# Buycostumes & costumeexpress Gargoyles, read this if your's doesn't work.



## BobbyA (Aug 20, 2010)

Hi, one of the two gargoyles I bought in this last sale came in came in defective.
I opened it and was able to repair the problems (no wing lights & grinding gears when wings retracted).
Both were due to poor soldering skills on the part of the assembler.

The hardware inside is pretty easy to access and understand. 
If yours is not working correctly I may be able to talk you through enough troubleshooting figure out why, feel free to ask for help with it.


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## Cloe (Mar 18, 2013)

I finally got around to trying my gargoyles and neither of them work. At all! Both of mine also have some serious leg dents. If I can figure out how to get the back off without breaking anything I'm hoping I can push them out. Any suggestions you can give me would be much appreciated. Hoping I can tell where the wires came off, if not if you have any pics of your wiring that would be very helpful too. I'm not too swift when it comes to electrical!


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## BobbyA (Aug 20, 2010)

Hi Cloe, sorry to hear you have two that are DOA. I'll be happy to help you if I can. You probably have already tried most of these first suggestions.
1. First make sure the Gargoyle's switch in back is set to "TRYME", then push the small button in lower right front.
2. Then place the back switch in "ON" position, and clap your hands once or twice.
If you get no response from either of the above, turn the switch back to try me, and put 4 fresh AA batteries in the Gargoyle then try 1 & 2 again.

Assuming this has not changed things, now open the back.

The screws around the back panel need to come out.
You can slowly pull the wing edges lose from the hot glue on the back panel. 
Near the top of the panel they put a lot of hot glue and you will likely need an exacto or thin bladed knife to cut the glue between the body & back. 
You can use a heat gun or similar ( hot air hair dryer ?) to remelt the glue when you are putting it back together, there is plenty of glue.

Almost everything will come with the back panel, only a couple LEDs, the try me button, and their wires stay with the body as I recall.
The small silver box is the motor that lifts the wings, the lump near the shoulder holds the motor to flap the wings.
You should look for any wires that are not connected at both ends. Especially near the backside of the battery compartment, and the ON/OFF/TRYME switch. 
This includes wires that may have their ends connected together, but that bare metal connection is not attached to anything else.

Let me know what you find, and we can continue from there.


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## BobbyA (Aug 20, 2010)

Hi Cloe, I'm going to post useful parts of your PM in case others come across this thread later. Posting as replies here what you find as we work on this might be helpful as well.

_"So, I resoldered the loose black wire on the one gargoyle and got it to work. Not so lucky with the other. I was able to get a little motion jiggling around the purple wire so I stripped and soldered both ends and still nothing. Any suggestions? I get no power at all."_

When jiggling the purple wire, was the motion you saw part of the unit trying to work, or did you just mean the wire moved easily so you thought it might be a poor connection ?

Do you have access to a multimeter or any volt meter ? Even a free one from harbor freight (might have to google for the meter coupon).
You can buy a cheap box of chip brushes for painting gunk on props and get a free meter, if you don't have one. Not a bad deal.
Access to a multimeter will likely prove useful in this. 

I'll try to post a few pics, I will have to lower their resolution before the forum will accept uploading them.

Bobby


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## BobbyA (Aug 20, 2010)

Here are some pics. Take note of the small limit switches (pic 3) that signal when a moving part has reached the end of it's travel. These like a few others have enough hot glue that even if a wire is not soldered well the hot glue can keep the wire from falling off so you can find it.


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