im looking for my next project,
i have been seeing comments and videos about the warthog joystick,
the so called stiction problem where people solve this by replacing the grease and polishing the internal plastic parts..

is this worth doing?

I all depends on the level of stiction you feel and if it bothers you enough to try to fix it. I have had a warthog for over a year now and it has a slight amount of stiction near center. It was that way out of the box but after extended use it has not changed but neither does it bother me nor does it affect performance in sims.

I considered the above shortly after buying mine but I have a concern on how long lasting the effects of thinner grease will be and have been unable to find a satisfactory response in the time I was looking into this. In some cases people were on a maintenance schedule with their warthogs for regreasings. I was not to keen on this considering the wiring inside. Ultimately for me I decided not to bother but I would interested to hear if anyone has performed a single regreasing that has lasted for multiple years.

Never bothered to open up my WH even after 5 years of use. Not really had a problem with it sticking as well, and this is after doing tank kills with guns in the A10C, guns kills in A-A with BMS, and air-to-air refuelling in BMS. So I guess either my stick never had sticktion or it has never impacted my flying.

thanks for everyone's reply, i also had my warthog for years, bought them when they first came out. nothing wrong with the, so i will revisit this mod later after i mod some suncoms

Consensus from this threadnaught is Molykote EM30L or Nyogel 767a. Both are very thick synthetics and provide some damping and will likely outlast most anything else. My nod goes to the Nyogel, as it's specifically engineered as a mechanical damping grease.


http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=80787

Lithium grease will not harm the plastic but it's not good grease for this and doesn't make the stick feel very nice.

I recently rebuilt mine with Nygel 767a I mentioned above and it's astonishing, I never thought this gimbals could feel this good.


Here's a little demo video showing Nyogel 767a vs lithium. If a grease is not actually formulated for damping, they do it poorly and damping is an overlooked but vital ingredient for input controllers like joysticks.

https://youtu.be/59F9qUDNwnQ

This was my main and only issue with the stick. Charging all this money and they still couldn't come up with a better joint solution. Ball joint is the heart of every joystick. Don't tell me you can't design that thing to float in a swashplate above the magnet sensor with no grease, stiction, friction, deadzones, loud clonks, center play (before the spring resistance),...

I've been flying with the warthog since it's release. A couple of years ago a ring wore out in the stick. Symptoms were that I'd feel a bump near center and the stick would not mechanically center itself. I know this isn't the issue you're discussing, but it's still relevant in that I replaced the ring (more of a bearing than an o-ring) with a teflon ring that someone was making at the time. When I installed the teflon ring I used some lithium grease to lube it up. it's been great ever since.

The Warthog despite some issues I still consider the best stick I have ever used--and this goes back to the age of the first Thrustmaster FCS (the F4 style grip) and WCS controllers and ranges across all the major manufacturers too.

Despite what I said above a few weeks ago I felt the need to tinker with the stick and try to eliminate all stiction. I posted about at the time but essentially I followed the updated youtube video and used Super Lube synthetic. I included all the steps right down to sanding the gimbal sphere assembly. There was an noticeable improvement regardless of it being minor before.

I also had one of my friends make the PTFE O-ring and will be replacing the rubber o-ring with it this weekend. Interested to see what difference it makes.