after doing a little checking i found a service gram from hyster about these handles, the service gram mainly dealt with repairing/retrofitting the upper part of the handle to make it servicable, the old style handles were not.
But there is a note in this bulletin that plainly states:
The lower control mechanism is non-repairable and the entire control handle must be replaced if it is defective.

As far as these tech's that came out and looked at it were they hyster techs? or Independent Techs? In either case they were wrong.. you can get a handle for this truck New or Reman
the New part number is 1554722 and the Reman part numbers are 4001993 and R4001993.

Sounds like these guys didn't know what they were doing and besides it is a heck of alot less expensive to replace the handle assy than replacing a $45k lifttruck just because of something like this ;o)