Fanatec CSW/CSR Elite Modders Thread *UPDATE February 2014*

  • Thread starter eKretz
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Cote Dazur
The best way is most likely to go on your account page on the fanatec website and provide a video of what is happening, like for any other issue. You do not need the invoice bill, your wheel, like all the other item you bought from Fanatec will be listed on your account page.
It always worked for me, first you get a confirmation email that they have received your email and then they will contact you via email again to let you know what to do next.
They are pretty good and fast usualy. Let us know how it is evolving and good luck.
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Your were right, they responded me from today, a bit surprised by their responsiveness
One more thing, i am dealing with them via mails
i described my issues
but i wish to be sure if pedals/F1 rims work fine

. SHO and ABS enabled, vibrations on the brake pedal seems to work randomly since my issue, even if i make very hard braking, and vibration's strength is much less powerful than before
Another issue: e.g when i launch PS3, on the menu PS3, usually pushing throttle pedal does vibrate, i must unplug and plug pedals into wheel base and restart wheel in order to work (sometimes)
Also noticed vibrations when environment effects and vibrations of wheel have been decreased
i made conclusion i have serious trouble with vibrations lol
vibrations come from motor of CSW right?
maybe one of its motor died?
 
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Latest idea to try:

Light1.jpg~original



Light2.jpg~original
 
Wow, cool race car engineering Eric. Have you calculated the percentage of reduced rotating mass? Will be interesting to see how it affects the feel.

One thing I've been reminded of, having had to go back to my old G27 while the CSW is out for motors, is the noticeably higher rotating mass (with the GT wheel anyway) as well as higher mechanical drag.
 
eKretz
So did anyone here get the CSW on eBay? Also anyone looking for Optibelts - this seller has them on ebay:

http://www.ebay.com/usr/bohemia_seal

Motor belts are PJ584 and you can use from 2-4 ribs. (2-3 recommended). Steering shaft/reduction pulley belts are PJ406 and you need 4 ribs for those.
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Hi eKretz, thank you for yr. prompt sharing... Having the old 2 ribs belt, I ordered from them 2 PJ584 to see the differences between 2 and 3 ribs.
Having also only 1 fan installed in my CSW, I would like to add the second one too.
I asked Fanatec for the additional fan bracket but I was told they are not allowed to send spare parts, so basing on yr. template I made a laboratory to produce it for me.
As I don't make an intensive use of my CSW (FF60-70 on max 15 minutes races), I would like to improve the airflow as far as I can... Can you recommend a better fan to replace the stock one or have you any advice to increase the cooling system within the case without pumps or liquid cooling?
Thank you for the great work.
 
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ultimate
SHO and ABS enabled, vibrations on the brake pedal seems to work randomly since my issue, even if i make very hard braking, and vibration's strength is much less powerful than before
Another issue: e.g when i launch PS3, on the menu PS3, usually pushing throttle pedal does vibrate, i must unplug and plug pedals into wheel base and restart wheel in order to work (sometimes)
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I was under the impression that a) It's either ABS vibration or SHO vibration active, not both, and b) The Elite pedals don't have vibration anyway. Try turning both ABS and SHO off, and see if you get consistent performance.
 
MartyU
Wow, cool race car engineering Eric. Have you calculated the percentage of reduced rotating mass? Will be interesting to see how it affects the feel.

One thing I've been reminded of, having had to go back to my old G27 while the CSW is out for motors, is the noticeably higher rotating mass (with the GT wheel anyway) as well as higher mechanical drag.
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Yup, original pulley is 7.28 oz. My lightened version calculates out to 4.45 oz. Nice thing is a very large percentage of it comes from the periphery. I also thought about shaving some mass from the pulley nut, the steering shaft itself and the reduction pulley, as well as the F1 rim.

I haven't decided if I'm going to do this yet, I had just been kicking it around a month or two ago and when mrbasher mentioned it in the other thread I got a laugh since I had been thinking along the same lines. After laughing about that in a message between mrb and myself I figured I'd post it up to see if anybody else might be interested in seeing it.

The drag issue with the stock CSW is really not that hard to mitigate; change bearings from grease to very light oil, get the bearings out of heavy preload, deburr the knife-edged screw threads and swap to oil instead of grease there and run the minimum necessary belt tensions and it's not bad at all with stock motors. Really no need to go further IMO.
 
