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first thing for me to do was remove the pedals from their plastic housing.
The housing is very well built, but to fit in my cockpit it needed to be
smaller. While making it smaller I felt I could make it even more stable by
adding the aluminum plate as a base. |
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first thing I did was layout the placement of the pedals on the aluminum
plate. Drill the holes and mount them with bolts that thread into the tapped
holes in the pedals. It was almost as if they were made to be attached this
way. I then routed the stock wiring harness around the edge of the plate and
secured them with loom and zip ties. All in all it was simple as pie to get
the setup running and the carbon fiber tape is there simply to cover the
bare aluminum and add a bit of a finished look. |
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it is off to getting the wheel mounted and prepared. The idea of an F1 cars
is there isn't a shifter so the G25 shifter is worthless to me in this
application. What it is great for is having lots of extra buttons. So for
now I am going to be stealing the circuit board out of the shifter and
moving it inside the wheel. More on that to come. |
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standard way to attach the wheel is to use clamps and clamp it down. That
works great for a lot of applications but for me I wanted something a lot
more solid. I removed the top of the wheel and proceeded to drill a hole and
attach bolts to the housing. Since a lot of the housing is metal this makes
for a very rugged install. Also there are two threaded inserts in the wheel
that make for two extra locations to bolt it in place. In the end the wheel
housing is held in place with 4 bolts. Here are some photos |
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the wheel will be hard mounted I needed to access the electronics so I cut
an opening in the top that would allow it to pass over the steering shaft.
Also the locking pins are no longer needed so I cut them off and then glued
them in place simply to give it a finished look and stock appearance. |
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MOMO wheel is a very shallow wheel and so when you try and mount it to the
G25 hub there are some issues. The thing to do is build a spacer. The
question for me was how big of a spacer. What I did was take some 1mm
material and machine out several spacers so I could adjust the distance
between the wheel and the paddle shifters. For me the ideal space was 11mm. |
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F1 fan knows that the wheel of an F1 car is covered with dials and buttons.
I had previously owned a Logitech MOMO Racing and it had just enough buttons
for the commands I used. For this wheel I decided to take an old approach
and build a button panel that would fit behind the wheel. I bought the
buttons from
www.allelectronics.com
and again machined the panel out of my 1mm material that the spacer was made
from. I was also able to slightly machine the name of the buttons in the
material in hopes of being able to paint the letters a contrasting color for
a very professional look. Here is the
button panel all primed up and you can see the letters of the button labels
showing up. after a few coats of black paint I was then able to highlight
paint the yellow letters for a nice smooth look to the labels. I used yellow
acrylic paint that had the thickness of toothpaste. I used a finger to rub
it in the letters then wiped it away with a cloth...leaving only the letters
colored in yellow. |
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with the button panel all painted and dry, time to fit it and the spacer to
the wheel. With everything mechanically in place and check for function it
is time to get to the electronics. I
stripped the shifter clean of it's PCB and started the wiring process. Since
I am going to exclusively use the paddle shifters I used the shifter to
provide a tone of extra button inputs. I only used 4 of them for now and
honestly that is all I needed with the games that I play. I also have some
extra button boxes that do other functions and so that also lowered the
demand for on wheel buttons. For the wiring I just used cables that I bought
for cheap from
www.allelectronics.com.
They provided easy installation with plug in connectors to help with
servicing the wheel. Also there was only a small amount of soldering needed
and the heat shrink tubing helps give the wheel that factory built look. |
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it was time to button the wheel up and get all the wires routed the wheel
installed for the final time. The shifter circuit board fit very well inside
the wheel housing. with a bit of creative routing I was able to get all the
wires in place with no binding or crimped wires. I am hoping that I won't
have to go back inside the wheel for a long time.
Everything is all buttoned up and the finished
screws are installed. The total time to do this was a few week nights here
and there for about 6 weeks. It was a very worth while project and the added
feel of the "real wheel" make all the differences in the world. the G25 is
one heck of a wheel for the consumer and with these few modification it has
made a huge difference in my gaming...now let's just see how much faster I
am!
Here are a few more photos of the completed
cockpit with it's new wheel. |
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Here is where you can download the AutoCAD
files of the spacer and button panel. |
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DISCLAIMER: Keep in mind that
all of things you do are at YOUR OWN RISK. Any ideas you get from my site
are purely yours and this site is only a record of my personal projects. You
cut your finger off, or burn down your house...don't come suing me! |
