My modified xbox wheel.

[BrEaKnDiSh]

Hey guys. Long time forum lurker and self confessed sim racing noob here.
Im still on the console and my first and only wheel so far is the original MS wheel. It has the well known bearing mod plus a little DIY electronic filter on the steering potentiometer to smooth and filter the signal.
The pedals have been more or less rebuilt and also include a basherboards type filter. They use a oil damper from some old bike suspension forks and skate bushings on the brake.
I have just finished a custom wheel rim with a CF button plate and paddle shifters. Its a 310mm leather wheel I got off eBay for £25. Bargain!
I really like DIY and modding and I have been inspired by the many excellent diy projects I have seen on the forums. Hope you guys like my effort

 

[left888]

Great job Break! Fantastic work. While I never had this gear I can see the modification that has gone into this.

 

[BrEaKnDiSh]

Great job Break! Fantastic work. While I never had this gear I can see the modification that has gone into this.

Thanks Left!

It's nice to get a positive comment for my hard work!

This is how it used to look:

I have a few more mods/tweaks planned for the wheel.

I also want to re-build the pedals from scratch and ditch every last remains of anything microsoft. They currently still use the original potentiometers and some of the original plastic casing. Plus theres no clutch, at the moment...

On top of that a sequential shifter and handbrake would be awesome! But that's lower on the list of priorities as I need a better screen and want to get a proper audio/tactile feedback system first Not to mention the DIY rig needs painting...

Oh my god the list goes on hehe! When is a DIY project ever really finnished???

 

[Mazyata]

Wow, great work and effort. Everything looks good besides how it still looks unfinished. I am guessing that you will take it all apart and clean up the edges and paint. Maybe a pvc pipe to cover up the steering column too? What did you do with the directional controls? It is wired as buttons now? Did you ditch any buttons at all or it still has full control like it was normal?

I also have this wheel but it is bone-stock. I don't like the slack on the wheel and the table clamp. So much slop. Lots of excessive plastic on the wheel and pedals too. Looks like you eliminated all that crap. The wheel also needs a sequential shifter and maybe a handbrake. It won't be complete unless you have them too.

How do you like the force feedback? I thought it was a bit weak. Since you upgraded to a real wheel I am thinking the feedback would be even more weak.

Rigs are never finished. There is always something that can be done to them. Anyways, I always wanted to mod my M$ wheel just like you have.

 

[BrEaKnDiSh]

Wow, great work and effort. Everything looks good besides how it still looks unfinished. I am guessing that you will take it all apart and clean up the edges and paint. Maybe a pvc pipe to cover up the steering column too? What did you do with the directional controls? It is wired as buttons now? Did you ditch any buttons at all or it still has full control like it was normal?

I also have this wheel but it is bone-stock. I don't like the slack on the wheel and the table clamp. So much slop. Lots of excessive plastic on the wheel and pedals too. Looks like you eliminated all that crap. The wheel also needs a sequential shifter and maybe a handbrake. It won't be complete unless you have them too.

How do you like the force feedback? I thought it was a bit weak. Since you upgraded to a real wheel I am thinking the feedback would be even more weak.

Rigs are never finished. There is always something that can be done to them. Anyways, I always wanted to mod my M$ wheel just like you have.

Hehe!

The wheel is 100% finished all apart from something to cover the steering column. PVC pipe is a good idea. I could maybe cover it with some carbon vinyl. It could do with a bit more work sanding the edges of the paddles though. They are made from Gold anodized alloy 'Luggage tags' I found on eBay. I really wanted Gold alloy paddles

The D-Pad is in the top left using 2 buttons for up/down and a 2 way toggle switch for left/right. Every button is there and working as it was on the original wheel.

Top Left: Direction buttons and toggle.
Top Right: A and B
Bottom Left: 'BACK' and X
Bottom Right: Y and 'START'
Center: HOME/GUIDE

The Pedals look like crap to be honest but with only hand tools and no workbench I struggle to get good clean cuts. I do wanna fully re-build them and try a load cell brake later.

To remove the slop in the main shaft:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krxo-59rloE

Its what I have done on mine. I have a friend with a lathe in his garage and he did the machine work for me. There's another video on youtube where a guy shows how to do it by hand with a Dremel.

The FFB is weak and going from a 260mm rim to heavier and larger 310mm rim definitely makes it feel slightly weaker. I'm planning to tweak the electronics to get more power.

Also I'm looking for parts to slightly increase the rotation to as close to 390 as possible. I know its not much but it should help. Although the wheel turns about 360 already, the signal's going to the game only cover about 310 degrees so there's about 60 degrees of unused/wasted rotation before I even think about upping it to 390. More on that later...

Thanks for your interest and feel free to ask as many questions as you like. If you can solder and make basic parts from sheet material you could build your own custom wheel too. I'd be happy to help if needed : )

 

[Mazyata]

Thanks for your offer to help! A while ago I thought about going through this route after I saw the video -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqZvh7I_2_c . Would have done it a bit more different while sticking to the same concept.

