I've recently gotten back into Sim-racing again with some of the OCAU crew (although I am more of a mobile chicane than a racer) and I've been working on building a REALLY nicely designed, machined aluminum pedal set (load cell and hall effect etc).. Anyway.. I happened to have the day off from work on Friday and was pretty bored because of the crappy weather so I went for a uber cheap, ultra thrown together mod for my G25 racing wheel.. I had one of Leo's old BU0710 shift and gear displays laying around and because I never really liked the bar graph type display and tiny little gear indicator, I decided I would make up a new PCB to mount 5mm LEDs and a 25mm high 7-segment display and interface it with Leo's original design. For the backing plate, I used a piece of scrap 3mm aluminium which I cut out with the jigsaw and carefully filed out the cutouts for the gear and rpm displays and then shot with a couple of coats of satin black to tidy it up a bit.. Because I didn't want to spend any money on this, I printed out a "carbon fiber effect" overlay which I covered with some clear contact and stuck the whole lot to the front, threw in some switches and mounted the modified BU710 in a small zippy box.. Anyway, this is the end result - not too bad considering it was built from essentially junk I just had laying around and it was all knocked up in about half a day.. My plan is to build a decent "F1" style wheel (which I've already started..) so it'll do until then.. Click to view full size! SIDE NOTE: It may not look like it, but the 5mm LEDs ARE actually all very much straight and aligned - just didn't want to photograph like that for me - I certainly am no photographer..
Nice mod! Your mod reminds me that I need to try and fix my old logitech MOMO racing wheel. I bought replacement potentiometers for it believing that was what was screwed in it. I did buy a G25 in the meantime... great wheel, but still fond of my original logitech MOMO. Given your mod, I'm thinking I may need to call on you for advice when I do decide to fix old MOMO. GAM.
really nicely done mate, very similar to what i have done with mine. where/waht did you do with the cabling?
I drilled a small hole in the steering wheel "boss" and routed the USB cable through there. From there, it runs down the middle of the steering shaft next to the original (button/paddle shifter) wiring.. and runs out the back to the (PC side) USB connector. Obviously the wiring needed to be routed through all of that and THEN directly soldered to the BU710 PCB (I desoldered the USB connector supplied with the 710).. A little fiddly (ie. you can upset the gearing/timing of the G25 if you're not careful), but all in all, it works very very nicely and damn neat too.. Post some shots of what you've done.. always nice to see how others have done theirs.. Hoops
hehe thats exactly how i did mine. unfortunately that g25 is no longer with me anymore (death by heavyhandedness) and ive moved on to frexgp wheel.
Nice work on the enclosure, looks like a nice fit. Does it get in the way at all when using more than 180deg of wheel movement? Dont forget about CrystalControl2 support http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BgUWMcHVR0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J7gezgxeRA
It fits quite nicely actually.. The enclosure is a UB5 "jiffy box" so only sticks out 35mm (level with the shifter paddles).. In reality, I could of cut down the box and it would have stuck out less than 25mm.. Click to view full size! The Crystal Fontz, whilst being nice, is just way too expensive for me.. if only they'd sell just the USB backpack, then I could use one of my many LCD displays.. Hoops
