My not-all-that old Thrustmaster T16000M main trigger recently stopped working and rather than fork over $80 for another (if you could even find one!) I thought I would try to do a repair myself. So I am going to provide a tutorial for this repair if anyone else has the same problem down the road. Also for me if I ever have to do it again and forget how!
You will need a soldering iron of medium wattage and a reasonably small tip, some solder, needle nose pliers, a hammer and nail or other appropriate tool and the correct 6x6 mm momentary switch. A solder-sucker and/or de-soldering braid and some sort of "helpful hands" noseclip holder setup would help immensely.
To start with, you will need to remove the small metal pin that holds the orange plastic trigger on:
The ways that I have seen to do this are to use a hammer and nail and drive it out that way. You will need to brace the back of the joystick against something like a tightly wadded up towel or sweatshirt to have something to hit against. What I ended up using instead of a nail was one of the little screwdrivers they always include in one of those iphone repair kits. It was the perfect diameter and the back of the handle gives you something nice and relatively large to hammer on. Hammer the pin halfway out and use the needle nose pliers to pull it the rest of the way. Place the trigger and the pin in there own ziploc sandwich baggie.
That's actually one of the hardest parts of the project. The other hard part is everything else!
Next we need to disassemble the top part of the joystick. Please read through all the instructions before starting as there are some small parts inside you will not want to lose. I have already removed all the "handedness" components such as the side plates and bottom of the grip. Place all of those parts in one ziploc baggie. Then remove the indicated screws on the picture above. They should go in a separate baggie. Don't forget the little one on the trigger or you will have a frustrating time wondering why your joystick won't come apart. You should now be able to wiggle and carefully pry the whole grip assembly apart. When you do, the back thumb button will probably fall off:
In the picture above, to the left of the back thumb switch is the little rubber button indicated by the arrow. There are three of those in total in the grip assembly and you don't want to lose them. They act as both the spring and contact point for the back buttons so pull the grip apart in an area where things will not easily be lost. To replace it, simple flip it over and stick it in the little opening just like it looks like you should.