All the things on your wheel and pedals looks very good. Like I said, it just needs paint including the bare pieces of wood around it. Clean up the edges and shorten all those excessively long screws. But of course you already knew that. Can't wait to see more of your mods. Never seen a more modded and better looking MS wheel than yours. Keep it up!

 

[BrEaKnDiSh]

Haha thanks man!

Yea my rig was made from scrap wood and looks a bit rough lol. I want to re-build the floor base frame using 4"x2" and 18mm ply on top. Then fill and sand it and get some paint on.

Thats pretty cool what that guy did in the youtube vid. My only consideration is that I wouldn't want any additional linkages between the wheel shaft and the FFB motor. It uses a spur gear so there 2 points of contact between the shaft and FFB motor meaning gear slop is quite bad. This is what causes the small dead zone in the FFB when the wheel is in center position. I've looked into replacing the spur with a pulley to the motor (like the Thrustmaster RGT) so there would only be one point of contact between cog's reducing the FFB dead zone and vastly reducing the whining noise you get when turning the wheel quickly. Another advantage of changing to pulleys is the gear ratio can be altered to get slightly more torque going to the wheel.

I'm also planning to add s second bearing on the back plate inside so that the wheel shaft can turn freely and have zero side to side play. The problem with the single bearing mod is that when the back plate is tightened down the bottom end of the wheel shaft rubs on the inside of the back plate causing friction. This friction robs you of subtle FFB effects. Thats probably next on the list for wheel mods

 

[BrEaKnDiSh]

Having fitted the new custom rim I needed to increase my FFB as the larger and havier rim was making the FFB barely noticeable.

I got a 10A adjustable PSU from eBay (48v - 30v) and did some testing to see how many volts I could get away with. At 30v I had no issues at all and got a decent amount of FFB. I began slowly upping the voltage and got to just above 32v when the power LED went off and the PSU cut out. I had blown the 2A fuse in the wheel. After replacing the fuse I still had a problem, there was a short. It was a small zener diode next to the power inlet. I didn't have a replacement so just removed it and fitted a new 3A fuse which got the wheel working again. Again I tried increasing the voltage up to 34v. I didnt want to go any further due the the Electrolytic Capacitors on the board only being rated 35v. At 34v the wheel powered up and worked fine but there was no FFB. Strange... I began reducing it and found that above 31v the FFB cuts out for some reason? For now Im really happy with the amount of FFB I'm getting with 31v, which is quite a bit more than the stock 24v 500mA the standard wheel has. I would say I'm getting what feels like slightly more than the wheel had with the stock 260mm rim and 24v PSU. So I'm happy for now.... []

Some pics below and a video with some cockney bloke speaking in it hehe!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsFZVOm_HrE&feature=youtu.be

 

[Mazyata]

I did not realize the dude from the vid changed his steering function. I thought the base was still connected to the wheel. That will surely add more moving parts, different gearing, and slop.

Good job for bumping up the power. The power supply looks trick! Any plans to swap out the motor? What are the exact differences between a WRW01 to the WRW02 wheel? Just curious.

By the way, I do not see any pictures of what you have done, just the vid.

 

[BrEaKnDiSh]

Hey Maz.

Got some pics but its nothing that cant be seen in the vid mate. The differences over the WRW01 were due to the first version having a tendency to go pop lol! They changed from a multi PCB arrangement to a single PCB, and changed a few things on the motor driver circuit to stop it blowing itself up. I dont know exactly what though. I have read on Forza forums that the WRW01 had stronger FFB but it wasn't as smooth and tended to do its own thing sometimes.

The PSU is way overkill but I needed something adjustable.

For general info:

I've done a bit of testing tonight and if anyone wants a chaep easy way to get more FFB from their MS wheel just get a 31v (no more!) 2A PSU. There are suitable ones on eBay for HP printers (think they have different plugs though). You may need to cut some vents and add a fan to help to motor stay cool. Its not that it runs drastically hot but it def gets a tad warmer than usual. It causes the FFB to fade slightly as the motor starts to warm up.

 

[BrEaKnDiSh]

 

[RSpry]

Hey guys. Long time forum lurker and self confessed sim racing noob here.
Im still on the console and my first and only wheel so far is the original MS wheel. It has the well known bearing mod plus a little DIY electronic filter on the steering potentiometer to smooth and filter the signal.
The pedals have been more or less rebuilt and also include a basherboards type filter. They use a oil damper from some old bike suspension forks and skate bushings on the brake.
I have just finished a custom wheel rim with a CF button plate and paddle shifters. Its a 310mm leather wheel I got off eBay for £25. Bargain!
I really like DIY and modding and I have been inspired by the many excellent diy projects I have seen on the forums. Hope you guys like my effort

I really like the mods you did. That thing looks awesome. I was wondering if you could explain how you did the potentiometer filters on the wheel and the pedals. I've been trying to find information on this but this post is the only thing I've seen. The only thing I can figure out is it involves some caps and resistors. Correct me if I'm wrong. Thank you.

 

[Ben1444]

Looking at upgrading mine as prefer rally games so desperately need sequential shifter and proper handbrake. Was planning on just hacking into the wiring for the buttons and effectively just adding another switch but don't really know which wires relate to which controls... Can someone please enlighten me?