So, I just opened my Warthog Stick Grip in order to try and fix the z-axis slop, which I thought was caused by a couple of lose screws around the stick base. However what I discovered was much much worse, to say the least!
The base is lose alright, seeing that the flanges holding it in place was snapped. But, as if that wasn’t bad enough, one of the grip halves is littered with hairline fractures in the very metal the stick is made of.
Some quick Googling makes me suspect it’s zinc pest, though I don’t know exactly what alloy the grip is made of. But the symptoms sound very much like it.
So, turns out the paint flaking on the outside, wasn’t caused by my sweaty hands and death grip on the stick afterall, the stick is simply slowly disintegrating
Well, guess I’ll contact TM and hear what they say. I wonder if they have spare parts for sale? Going to need a new grip half and base.
Has anyone here heard of something like this before, I wonder?
Edit: Forgot to add, it’s only this half and the base thats affected, for some reason.
If you told me this without the pictures I would not believe it at all. In fact, a quick glance at the first photo I though for sure you couldn’t be referring to the TM: WH - but damn!
I sincerely hope they can do something for you.
Hopefully nobody else here is affected by a potentially bad alloy half-shell as you are.
Yeah, just sent off a support request to TM, and included a link to this thread so they can see the pictures. We’ll see what they say, but it may be a while. They stated that covid related delays were around 15 days for support requests.
Good thing is I have an old Cougar grip looking as good as new, so I still get to try out that new VPC T-50 base
@Lobinjaevel Thanks, I might very well take you up on that, if TM support dosen’t work out.
I’m told it’s made from Zamak. It contains zink but shouldn’t develop zink pest. But I guess there’s always a possibility that there’s a bad batch with alloy impurities…
Bad news is they can’t help…
After a bit of emailing back and forth it all ended up with this:
Thank you for the pictures, that helps a lot. Unfortunately, we do not have those 2 parts available as spare parts, we would not be able to repair this unit. There is nothing more we can do. Sorry.
So @sobek I guess you’ll have to be really gentle with that grip, going forward.
It kinda sucks, and I must admit that I’m somewhat disappointed in TM.
Hell, if they don’t have the parts they could have at least offered a replacement entire grip!
I am not sure what the warranty period is - or if you are past it - but for something that drastic I would gladly as a business owner pay the price of one grip and shipping to keep a customer happy!
Yeah, they weren’t really helpfull at all.
I think polite but entirely disinterested, would describe their side of our email conversation the best.
And the stick is long out of warrenty, so can’t really demand anything.
I remember looong ago, when the speedbrake switch on my Cougar broke, also out of warrenty. I contacted a TM support guy that was active on Frugals forums, and he sent me a brand new switch for free.
Unfortunately I can’t remember his name, but that was outstanding service! Times change I guess.
I think I bought it right around when DCS A10C came out, when was that? 2011 or there about?
So, 9 years isn’t too bad really, but still… I had expected the gimbal or some switches to fail at some point, but the grip shell itself? I hadn’t seen that one coming for sure!
@TheAlmightySnark I’m pretty sure it has be inside of 2 years from purchase, in order to mandate a replacement, but I’ll take a look.
“EU law also stipulates that you must give the consumer a minimum 2-year guarantee (legal guarantee) as a protection against faulty goods, or goods that don’t look or work as advertised. In some countries national law may require you to provide longer guarantees .”
It really depends on what local law says. 2 years is the minimum but many products have a much longer expected lifetime, so lets say your washing machines fails after 3 years? You legally have a strong case to still expect warranty service. Not a lot of people know this and it’s worth checking out local regulations regarding these sort of products. 9 years is quite long so I am not sure if you will get anywhere unfortunately.
I see a couple of areas that may be fatigue fracture zones…but a whole lot of other cracks that don’t look like fatigue. And electrical wires connected to some of the parts…galvanic reactions? Would need to see the other metals used.
This is really disappointing. I would have expected anything to fail but the moulded cast parts. If it comes to that, i’ll try my luck with support as well but suffice to say, they’ve absolutely lost me as a customer. There’s something to be said about going cheap on your manufacturer, but i’ll refrain from racial stereotypes.
