N64 Hori Mini Pad (Repair Stick)

[acecube]

Hello,

yes you read right. (Long) before I found this and that thread I bought such an expensive N64 Hori Mini Pad from Japan over ebay. Today it arrived and I'm very disappointed, because the stick isn't as fine as I hoped. I think it's as crappy as a worn out original N64 Stick. For example sometimes it doesn't return to the central position if I move it to the bottom right position.


Additionally I can't make movements within the full range:


By the way: That of course wasn't mentioned in the ebay description.  So I disassembled it immediately to figure out, what's the problem.

The stick contacts the corners of the metal from the joystick. I marked the points with arrows. Especially at that corner I marked brown, the metal scrapes the plastic.



I thought a solution would be getting the stick a little higher. But it is absolutly tight. I think it's glued to the joystick. Does anybody know if that's right or does anyone have experience disassembling the stick of a hori mini pad? I'm afraid of breaking the stick or the circuit board the joystick is attatched to.

I also loosed the screw slot I marked red. I don't know whether that was a good decision. 


Maybe the best way is to replace the whole joystick. I think these ones that micro uses are more adequate because of the rounded corners.

I've made a new version of the PCB for improving that Gamecube-style N64 replacement stick in various ways.

Edit:

Meanwhile got an idea: I disassembled a PS2-Pad that I bought at the flea market last weekend. I realized that the corners of the joysticks are rounded a bit...


Long story short: I got it!!!    

Sometimes it's necessary using brute power!!! 




Here you can see, that the stick of the hori pad is a little taller than a ps2 stick.



...replacing coud be a solution...

...but the holes at the bottom have different sizes.


Now I have the solution: I just sticked the Hori Stick back in and that's wonderful. I think the previous owner pressed the stick too heavy. Or maybe the problem came during shipment.
Whatever... now it works how it should be - absolutely smooth. 


There is just one thing. The stick is not at the perpendicular. From side view that's ok...


...but from top view that should definitely not be:


So if the stick is at the neutral position it's not exactly at the center of its octagonal cage. It's marginal, and from the center view you maybe don't realize it.

But having the stick at the center of the image you can see it.


I think I'm going to fix that soon. But for now I'm going to start playing.

After a few hours I can say that stick is absolutely awesome.

Regarding to people who say that the best way playing N64 games is with the original stick I have to say: They are wrong!

The stick of the hori pad is much better than the original N64 stick. My reference which is proving that is "Mario Kart 64". With the hori pad I can drift nearly flawless (almost always red dust). And I often got the difficult short cut in mario raceway (jumping to the right side over the wall) today. Here you can see it - that's not me driving in the video. Mario kart 64 - MR SC lap
By the way: With my N64-Pad (the stick is in a really good condition) I didn't get that the last days!


Edit 2 (as long as I don't get posts I'll edit the first one):
After playing some Mario Kart 64 with my Hori-Pad-Stick (not at the perpendicular) I realized that getting power drifts in right corners works far better than getting it in left ones.
So I disasselmled my Pad again and so I figured out that it's not the circuit board that leads to the problem:

It's the metal stick that is bent:

Looking more precisely I realized that the metal cube has a dent:


Because I'm afraid of breaking the metal stick I didn't bend it back. I tried the following:


And that's my result:


It's not the best way for solving the problem, but what should I say? It works and that's the main fact.

[Catastrophic]

The way you managed to fix it is pretty cool. I personally own a blue Hori Mini Pad and I love the smoothness of it. The only thing I don't like about it is the shoulder buttons which could be a bit more responsive.