In 2018, I made a video and a post where I repaired a TAC-2 joystick with a broken stick. This process was performed by using tire valve, a screw eye, and a newly crafted ball at the end of the stick. See:
At the end of the post, I mentioned that we also created a stick with a chrome look during this process, by attaching a metal pipe around the tire valve. This stick has been lying around since then, waiting for me to acquire another TAC-2 with a broken stick. A while ago I encountered such a joystick, and I proceeeded with attaching the crafted stick to it.
New stick for TAC-2
As seen in the images below, we used a tire valve, model T-418. You can find such a valve in any store that sell spare parts to tire for agricultural machines or tractors. As described in the post above, we jammed a screw eye in the bottom of the valve. The ball was crafted by forging a brass copy of the original in my father’s workshop. The ball is attached to the screw eye by cutting the eye, drilling a hole in the ball and squeeze fit it on top of the screw eye. The chrome shaft was attached by cutting an appropriate pipe, and hammer it to the valve.
Fitting the stick to the TAC-2
To remove the old valve, I cut the rubber from the underside of the top joystick housing until I could pull it out from the top. Then, I greased the rubber part of the new stick with some soap, and gave it a quick but firm hit with a big hammer. That will place the new stick firmly into position, and the joystick housing will align with a thread in the lower rubber part of the valve. Then I made sure that all the directions + fire buttons were working. Then I assembled the top parts of the housing. The metal plate with the logo and the plastic ring required some glue to stay in place.
Now when the new stick is in place, there are two options for adding the top part of the handle (the black ball): 1. (preferred) Re-use the ball from the old stick, if it is possible to remove it. 2. 3D-print a new ball by using a 3D-model from Thingiverse:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2921702