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PS4 controller refurbishment for a friend

December 11, 20251 thread~2 min readSuccessful repair
Controller driftRust/corrosion

Two very grotty PS4 controllers, one of them drifting. The drift was fixed with nothing more than a thorough cleaning of the potentiometer wiper, and the rusted rumble motors came up reasonably well after an Evaporust soak.

hitmanmcc
hitmanmcc

December 11, 2025· Thread 1· 8 tweets

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This pair of very grotty PS4 controllers are for a friend and the white one even has drifting so, you know this is going to be a thread. Come along. 🧵👇

2 / 8

Disassembled in preparation for ultrasonic cleaning. Found that the rumble motors on the white controller are rusted. Took the time to clean some liquid spillage (I think) off of the touchpad.

3 / 8

Also cleaned the corrosion from the ext. port in the controller.

4 / 8

Cleaned inside the pot wiper compartment to see if drifting could be fixed this way. Fortunately, it worked.

5 / 8

Shells, membranes and buttons stripped to go into ultrasonic.

6 / 8

Looking much better after the bath. I followed up with some detailing with cotton swabs and isopropyl.

7 / 8

Unsoldered the rumble motors and cleaned them with evaporust, isopropyl and a fiber glass pen. These pictures show how they looked after that. Not mint but a lot better.

8 / 8

This is the final result. I'd say not bad at all. I also used the Driftguard app by @Modyfikator89 to center and correct the circularity on them. Funny detail about the blue controller, that golden character changes colour with moisture.

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