The decomposition on an Joystick's Rubber feet. TAR

[Atari Charles]

 

I knew that rubber does decompose over time, but this is really strange. I have a few old school joysticks(That works on theAtari 2600) made by WICO Command Control. You may have seen them, the red and black joystick. Well, the rubber feet on one of them(I got this one from my neighbour), has turned into a kind of tar. The black goop has the same consistency of ashphalt tar on a hot summer day. This particular joystick hasn't been left out in the heat, so I'm not sure why this degredation has occured.

 

What do you guys think?

 

Perhaps some of you have has the same problem with this make or other makes of joystick feet?

[Rockin' Kat]

I got a CH hayes Apple II joystick once which had a rubber foot that had the consistency of bubble gum someone had just chewed. I seriously thought it was bubble gum at first look... I was rather surprized when it turned out to be the rubber foot... it was so gross... I ended up just scraping it off and tossing it out..

 

If I you wanted you could probably get a sheet of rubber with sticky backing somewhere and cut out new feet for your joysticks

[Chris-in-NJ]

I've got an old 2600 joystick on which one of the rubber feet constantly rubs off on my hand when I use it. It's really tough to remove as heavy scrubbing doesn't always work. Whenever I play 2600 games it's either a choice of stains on my hand or using a 7800 stick and getting blisters and hand pains (and I use the 7800 stick quite a bit for my 5200).

[Atari Charles]

The wierd thing is is that I have three of these joysticks. The other two's feet are toally fine and intact, but this third one. Yuk. I am going to use my old friend(goo-gone) on the disassembled bottom part of the joystick. These are actualy excellent joysticks. Cleaning joysticks has to be my least favorite job aside form cleaning keyboards.

 

Anyone have any idea why somE rubber feet degrade over time?

[Mindfield]

In all probability you're dealing with an adhesive that breaks down the composition of the rubber over time. Most commonly with such situations you'll find that it starts with rubber feet that become slimy on the bottom (the adhesive side) and tend to slip off of the stick, and despite them being plenty tacky enough to stick back on, the adhesive never dries because the broken down rubber composite has mixed with the adhesive and won't dry. That happens to a lot of things that use rubber feet, actually.

[Atari Charles]

Well, I solved part6 of the mystery of the decomposing rubber feet. I looked at my original feet for the first WICO joystick and these feet are different than the aftermarket feet on the two other WICO joysticks that I got more recently and that are decaying. I guess some feet are made better than others.

 

I'm going to clean the bottoms of these joysticks with good ole Goo-Gone. These joysticks are excellent, so I want to keep them. Oh, I'll be taking them apart before immersing the bottoms.

 

I'm not going to replace the feet as the replacements could have this problem later on.

 

I'll always like the original atari joysticks more due to sentimentality, but these WICO joysticks are most excellent. I think the Moonites would agree.