Piumaz
Hi eKretz, thank you for yr. prompt sharing... Having the old 2 ribs belt, I ordered from them 2 PJ584 to see the differences between 2 and 3 ribs.
Having also only 1 fan installed in my CSW, I would like to add the second one too.
I asked Fanatec for the additional fan bracket but I was told they are not allowed to send spare parts, so basing on yr. template I made a laboratory to produce it for me.
As I don't make an intensive use of my CSW (FF60-70 on max 15 minutes races), I would like to improve the airflow as far as I can... Can you recommend a better fan to replace the stock one or have you any advice to increase the cooling system within the case without pumps or liquid cooling?
Thank you for the great work.
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There is a member here who shared his shoehorning of an 80mm fan into the 2nd fan slot with me in PM but hasn't posted pictures - maybe he will see this and post them. I may go with an 80mm for my second fan too. Stock 2nd fan is 70mm square x 25mm, as mentioned earlier.

If you can find some better heatsinks with fans right on them that might help some, not sure what else you can do that would fit in the case at the moment as it's pretty tight in there.

I have been leaning toward staying with the 2-rib belt lately as it seems to be OK as long as it and the pulleys are kept clean.
 
Just got done installing a set of the new "low-friction" Bühler motors in my wheel. They definitely have less power-off free wheeling drag, but not sure if it will make any difference under actual power. Funny - the friction is now so low that the wheel will often just oscillate back and forth a tiny bit around center. The original Bühler motors do it too with all the low-friction mods done to the wheel, but not nearly as much or as often. I'm not sure if it's worth getting to this level or not - some things feel better and some feel worse. For instance the small bumps and such are better but now the clunk from no feedback to feedback in certain dead zone areas around center in some sims is very noticeable and pronounced where it used to be muted. The motors definitely make a huge difference in the way the drag is measured at the rim - If I get the original Bühlers set just so (hold my tongue right, as they say) I can get down to about 10 oz. of drag at 5.38" from center. But if I just drop them in there and quickly tension it's probably closer to 14-15 oz. on average. These new ones I just dropped in and measured it at 8 oz. Probably could get even lower, but most likely would get some slip. I noticed for sure that the "stickiness" of the belts go up the tighter they are tensioned. So higher motor belt tension = higher drag every time. Guys with stock motors or who run less FFB can probably run considerably less belt tension and get a bit better feel.

Wheelcheck graphs on the way.
 
hi guys i heard about the work being done here by ekretz and others , nicely done, i am having overheating problems with my clubsport ffb motors overheating badly ,the wheel is 8 months old now , and would like to have 2 of those buhler motors ready to replace them when they kick the bucket as they are sending out a bad smell , so is it possible to have a link off one of you guys for the motors please cheers
 
I will PM you a link where you can get the motors but you will need to be able to do the necessary machining to make them fit, and I would definitely suggest finding a good method to cool them.
 
I sent my CSW to Fanatec over a month ago and still have not gotten it back. I think the next time this happens I give you a call eKretz.
 
I honestly think these mods will be the future of these wheels, unless fanatec have a serious think and actuly work out a better motor solution. It seems they are beccoming very reluctant on supplying parts now, I contacted the m about my issue I was having with my encoder, at first they tried to tell me to read the FAQ to try solve my problem, which I told them would not solve the problem. Eventually they ended up telling me that they cannot supply me with the part as they don't have that part by themselves aparantly
 
That is bad news though. There are some parts that would be difficult to find elsewhere, such as that encoder wheel. Or if a PCB gets damaged to the point it can't be fixed. Probably unlikely, but still.
 
Blue028
I honestly think these mods will be the future of these wheels, unless fanatec have a serious think and actuly work out a better motor solution. It seems they are beccoming very reluctant on supplying parts now, I contacted the m about my issue I was having with my encoder, at first they tried to tell me to read the FAQ to try solve my problem, which I told them would not solve the problem. Eventually they ended up telling me that they cannot supply me with the part as they don't have that part by themselves aparantly
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Its not that they cant get the encoder wheel, they mailed me one a few months ago. Im not sure whats going on with Fanatec, but it sure isn't looking good. There have been a few people now who have been told they cant get parts, even though Thomas stated on this site that spare parts will be available.
 
About the eKretz mod kit, which is the FFB setting equivalent to the 100 value of the stock motors? At that value can the motors work with stock cooling (2 fans) on regular basis without needing air pump at all? Otherwise, which is the original equivalent FFB value the Büler motors can handle with stock cooling without losing FFB force?
 
I don't have a definitive answer for that at the moment. I would guess somewhere around FF50-FF60 would be equivalent in strength to the stock motors at FF100. If you never go above that value it would likely be OK to run the stock power supply and no cooling other than the stock fans, but I'm not positive about the cooling. You would also miss out on a lot of the smaller forces in console sims (as you also will with the stock motors at low FF settings). That can be tuned out in the PC sims by adjusting the minimum force setting.
 
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By the way guys sorry about the delay with the Wheelcheck graph on the new motors - I just had a major zapping. My heat sink on the rear side of the board wasn't insulated well enough I guess, and with the paralleled MOSFETs my board was capable of delivering a LOT more current than stock. So... I went to test my wheel with the new motors and when I fired it up to start testing, I set the SENS down to 90° because I wanted to feel how the cogging of the new motors was against the stop. Well, the insulation I had put over the vias picked that moment to let go, and shorted to a via on a trace in the rear of the board. I caught a quick glance at the ammeter as I heard the pop and it spiked to over 20A!

I pulled the PCB to assess the damage and thought I had it contained to replacing the conformal coating and a few components. But it was not to be. I found a failed Schottky barrier diode, and replaced it but when I checked it, it was shorted. So I desoldered it and checked across the pads to find that they were shorted. I started trying to remove a bit of material between the traces with an Xacto knife and as I peeled away conformal coating it just kept getting deeper... And deeper. Turns out the inside of the board is completely turned to charcoal/carbon all around the vias. And of course carbon is conductive. So looks like I need a new board. &$&#+%-@!!

And also 🤬🤬🤬 :D

I have just ordered some non-electrically-conductive thermal pads for next time. 🤬 Arctic Silver 5! LOL. Nah, can't blame the paste for my screwup. I knew it was iffy but thought I was good since it worked with the old motors. I had removed the top little bit from the board around the vias with a die grinder to get them below the board surface and my insulation was CA glue. But taking the vias down probably made the remaining connection too thin and allowed it to heat up too much, which then cooked the CA and shorted to the AS5 and heat sink. Lesson learned.

I'm posting this in the hopes that it will prevent anybody else from making a similar error.
 
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Piumaz
About the eKretz mod kit, which is the FFB setting equivalent to the 100 value of the stock motors? At that value can the motors work with stock cooling (2 fans) on regular basis without needing air pump at all? Otherwise, which is the original equivalent FFB value the Büler motors can handle with stock cooling without losing FFB force?
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I will share my experience with this approach. I ordered a new motor set, mount and pullies from eKretz for my CSR-E. He warned me that he didn't know what the safe level of FF was without the cooling and power booster he had tested. He will not guarantee that I won't burn out the motors or power supply. I am willing to run the risk as I operate at FF40 in GT6.

My CSR-E is over two years old and has served me well but I notice some "gravel" in the feedback. I am approaching this as a way of extending the life of my wheel.
 
That reminds me RReed - I am going to send you a set of the low-friction motors since you will be using reduced power - that should help considerably at lower power with the weaker forces. Also make sure you set your motor belt tension as low as possible without getting slippage at your normal FFB settings.
 
fatkrakr
Its not that they cant get the encoder wheel, they mailed me one a few months ago. Im not sure whats going on with Fanatec, but it sure isn't looking good. There have been a few people now who have been told they cant get parts, even though Thomas stated on this site that spare parts will be available.
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I need to correct this, they sent me a new sensor and when I seen my encoder wheel had scratches on it I had to send the base in and they sent a New base out.
 
Nope, exactly the same in every other way except friction. They have smaller diameter commutators and smaller brushes, so they have less parasitic losses.
 
One thing I have definitely noticed is that the lower friction motors get up and moving at lower voltages than even the stock motors. The stockers get going at about .7 - .9 volts. These low-friction Bühlers get going at about .5 - .6 volts and seem stronger even at that level when just grabbing the pulley and stalling it with my fingers (it's barely moving). At equal voltages - say both at 2 volts - the Bühler motors are already noticeably stronger than the stock motors. The original Bühler motors are also stronger at 2 volts, but they don't get going until more like .9 - 1.1 volts. I really wish I had a way to get more of the low-friction ones! I just am not sure how the longevity will be compared to the originals yet.
 
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I may have a line on some stock motors if anyone is interested. PM me if you want to be put on the list because I will only have so many, and I'm going with first come first served to be fair.
 

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