Thread: Dead Eye Drake's eyes wont light up

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Hey, mechanical types. I am stumped with my Gemmy pirate, Dead Eye Drake. Bought him a couple of years ago and he delighted the boys and girls, however last year one LED eye at a time went out. ( Is this where he gets his name?!) Also his sword arm never worked. It was supposed to move up and down while he was talking. Anyway...how do I take his head apart to get at the eyes? I'm assuming it is a simple burned out bulb problem and I will just replace them if I can figure out what they look like. Any clues to hacking a Drake? Thanks!

Not common for LED's to burn out. More likely a small incandescent bulb or loose connections.

As far as taking apart?

You need to remove whatever garb he has around his head and likely neck an shoulders to find out if you can take him apart. Same applies to his arm. These props are not always easy to work on because they are built to be put together once. I had someone who actually lived nearby come on this forum once asking for help on a prop. I went to her home and fixed it.

If you are mechanically inclined then just get in there and give it a try. But keep in mind that like any endeavor of this nature, you could end up with a prop that is less functional than when you started.

If you wish you can take pictures once you get to the point where we can see how he might come apart.

Okay, Spinman, I'm going in...
I will take your advise and stop when I cannot access him without cracking the skull frame or if I think I will mess up the wiring. His hat and hair are glued on over the skull head (hence, not designed to be repaired), so I will gently pry those off using adhesive remover. There are 4 screws I see between the two plates of his skull. I just hope the joints aren't glued together too. I hope it is just as easy as seeing the two eye bulbs, then figuring out where to buy new ones. I agree with you in that I have several features that do work on Drake, so I should be happy to have him as animated as he is. But he could be so much more... Yes, I will take pics

You are going about it the correct way. Slow and easy. And yes you can reattach stuff. I would use a glue gun.

Just be careful as you pull stuff apart. These props have a nasty habit of stuff popping out of place.

If you can get the clothing away as much as you feel comfortable you can reattach. Then run the prop and look for movement that hitches. Another thing you can try is to manually move his sword arm to see if it is free. Be careful here. No forcing. If his arm swings easily, then you know something is likely loose or broken. If the arm resists being moved, then the mechanics may be in place and intact and you have a motor issue.

Crazy Aunt,

Any luck?

Spinman,
Drake's head came apart relatively easily (see pics), but I went slowly. The glue under his red headband slipped up pretty fast, however his hat was held down by these long staples. I couldn't budge them out until I pried them up with snipe nose pliers, and they were like pulling teeth! They even made screeching sounds like a creaking door as I extracted them. These staples were a whole 1" long. I don't think I can re-staple, so hot glue sounds good for replacing the hat and the red headband. There were more than 2 screws securing his head halves together (12 of them). It took different lengths of screw drivers but they came out smoothly. Then when I got him opened up, the eyes were way down there under wiring, levers and screws. So I removed them...carefully. After I got the eyeball armature out, there were more screws securing the lateral eye movement mechanism and the eye carriage itself. Now I know that I cannot access a bulb (I doubt it) or see if it is an LED that illuminates the eyeball. The eye package is glued so tightly, I dare not pry it apart. And when I removed the collar around the eyeball to see it's base, it WOULD NOT go back on. The collar is very thin and looks so fragile. I gave myself 2 days of trying different techniques of sliding it back over the eyeball, giving up and working on other monsters, then on the third day, it snapped back on like there never was a fitting problem. I do see two resistors looking back at me. These might be the culprits. I don't have a functioning multimeter tester, so I don't know how to see if I should replace them. Any clues?
Thanks,
Nancy

Just an update: Gemmy does not sell eye replacements. The best I can do is find a Gemmy Talking Skull and cannibalize his eyes. They seem to be the same prop mechanism.

Hi Crazy Aunt Nancy,
I was looking at you pix of the skull and in pic 0179 I see what appears to be two orange wires just below and to the right of the right-hand eye. The ends of the wires appear to be stripped. Are they supposed to be connected to each other, or possibly to other wires in that location? It may just be the angle of view, but they seem to be disconnected/broken.
BTW, resistors rarely fail unless they're asked to dissipate really high current loads and the result is an obviously burned part. My experience with props like this tells me that it's likey a bad solder joint somewhere in the LED wiring. The soldering work is usually pretty bad, and they use really cheap solder that barely makes a good joint. I doubt that the LEDs themselves are the root cause - even the worst of them will last a long time if the correct resistors are used.

My Dead Eye drake did't have eyes like yours. Do they move? Or did they move?

Otaku,
I thought of this also (see pics), but these sections of short orange wire are not stripped and are connected at the front. They just appear to be dangling off the right eye in my other photo. I believe all my connects are soldered well. I did check these shorty guys and the weld is true but not very thick on the solder. My reasoning behind a bulb being burnt out is that Drake worked for a couple of hours (on a 6 hour night), then one eye no longer lit. Davy Jones brought it to my attention that on the 6th hour Drake's other eye no longer lit either. He did have a lot of action, so you do have a point: something could have wiggled loose. But I can't find it yet. I'll look better, systematically this time.
Thanks, Nancy