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Time Pilot Joystick
allroy1975:
My Uncle has a Time Pilot cab and his joystick blows. He has mentioned it to me before and I suggested that he just get a new one. I was over there on the holiday weekend and played it and damn near hurt my arm it was so difficult to move. I'd like to help him out and get him a NICE stick, but It'd need to look like the original black ball top that Time Pilot had, and preferably be Leaf.
Any ideas where to find one?
Thanks in advance
Allroy
Sasquatch!:
The only place I know of to buy leafswtich joysticks is mikesarcade.com, but they're the Chinese repros that a lot of people seem to hate, and they also seem to come in red only.
If you can live with a microswitch stick, maybe an Ultimarc stick would do ya?
MiKman:
was the original time pilot an 8-way or 4-way stick? I have seen this seller selling alot of Wico leaf sticks on ebay 4-way and 8-way but they are red ball tops... in fact here he has 50 of them for sale now :-) (not my auction but I also watch for wico 4-ways on ebay)
http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=13718&item=6106912893
NoOne=NBA=:
The originals have 8-way sticks in them that have no corners, so I would suspect they are probably Wicos.
The seller mentioned above is a GREAT guy to deal with.
I've bought alot of stuff from him, and EVERY transaction has been perfect.
He has alot of the 4-ways at the moment, and has been using some of them to build 8-ways when he can get good bodies for them.
He replaces everything on the 8-way except the body and the actuator.
You might want to check with Oscar, to see if the stick in that machine is supposed to be a Wico.
If so, check yours out.
If the body is still in good shape, you could buy one of the 4-ways from Nicade, and replace all the trouble parts in yours (grommet, leaf switches, etc...) with the stuff from the 4-way, keeping your original actuator, stick and base.
I can't think of anything that would make the stick hard to move, if it is a Wico, though.
The two biggest problems Wicos have are the rubber grommet ripping, which lets the stick move too easily in one direction, and the leaf switches bending.
Is the stick hard to move ANYWHERE, or is it just hard to get it to make contact with the switches?
If it's just hard to make contact with the switches, they may just need to be bent back in toward the center.
OSCAR:
The OEM joystick for Time Pilot was a Monroe 8-way. I was able to obtain a NIB one for my Time Pilot cab. They feel pretty good, a little springier than a Wico. They also have a nice rolling action, like doing a circular move with the stick, which helps a lot for games like Time Pilot and Gyruss, which both came with the Monroe sticks.
The bad news is that they are terribly hard to find, especially "new in the box" like the one I found. My Time Pilot came with a 4-way Wico and it played surprisingly well, most likely because the restrictor was beat to death and it acted like an 8-way.
Below are some pics of the Monroe I put in my cab: