Potentiometer advice needed for wheel

  • Thread starter FireSloth
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United States
I have an old wheel that I think needs a new potentiometer, as barely touching/turning the wheel in either direction makes it "jump" back and forth erratically like there's a loose connection. Beyond the center in either direction seems fine.

I took it apart and there are markings on the pot housing that I don't understand... Could someone help me figure this out so I can know what to order?

It has these markings:

top left "10"
top right "4B"
bottom left "15"
bottom right "DN"

I figured there may be enough DIY folks here to know generally what kind of pots are used in racing wheels...
 
It'll most likely be just a simple linear pot. 10-100k are common values, that's what the "10" might stand for. Just take it out and measure the resistance between the side pins, but you can swap it for pretty much anything in the tens of kiloohms range and it will work fine.
 
10k, 4b (or b4) taper, 15 mm shaft length, D shaft. That's my guess. :)

The easiest thing to do is get a mic, or even a ruler and measure the shaft diameter and length. The length is generally measured from the bottom of the threads, but you'll need to check the datasheet on whatever pot you find.

I swear I just looked at a pot like this on digikey.com the other day. Their search is really good, their stock availability often isn't.

Like Jet Badger said, pretty much any value pot is going to be fine. Getting the right size and finding it in stock is the hard part. It's also likely a 270 degree pot since it's in an older wheel.

I'll see if I can find that pot I was looking at.

This might work:

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/tt-electronics-bi/P170S-FC15BR100K/987-1317-ND/
 
Last edited:
Thanks guys.

The wheel is a Thrustmaster Nascar Pro Digital 2 from 2001!

I ended up going with Digi-Key and ordering this 10k one: https://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=987-1739-ND

Funny, while I was thinking of wheels, I opened Craigslist and searched for xbox wheel. Found someone selling their Microsoft XBOX 360 wireless force feedback wheel and pedals for only $25 in perfect working order. It's already looking better for American Truck Simulator... but now I'm quickly finding myself looking at the most expensive wheels and drooling. What happened there?

Anyway, this old wheel can be used by my 3 year old boy if nothing else!

I really appreciate all your help here. Sometimes Google doesn't have all the answers. :)
 
Degrees of rotation is more important than I ever imagined in ATS... I never had problems in PC racing games (not simulators, admittedly) in the past. Playing with non-linearity settings is frustrating.
 

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