Has anyone here done this? How do I go about doing it?

I have a Saitek throttle quadrant that is starting to get annoying because of the spikiness of the potentiometers.

I use an X45 dating from the early 2000s, and a year or two back it started getting spikes that I feared would eventually cost me a ship in Elite Dangerous.

I'm trying to remember fully, but the basics were that I took it apart, and sprayed an old can of tuner cleaner into the pots. The tuner cleaner is the same stuff I use on my vintage hi-fi gear contacts and knobs every few years. Spray it in, then work the pots to allow the wiper in the pot to spread and clean.

It fixed my X45, and it's been as smooth as new ever since.

Those Saitek quadrants are bad about spiking too. I've got two of them and each of them has one of the levers that is spiking badly.

Do you just spray the pots without taking them out / taking them apart?

Yeah, the Saitek quadrant has no dust covers over the gaps for the levers so any dust in your room gets in them and messes them up.

In the future I think I might try replacing the pots with HAL sensors since the the unit itself is not too bad and is fairly cheap. Or maybe it would be better to just buy a pro quality unit..
I fly a lot of 4 engined aircraft and turboprops so having 6 or 8 levers available is kind of a must, making the Saitek one of the only reasonable options (3 levers per quadrant)

You can. You just need to get the cleaner in through the same gap that the dust enters through.

Be aware though, that some contact cleaner solutions can craze some types of plastic. So it might be a good idea to take steps to minimize having excess solution dripping out on to plastic parts that matter to you.




You might want to PM Sokol1 for suggestions. The man is a walking / talking encyclopedia on various controllers and feasible modifications to them. Hall sensors are good, but there is another type of magnetic sensor package that he talks about at times, as well.

What about buttons failing? I have a rocker switch that doesn't work anymore and since I use it to lock targets in DCS A-10 it gets annoying.

v6,
boNes

If it still has the same mechanical action as when it was working properly, try spraying contact cleaner in there and exercising it. Same precautions.

Yes, I just sprayed the cleaner through what looked like a small hole in the face, and through the holes visible along one side. I left them connected and inside the joystick body when I did this, but not every situation may work as easily.

and if you want a custom one this guy seems to be on the ball.

http://SimHQ.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4335985/selling-throttle-gvl224-rud-2x6#Post4335985