped me bring it down. And it's quite the trifecta here. I mean, had to move Viper out of the way, but we got Gamatron, Viper, and Quicksilver right in a little cluster here. That's pretty cool, cuz Gamatron is basically stern, right? So, I think the idea is to install the playfield into the cabinet. I might need to borrow the wife again cuz I don't I might be I might be able to pull that off on my own. We'll see. So, got the nicely powdercoated legs,
10:53
gunmetal gray, new levelers, and here's some of the other parts and pieces. This is the add-on board. What do they call it? The PSM. The um I forget what it stands for now, but there's the Gamatron game ROM, which is identical to Flight 2000. And I'm guessing that is like battery for memory. Here's this weird ribbon cable. 40 pin. It's actually in good shape, but I'm going to try and not use this thing. Now, I don't know if all these socketed chips
11:52
were somebody's doing after the fact. There's a little jumper wire there or it came like that cuz these guys are not socketed, but all the rest are. See if we can see some um solder work. I don't know that that's solder work
12:24
from here. This angle without my glasses on I think it's factory. There's just all this slime that's dripping down the board for whatever reason. So, that's what that looks like.
12:45
And then we've got what's this? Oh, the power play instructions. Don't need that anymore. This is probably from Power Play as well.
13:06
And then these are the red gels that go on the back glass. And then it also comes with these blackouts.
13:17
If you're going to use a sevendigit display, I guess you need a little bit of blackout because the uh display windows are a little too wide. So you add that in behind just to make it right. And then of course you've got your little fake zeros
13:39
which I think my back glass is missing. But I can either reuse these. I've got one, two, three, four of them. Or yeah, I'll probably just reuse those. They should clean up. Okay, if I'm going six-digit, which I probably am, I could go seven-digit if I wanted to, but we'll see. Remember when I switched over um quicks from Meteor to Quicks? I added I went from six to seven digits. So, I kind of know how to do that now. And it's not that big of a deal. some extra
14:29
apron cards. Here's another one. Oh, and then Kevin uh painted up the transformer grill for me. So, got that. And then check this out. This appears to be I don't know could be photocopied but it looks like it's in pretty good shape in terms of like here's the original manual not original. Here's the manual that is on internet pinball database and you can see how clearly photocopied it is. You can see the edges there and all the ink here. And I know it just looks photocopied. This it's got some weird stain on it. I don't know what that's all about, but kind of looks like it's not photocopied. Somebody has circled some stuff,
15:33
but it is, I believe, complete. And you see there's like no ink around the sides. So we might have an original Gamatron manual which is kind of cool with some notes. Fuse broken. And uh I kind of briefly read over some instructions. It's not exactly for the faint of heart. Um let's see. Take the wire from the PSM board with the seven pin connector. Plug this into the MPU connector J5 all of the way. Now, that one's an easy step, but there's a lot of steps where you got to change the connector wiring.
16:24
Let's see if I can find one. Uh, find the wire in position eight and remove it. Tape it up with electrical tape. Remove the wires at positions 4, 5, 6, and 7. Move them over to occupy positions 5 through 8. Find the wire with different tape connection connectors at each end. Plug one end into position four of the ball and play display and the other end into connector J1 and the MPU at position one. There's a lot of that and uh that might take me a minute or two to kind of figure out. I mean, hopefully someone has done most of the uh hard work, but I definitely don't think this is going to go without a hitch. But uh there was something else interesting here. See, here's more harness manipulation. More harness manipulation.
17:17
Here we go. Check this out. On the transformer, between terminals five and seven, there's a jumper wire. Clip this or unsolder it and remove it. Unsolder the wire from terminal 5 and solder it to terminal 9. Between terminals 9 and 11, solder in jump a jumper wire. Reinstall the protective cage. This gives the solenoids a greater voltage and makes the playfield action more lively. So, literally hightapping the transformer. It sounds like I don't know if that's already been done, but that is something I'll have to look into. And also, you need to change out the cabinet switches. Where does it say that? Let me see if I can find that. And this was advertised as it's so easy. You don't even need a soldering iron. No, but you need to spend a week of your life figuring all this crap out. Uh Oh, yeah. So, for leg levelers, it provides you with two new 3-in leg levelers. So, you want the game front should be as low as possible and the back as high as possible. They really want you to jack this sucker up. So, it's the way it's designed. I will probably do that. Maybe not fully jacked up at the back, but pretty darn close to it. Oh, and here, this is another thing I got to check on. Find the two new heavyduty cabinet flipper switches and replace the old cabinet flipper switches. The old flipper switches are not strong enough for Gamatron's high-powered flippers. So, if the transformer is not been manipulated, then maybe I don't need the heavy duty cabinet flipper switches. So, this is all stuff I have to look into. Um, the first, you know, maybe eight pages or so are instructions for the conversion, but then once you get to this part here, the rest is mostly just game operation. Um, you know, maintenance, self diagnostics, switch adjustments, general game operation. and all the different um bookkeeping fun bookkeeping functions and game adjustments, you know, like bonus advancement, bonus multiplier. So, the first quarter of the manual is the most um important part that I need to focus on. So, at least there's not, you know, 60 pages of instructions on the conversion. It's just the first 10 pages or so. So, that's all I've got to work with. And I think I'm going to get the cabinet set up here on legs and just start with that. All right. I got the cabinet body on some legs here. But, uh, before I get too ahead of myself, uh, me and Kevin were discussing the lock bar situation. It's just loose and floppy. Not really sure why. There's not really an adjustment for it. You know, some of the WPC games, there's screws that you can like raise or lower to help snug up the lock bar, but this does not have that. So, it just
21:02
needs to be tightened. So, I'm going to have to figure out the best way to do that. And we kind of discussed the idea of
21:13
slotting out some of these holes so that we can kind of basically sort of lower the receiver bar.
