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Do you remember the road safety campaign from a number of years ago that involved Dave Prowse (Darth Vader) and a small robot. The aim of the campaign was to to teach kids about road safety. The years have now passed and the small robot was forgotten, left in the back of a shed, until now. After all these years the Green Cross Code Robot is going to be reborn, given a full electronics make over and brought back to life.A massive thanks to Dave Prowse for giving me the opportunity to rebuild this iconic piece of television history.

Friday 11 July 2014

Complete

At last, the Green Cross Code Droid from the 1982 TV advert lives again.


On the whole the Droid is completely original cosmetically. There had to be a few panels that needed to be rebuilt and some internal wood that needed to be replaced because the original had rotted away. He has not been resprayed, instead the original paintwork has been restored along with all the genuine bumps and scuffs that he received over the last three decades. The electronic were a different mater. The original electronics had had it and internal batteries had corroded over the electronic rendering them dead. The new electronics will keep him going for many years and combined with his new Bluetooth sound system, lot of fun can be had sending different sounds from any iPod or bluetooth device.
All the original motors have been rebuilt and are still working, plus have a few more years left in them yet. It is a shame that this unit was not the screen robot that had all the flashing lights because I like flashing lights. All the lighting systems fitted now work as they originally did. Power comes from two modern 15 Amp SLA batteries providing 24v to the main drive system and  12v to the lights and dome. All the internal circuits are independently fused so hopefully there should be no problem when he goes out on tour. Radio system is state of the art 2.4ghz so there will be no issue with cross channel interference at events.
It has been great fun restoring this little Droid and I hope it sees lots of public events touring around with Dave Prowse.

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