Fix N64 Joystick - Failed Attempt - Plus other Tips

[optmusprimenumber]

that stuff might be better than the petroleum jelly tho (see above)

[CRTGAMER]

I have used cutup aluminum foil to make better button contacts on the dreaded 5200 controller. Sometimes they would slide off from repeated gaming sessions. Gave up, went to Wicos.

Nice idea, there is a concern if pieces of aluminum flaking off into tiny conductive pieces dropping inside on the electrics. With good glue maybe not an issue.

There will be slight less total movement of controller depending upon small added thickness of aluminum. How does the calibration hold? Say on 3rd person games, when stick pushed little ways is walk and all the way is run.

Looks like you came up with a winner.

[optmusprimenumber]

see, i got the n64 a month ago, cleaned it up, and just last night decided to work on the stick. i traded in the 3 games i got with it cuz i didn't want them...but i should be getting resident evil 2 today or tomorrow and i'll be playing it then... but the stick moves fine, and with the little bit of lube and the entire back surface of the foil glued down, i don't anticipate any flaking... plus, since it's aluminum on aluminum contact, there should be very minimal friction in the destructive sense. also, the "hammerhead"/"neck" has rounded corners/is round, further reducing harsh friction or snagging.

EDIT: Just got my Expansion Pack and Resident Evil 2 in the mail. While it's annoying to play old RE with a thumbstick, to answer your question, the analog action is there, no problem, tilt a little=walk, tilt all the way=run. I'll have to get a more stick intensive game to really know, but like i said, it moves fine.

EDIT 2: Just got Goldeneye and took it for a spin, stick works fine, wish it had a rubber cap of sorts on it tho... sounds like another project

[Incognito D]

I remember back in the day, (before internet was so mainstream and N64 was still sold in stores) my friend was convinced that the powder around the base of the stick was baby powder and that you could fix the stick by opening it up and putting more baby powder inside of it. Now we all know it is actually the plastic that it coming of when rubbed against each other, but the end result was that my friend had managed to further ruin his 2 N64 controllers and make a fool of him self

To this day, I still tease him about it.

It's really weird that you say that because when I was a child, some guy wrote into Nintendo magazine saying that he'd fixed his control doing this method. Naturally, being 11 years old I tried it... Although to be fair, the magazine didn't even dismiss his technique - they kind of almost praised him! wtf?

[CRTGAMER]

see, i got the n64 a month ago, cleaned it up, and just last night decided to work on the stick. i traded in the 3 games i got with it cuz i didn't want them...but i should be getting resident evil 2 today or tomorrow and i'll be playing it then... but the stick moves fine, and with the little bit of lube and the entire back surface of the foil glued down, i don't anticipate any flaking... plus, since it's aluminum on aluminum contact, there should be very minimal friction in the destructive sense. also, the "hammerhead"/"neck" has rounded corners/is round, further reducing harsh friction or snagging.

EDIT: Just got my Expansion Pack and Resident Evil 2 in the mail. While it's annoying to play old RE with a thumbstick, to answer your question, the analog action is there, no problem, tilt a little=walk, tilt all the way=run. I'll have to get a more stick intensive game to really know, but like i said, it moves fine.

Thanks! Good info.

[optmusprimenumber]

side note: out of curiosity, i rubbed a piece of foil rapidly against another to see how fast it would heat up... i did it for about the same time you'd rub a pen tip on a desk to burn your friend with (you guys do that too in 6th grade?)... results: no noticeable heat whatsoever

[optmusprimenumber]

Heh... I just searched "n64 controller thumbstick repair" to see if this would come up and it came up on the 3rd page, but the excerpt from this post is "Re: N64 Thumbstick - New Maintenance/Repair Trick ... had managed to further ruin his 2 N64 controllers and make a fool of him self ..." I hope anyone searching for this with a typical search engine is curious enough to find out more than that.

[Ziggy]

If you edit the thread title to read joystick instead of thumbstick (or add joystick in it) and possibly even add the word 'fix' in the title too, I'm sure this thread will be in the first few hits on many peoples googles.

[DerekG52]

good work coming up with a solution, please keep us all informed as you test it further.

[optmusprimenumber]

will do