help with gi joe repair

[rche]

Hiya folks,

Can anyone point me towards a good modern GI Joe repair site? I have tried the GI Joe club with this question, but don't seem to be getting much of a response.

I need to fix a modern talking commanders pull string. I picked up some talkers recently and one of the pull strings will not recoil. First pull, straight outta the box and it just sort of lay there like a noodle.

The good folks at Hasbro and at the Joe club all advise me to cut the string off and just shorten it, but I like the idea of the recoiling pull string even if it is unnecessary for the modern electronics.

Any help is appreciated.

thanks
rche

[Man of Action]

Sorry to tell ya,...can't be fixed...this is a major problem they had

[AAAAA]

Old joe repair hospital
I think there still around
I try find the url.

[rche]

Hiya aaaaa,

I looked at the OJ hospital. I think they only do repairs on the vintage stuff. I pulled the talker apart last night and found the issue. There is a coil spring in there that acts as the return force for the pull string. There is no true connection between the spring and the post/axel that the return gear is on. It is only held on by crimped tension. Pretty bad design in the first place. I am going to try flattening one part of the axle and doing a little solder weld to see if I can get a solid connection. If so, then the problem is solved.

[Man of Action]

Hey rche ..I feel for ya..I hope the repair your doing works!! I have done the same repair, only to find the spring does not have enough pull back power...the cord would only retract about half way then stop...very flustrating repair for sure...thats why I said it couldnt be fixed, I finally gave up and cut the cord!!!..Good Luck...let us know if you get it working..

[Neutron X]

It is my uinderstanding that the the "Talk Doc" apbjoe1 on Ebay does this repair. It's a huge pain because the mechanism wasn't made very well and some kind of very involved repair with sodering is required. Good Luck!

[AAAAA]

Yeah ApeJoe does repairs to.
If the coil spring has lost its tenison strenght, than it needs to be removed/replaced or removed and heat treated to get its tensile strenght back.

[rche]

Hiya folks,

Thanks for all the support and suggestions. I got more support in a shorter time here than at the Joeclub site. Just goes to show you, MM is the best dam site ever.

I think the spring tension is ok, it just cannot grab the gear the way it is designed. Very bad design on these things. Fortuately it is pretty easy to access the spring box to try a fix. I can't imagine why the engineer that thunk this one up thought it would hold out to multiple string pulls. They could've saved some heartache and just skipped the string altogether as that is the official fix for this problem.

I'll let you all know how hard it is to get the parts to hold solder without melting the plastic gear.

thanks again