As some of you know, I'm a bit of a historian with an interest in the work of Ted Zale.
The acquisition of this one happened completely by chance, and was local to me.
Like many of you, I have a craigslist notification setup on my phone. I don't really have the room for any more games, but if the right game popped up at the right price, I can always make room.
Last Thursday I got a random estate sale notification with "pinball machine" - no title, no photos. I just ignored it. Lucky for me, fellow local pinsider truemagoo102 didn't ignore it. He inquired, and they replied with a photo-- which he promptly brought to my attention. It was the very rare Bally "Happy Tour"-- the add-a-ball version of Grand Tour. The estate sale started on Friday morning, and I had an absolutely immovable all-day work obligation.
Lucky for me, my local crew is pretty tight, and we help each other out as needed. Lawlor_and_Order happens to live right near where the sale was happening, and was able to run over early Friday morning and secure the machine. He and
Aphex went back in the afternoon to pick it up. When I got home that afternoon,
Aphex was already in my driveway with the game. I have great friends!
We got the game down into my basement, and immediately went to work cleaning, replaced the power cord (which was maybe the scariest one I've ever seen) and when we plugged in the game, it fired right up and worked. Interestingly, one of the score reels isn't working-- but the game will still start even though it's not at zero-- so I'm going to have to track down whatever bypass someone came up with to make that work... but otherwise, every switch in the game works, every stepper works-- it's pretty amazing. The game was FILTHY. I was concerned about the playfield, but it really cleaned up nicely. I didn't take any before pictures-- maybe Aphex can share some of the ones he took. The photo here is after cleanup, as reassembly had begun. Waiting on a few parts from PBR before I can continue.
Happy tour playfield (resized).jpghappy tour backglass (resized).jpg
Newark, DE
we began to remove plastics and depopulate the topside of the machine. I couldn't believe how well it cleaned up as you'll see from the shots below. I think there are some more parts on the way and once they're in the machine we'll post a few more pictures of it restored. I can't wait to play this one, the layout looks pretty awesome for a game of its time.
