Modding 360 Wireless Controller: Disassembly and Paint Job

[bloodcar]

As anyone who owns an Xbox 360 can tell you, the controllers can get really grimy from the build up of oil and dirt in the button recesses. Having a white controller doesn't really help to hide that. So here's my rectification of the problem plus it should help cut down on the sweaty hand problem as the surface isn't completely smooth.
I didn't manage to get a hold of a camera until after I already had the base coat on the controller so I'll use my other controller as reference to you. Please disregard the ghetto picture and painting setup. I don't happen to own any white furniture or even have any white cardboard lying around so I draped a couple of white towels over my coffee table in order to take the pictures. You'll see later on my ghetto paint setup.

Here you can see the dirt build up in the START and BACK buttons as well as in the shoulders buttons/triggers and around them.


Next remove the battery cover to begin removal of all seven screws. The seven screws are circled below and while six of them are quite obvious, the seventh one is located under the FCC identification number.


In order to facilitate the removal of the screws, you'll need a torx T8H driver. A torx driver of the appropriate size will work, but the screws in the wireless controller include a security pin that will need to be snapped off. A set of jeweler's screw drivers will work instead. Unfortunately, I couldn't locate my jeweler's screw driver so I can't tell you exactly the sizes you'll need. In the picture below, the green one was used to remove the casing screws and the yellow was used to disassemble the directional pad. You can make out the security pin in the screw. The U.S. dime is included in the picture for size reference.


The next few steps I don't have picture of but I'll try and explain them as best as I can from memory.

After you've removed all of the screws, I found that it's best to lift the face plate up off of the controller instead of the back. All of the face buttons will fall out of place but that's not really that big of a deal. If you lift the back up off of the controller, keep an eye out for the rumble motors which are located in the legs. They're not really secured in place very well and will fall out.

Before you can remove the PCB and disconnect the rumble motors, you'll need to remove the silver piece from the bottom of the controller. That can be accomplished easily by pulling out slightly while pulling up. The PCB and rumble motors should now lift out fairly easily. You might want to go ahead and disconnect the rumble motors to avoid accidentally snapping the wires later on. If you wish to remove both the right and left trigger buttons, read the rest of this post. If you wish to move on then skip on to the next post by me.

Alright! Well right here is the fun part folks. I sat here for quite awhile while trying to figure out how to remove the trigger button without breaking the entire assembly. So here are some rough step-by-step instructions with pictures included. *Disclaimer!* Putting the trigger buttons back on can be a royal pain. I scratched the PCB while putting the left trigger button back on to take step-by-step pictures to post here. Luckily it's just a surface scratch and doesn't look to have broken any circuits. If it has I guess I'll take the controller apart and fix it after final assembly.

Now on to the pictures. Sorry about the flash but that was the only way I could get my camera to take a clear shot of these steps for some odd reason. The glare on the PCB shouldn't be much of an issue though.

1. Pull to the left

2. Push to the right and push down slightly

3. Squeeze together and pull up

4. Remove spring and place in a safe location

5. Lift up

6. Slide to the right

And we're done removing the trigger button! Repeat the steps above but reverse the left and right directions to remove the right trigger button. Here's what you should be looking at now.


I'll proceed to the painting steps in my next post. I'm still working on taking pictures of what all has been done so far and continuing my work. More later on today.

[bloodcar]

Here we've finally come to the painting process. I've gotten most of the stuff painted now so I'll show you pictures of what I've done so far. First up though, is the paint I'm using.

Krylon Camouflage Ultra-Flat spray paint with Fusion for Plastic paint technology. From my previous uses with Fusion paint from Krylon, this stuff will do the trick nicely. I just hope it doesn't wear off due to the oils in your skin. If only I could find a flat clear coat then all would be well.

The ghetto paint setup that I mentioned in my earlier post.

It's a large piece of cardboard that can in a box with something or other. Notice the holes in it? That's for holding some of the parts upright for painting. These two pictures will be the only two pictures taken of my painting area. For some reason my camera has a complete fit on me while taking a picture of the cardboard so I'll just post some before and after pictures.

All of these pieces were originally white with the exception of the large piece at the top. That's the silver area on the bottom of the controller. The parts shown in the picture are the START button, BACK button, RIGHT and LEFT button, silver filler piece, and the glossy white filler piece from the top of the controller.


Here's another picture with some of the pieces reassembled and the trigger buttons now painted.


Next up we have the actual controller itself. You can see the tan coloured base coat that I'm using as well as the next step using the olive green paint on the battery cover.


Here's how I accomplished the olive green stripes on the battery cover.

Two old rags used to catch the paint where I didn't want it on the battery cover. I'm still debating on whether or not I want to add any black stripes to the controller or if the black on the buttons and other parts will be enough.

Here's the front piece.

I'm still working on the back piece and have been for a few hours now. Unfortunately the rag trick didn't work as well on the back due to all of the contours of the controller so I'm now devising a new method. I might just pick up some sand paper and painter's tape here in a few minutes and start the backside all over. There's a bit of overspray on the front as well but it's not bad so I think I'll cover it up with a couple of well placed black tiger stripes.

I'll post more either later tonight or some time tomorrow.

[Tibby]

Looking ace man.

I wouldn't have the balls to crack open a £32 controller.

Looking forward to the end result!

[furqan]

looking good,

and tibby it's only a controller what can go wrong!

[bloodcar]

Another day, another update. I ended up sanding down some parts of the back of the controller last night and repainting it while masking off with painter's tape. The lines are a bit too sharp for my liking but it's on the back and I really won't see them much there.

