Sticky switches

[Laggard]

Blew out switches with air and sprayed with fast drying contact cleaner. It’s made them worse, need some sort of lubrication? Silicone spray?

 

[GrantMo]

I would be inclined just to put new ones in, you’ll be looking for on-off-on momentary toggle switches. About £2-£3 from the likes of eBay or RS components.

 

[Dry Rot]

^^^^ This, vut a spray is quick and handy. If using electronic contact spray, make sure you get 'proper' contact spray. WD-40 is primarily a water repellent -- or so my electronics guru told me, so not the best. I am using Servisol Super 10 and it works for me. You probably need something that dissolves the corrosion.

 

[milkloss]

Contact cleaner is basically just brake cleaner so will strip all the grease out of the switch and leave it dry and horrible. I don't know what grease you'll need but I reckon those switches won't like being dry.

 

[Barleymow]

Vaseline

 

[TripleSix]

Why not replace them?

Get little rubber dust covers for them too

 

[Grouse]

I had better results spraying my switches with normal WD40 - they now work perfectly! Contact cleaner merely stopped them working FFS - can’t see what the point of it is TBH

 

[box]

Normal contact cleaner is really only good for connectors (and even you're generally wasting your time trying to bodge fix something that's fuucked). The Wurth contact cleaner leaves an oily residue which works reasonably well for switches. There's two types, I'm sure it's the Contact OL that does it, I think Contact SW is just the normal stuff? Fuucked if I know.....

The right way to "fix" them is to pull them apart, clean the contacts and reassemble with di-electric grease.

Otherwise you can spray them with CRC 556 or normal WD40.

What you really should do is spend 30lbs and replace them and fit rubber boots as mentioned above. In an ideal world you should fit a rubber/plastic/steel flap or something over the whole panel to keep them out of the weather.