Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: chucklepie on April 27, 2013, 01:24:41 pm
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Hello,
Just thought I'd share my experience. I bought a mini-pac (rather than ipac) with all the harnesses and the ground daisy chain.
I have no complains with the mini-pac, it's fantastic and just works out the box as it were, as is my u-track, and the win-ipac is very nice too. I'd recommend it to anyone over the ipac. However...
My gripe is the quality of the wiring harness/daisy chain (http://www.ultimarc.com/images/minipac_harness.jpg (http://www.ultimarc.com/images/minipac_harness.jpg)) is just very poor, especially the daisy chain.
After quickly testing the harness (it literally took me 30 seconds to test all of them using a button and the spade connected to the NC with the win-ipac software) three of them failed to work. Why no testing can be done before despatch I don't know (even a quick continuity test of each connection made after crimping will take literally a second and highlight a fault immediately.)
After further testing there was no continuity from one end to the other so simply the ends weren't crimped properly or they've worked loose in transit (see daisy chain whinge below). I've another week to wait for a new one (assuming I get a replacement) to arrive and hope that this one is better put together.
As for the daisy chain, this really is poor. After just handling it for a few minutes and testing a few connections it's now in three parts due to the wire coming out of the spade (and I was gentle with it). I suspect the problem is there are so few strands (i.e. very light gauge) the spade simply cannot get a good grip (maybe this is why some connections on the main harness fail too).
I'd rather pay a few dollars more and have a better quality material than have to spend ages soldering it all together which I'll have to do - I may as well have made my own daisy chain...
You can't really create your own harness (and they aren't cheap either), but if you were thinking of buying the kit I'd think twice about getting the daisy chain and I would check all the connections immediately on delivery and before you even think about connecting it up.
Neil.
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on the other hand, i own 4 minipacs and have never had any issues with the wiring.
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Sorry to hear you got a less than optimal harness, Chucklepie.
The only issue I had with mine is the wiring color differences between the harness and UTrak, but Andy has already said that he will be changing the wiring colors on the next batch of UTraks to match the harness.
Scott
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Maybe I was just unlucky, however this was two completely separate wiring bundles. But Ultimarc have offered to replace them even though I didn't buy them directly from them - can't get better service than that :cheers:
However, the gauge definitely seems too small to get a decent take on the spade/pins. Zoomed up the photo shows it quite well, there is literally 6 twisted strands. And no pinching my fingerprints steal my identity ;)