The softness of the lines on the front looks much better in my opinion. However, I couldn't replicate that on the back with the rags due to all of the curves and ended up with a ton of overspray.

So now, onto painting the rechargeable battery pack to match the back of the controller. Here you can see it in its naked state.


Next up is the base coat with the masking lines inked on.


Painter's tape applied and the battery pack is ready for painting.


OMFG! I accidentally painted it all olive green!


Whew! Just forgot to remove the painter's tape. Here she is in all of her glory.

Don't mind the oily spots, that is just where I've been handling it for a little bit before taking the pictures.

Here we can see the rechargeable battery pack snapped into place on the back of the controller. Looks pretty damn good if I may say so myself.


I've decided to not paint any black stripes on it as I think it looks rather well how it is. There will be some additions later on such as finding someone who wouldn't mind swapping me out their analogue sticks from the Xbox S controller for my 360 analogue sticks. I also plan on swapping out the D-pad as well and hand brushing the chrome on the guide button to black. Hopefully I'll figure out by then how to take the A, B, X, and Y buttons apart so I can paint them black as well. Here's a picture showing how the buttons are actually in two separate pieces.

I tried to use a pair of fine tipped needle nose pliers to pull the white parts out but it was to no avail. I'm hoping someone else will figure it out by the time I get a hold of an S-type controller.

Now, it's time to begin reassembling the controller. Here you can see I've placed the newly painted trigger buttons back into place.


The D-pad has been screwed back together and most of the pieces have been put back in place.


Now, after about five minutes of hassling with buttons falling out, it’s completely reassembled!


There are a few places I want to touch up with paint, but I'll wait to do that when I get a hold of an S-type controller. If any of you on the East coast have a broken S-type controller, I'll gladly take it off of your hands. I reckon I'll update when I get a hold of the other controller but for now it's finished. All in all it took me a total of two and a half days to start and complete this paint job. I don't think I'll paint the black camouflage stripes on it as the other black parts more then make up for it. Thanks for reading and if any of you can figure out how to take those damn buttons apart without breaking them, let me know!

By the way, I played a couple quick rounds of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter right before posting this to make sure the controller still worked completely and it does!

[kiljoi]

That looks seriously win dude. Great job, especially with the soft front lines, and matching the back lines up on the battery thing.

[mattthegamer463]

love the paintjob, but the buttons look really out of place to be honest. They are too colourful. If I were you I would try to figure out a way to scrape off the colour on the back of the plastic button and paint it some army colours or something. That would compleet the mod.

[bloodcar]

Originally Posted by mattthegamer463

love the paintjob, but the buttons look really out of place to be honest. They are too colourful. If I were you I would try to figure out a way to scrape off the colour on the back of the plastic button and paint it some army colours or something. That would compleet the mod.

The whole shell of the buttons are coloured.

If I can find a place that sells the buttons in two piece and the shell in clear plastic, then the plans are to paint the buttons black and paint the raised letters their respective colours. Gotta have some sort of the colour there as sometimes I still forget which button is which.

Thanks for the compliments guys.

[mattthegamer463]

Originally Posted by bloodcar

The whole shell of the buttons are coloured.

I bet that was Microsofts plan, just to foil the mods of people like you. What if you cut the button in half, and removed the colour, the glued it back together?

[bloodcar]

LLAMA button Mod

THey have some pics there to give you a better idea how the buttons are made.

[tm36usa]

Sweet paint job, looks like it took some time. Hope those buttons I donated help the cause!

[RotoSequence]

Nice paint job bloodcar; looks good

[Shadowed_fury]

Good job!

[bloodcar]

Quick update on the controller. tm36usa kindly donated a black D-pad and two analogue sticks from a broken S-type XBOX controller. I got them in the mail today so the first thing I did when I got them was crack the controller open. Unfortunately, two of the screws had stripped while I was putting the controller back together the last time so I had to drill them out. I also touched up some paint but did it in too big of a rush and added too thick of a layer so I'll be working on fixing the messed up paint over the course of the next couple of days.

Anyways, here's the controller in it's finished state (that is until I manage to custom make myself some ABXY buttons) minus a few paint touch ups.


I think it looks a ton better with the black D-pad and analogue sticks as opposed to the gray as you can see in the before and after shot above.

Thanks for the donation, tm36usa!

[hitman012]

Very slick paintjob, nice work

[Denied]

How's this mod going? Is the paint still staying intact? I was going to do a similar thing to my nintendo wavebird controllers but have been wary since in the past I've had the paint wear off very quickly.

Very nice job though either ways!

[dridge]

nice mod, man.

are the s-type analogs and d-pad a direct swap in or is there some modding required?

my dog chewed both analogs off my wireless 360 controller and I've been looking for a busted one on ebay to steal parts from. I could probably find an xbox 1 controller for much cheaper

might do a paintjob while I've got it apart

also....instead of the old rags you could try vaseline on future projects. just wipe it off after the paint dries and *voila

[Major0ffense]

Originally Posted by dridge

nice mod, man.

are the s-type analogs and d-pad a direct swap in or is there some modding required?

my dog chewed both analogs off my wireless 360 controller and I've been looking for a busted one on ebay to steal parts from. I could probably find an xbox 1 controller for much cheaper

might do a paintjob while I've got it apart

also....instead of the old rags you could try vaseline on future projects. just wipe it off after the paint dries and *voila

Both the analogs and the d-pad are a direct swap. Just unscrew the D pad and then un-clip it, and for the analog sticks, just pull up gently, they slide right off. (You'll still have to use the 360's internal D-pad components, but the D pad itself is a perfect match.