21:25
Anyway, I got to figure something out with that before I proceed. But here's some more fun ahead. Let's see everything else here. This looks good. Does this look like
21:40
replaced high voltage flipper contacts? Well, I would say yes. Looks fine to me.
21:54
Those guys should be good. But um got some extra wiring here
22:07
perhaps for a knocker cuz there is a lack of a knocker in this cabinet. So we're going to have to figure that out. And then this was uh part of the kit here. this volume pot that you would add on. And some ballet cabinets did not have a speaker in the bottom, I think. And I think that's why this whole speaker hole, which is oval, and the speaker itself, which is obviously not original, are there because maybe this particular cabinet never had a speaker in the cabinet cuz it says in the instructions, if you don't have a speaker in the cabinet, cut a hole. Don't just drill a bunch of holes in it cuz the audio isn't as good. So that explains the uh the hackery of the speaker situation. Um so I'll have to figure out what these wires are for. And I checked on my verister. It doesn't look like it has been struck by lightning. there. Sometimes if your house gets struck by lightning, this Verister if there's an over surge will blow up and uh it'll be black and explody. So that's intact. So that's good. But you can see some of the uh wiring manipulation required, but doesn't look too bad actually. other than that. And then this that ABCD matches up to this ABCD. So, you know, maybe maybe a lot of that wiring manipulation is already been done and I don't need to worry about it. So, that'll be nice. So, I'm gonna probably spend some time trying to figure this out. So, wish me luck. Okay, I've determined that the lock bar fits nicely until you lock it into place and then it gets pushed up. So, that's because
24:40
is pushing the lock bar up. So, I found another one. I knew I had one. I thought, well, maybe if I put in a different style, then maybe that would solve the problem. But I don't see any reason why I can't just sort of file this down, you know, and install it. I'd like to think that that would work. Not really sure why this is designed this way, but I feel like if I screw it up by filing this down, then no biggie, cuz I've got a spare. So, I'm going to give that a try. Well, the strategy is working slowly but surely.
25:34
All right. Well, I figured out why it's designed the way it is. This little part needs to be tall enough to actually open and close the slot and so that it doesn't slip through like so once it's closed. Fortunately, it does technically still work fine. It's not ideal. Um, and it is slightly better. It is a slight improvement. I can lock it up. And it's tight there. It's a little bit loose there. It's kind of a little bit up though. I don't love that at all. So, I'm not sure what I'm going to do about this yet, but I don't recommend you filing down that part. Not a good solution. Okay, I was about to give up on this and just move on to something else. Then, I thought I'd try one last thing. It's not my favorite solution in the world, but look at that. There's a little bit of play like that, but it's flat down. Pretty flat down. Maybe not 100%, but when you approach a game and the loose bar, the lock bar is all loose and floppy. It just it's just not ergonomic. It doesn't feel good. It's just it's like the whole curb appeal kind of thing, right? So, it's much better as it sits. But here's the solution. Not my favorite. I added a washer there. there and there just to kind of sort of lean the thing more inward towards the back of the cabinet. I'm just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what happened. And look at that. You know, like this side not quite as perfect, but for now I'm just going to live with that. Unless you have any other suggestions or ideas on how to like really do this up, um, let me know. Otherwise, this is probably going to be the final solution. Now I can finally move on. That was like an hour. All right, I just installed a new lock. And how good does this look? Just take a moment to appreciate all the silvery shiny metals all come together here. So, I've got Bigfoot Bruce. He's uh working diligently on printing me up some goodies. Hint hint. And um also hint hint, but this is a thing of beauty as it sits right now. Really turned out nice. So, I feel like I've finally made progress installing the lock. Now, time to uh maybe just throw on the head now. I I don't have much time. It is the wife's brother's my brother-in-law's 50th birthday. So, we're going to head out for some dinner shortly, but think I might have enough time to install a head. Okay, I got the head installed. It's all centered and aligned.
29:18
Kevin was using um the valley head to uh use as like a stencil for the holes to bolt the head to the cabinet. And for whatever reason when he installed the head it was like shifted over like a couple well maybe not a couple inches but like an inch and obviously that ain't good. So, for whatever reason, the eightball valley head slightly different than Bobby or belly head. So, had to drill a couple extra holes. Okay, I just got word the bus is leaving. I'm going to have some stuff to figure out like WTF and WTF and there's some hackery and I think that's you know required but uh oh yeah and it looks like someone screwed a bridge to the head at one point. So um that's where I'm going to leave off. I did find a knocker and knocker assembly if I want to go ahead and reinstall one, which I probably do. Some more wires here. Maybe that was an old knocker possibly up here. And uh anyway, that's where I'm going to leave uh y'all. So, hope you enjoyed. We'll see you on the next