G25 F1 wheel mod

[Chris Knight]

Ok Ive wanted to make a F1 style wheel for a long while now. Im going to take my G25 and a wheel from a joytech Williams F1 wheel. I will be incorporating my Sli-M and the buttons and rotary encoders. I will keep updating this as I go.

The wheel arrived at 9am this morning and ive been dismantling and removing the circuit boards from it. for the buttons I will be placing some miniature momentary switches behind the button so it will look original and the rotaries will be were the 3 bigger buttons were.

Heres what I have so far. Im just waiting on some plexi and some servo leads

Big thanks to Roadster-2 for the wheel

 

[Chris Knight]

After some cutting and drilling for holes to mount the wheel (very early pics not cleaned it up yet)

Heres my wheel as i started with

Mounted on the G25 had to take it for a run in rfactor feels really comfortable will have to do some work with the gear paddles though as they are a bit too far from wheel.

Final shot for now with the front cut out as wont need the original holes were gear was this will be were some plexi will go the front will be covered with some 3m carbon fiber

Any comments greatly appreciated

 

[Roadster-2]

Hi Chris. Well that didn't take long. Congratulations on an early start and I will keeping a watchful eye on this as not only might it help me with my conversion, it may spur me into action !!

People think that this Joytech PS2 wheel is a toy but quality of the actual wheel is first class and when fitted to a G25 or a G27 it should look awesome. I can see that you have removed the shifter paddles, probably in order to retain your original paddles but for others it's perhaps worth mentioning that many of these wheels come with four shifter paddles and they can be picked up quite cheaply.

Can't wait for the next update.

 

[George Pilkington]

Its looking great mate!
Keep the images coming.
Regards
George

 

[Chris Knight]

heres all for today a bit still to do but its getting there.

 

[Roadster-2]

This is the wheel as it looked originally, so you can see how good it could look sitting on a Logitech unit.

 

[Chris Knight]

a small teaser for what I will be doing tomorrow

 

[Roadster-2]

I have checked with Chris that it's Ok to add to his F1 Wheel thread rather than start another so I will be adding to this thread as I can.

Last night I was working on a G27 repair and had cause to strip the wheel unit. Once the steering wheel and the shifter assembly had been removed I noticed that it should be fairly straight forward to fit the barrel of the Joytech unit, once the ball races have been removed (simple job). As the barrel is slightly too large it will need a couple of grooves cut in the side. A metal bracket can then be fabricated to secure it in place.

If this proves to be a feasible option then it will be easier than I initially thought to fit the Joytech Williams F1 wheel to the Logitech unit. This method will also retain the original Joytech quick-release facility and the four shifter paddles.

I will add a few photo's here as soon as I get chance.

 

[Chris Knight]

so got some work today not as much as wanted but yeah oh and manged to drop soldering iron on my arm and burn it.so heres 4 buttons attatched the other 4 are going to be more annoying..

Heres the wheel with the buttons and attached to the Sli-m

 

[Brian Clancy]

Love all this great DIY stuff

Some good work arounds here, should be a great setup for very little money when its done, nice

 

[Chris Knight]

Ok so far done today burnt my finger tip on glue gun now hurts to type... front of wheel face done where the sli-m fits. just need the carbon vynal to cover it. got fedup of trying to solder to the pcb so baught some tactile switches hope they come tomorrow as back to work on tuesday and theres no post monday (bank holiday)

So for now this is what I have

might have some more pics later on tonight depends on if the putty around the top of the wheel has dried enough to do any other work on it...

 

[Chris Knight]

had to do some testing so put the wheel back together starting to look good..

Wheel feels really comfortable and more like driving a F1 car than the old round road car style wheel

 

[ufunacaoenn]

Very well done Chris, I really like the wheel and the buttons are all placed very well for open wheel cars.
I would really like to hear the total cost when you finish your wheel because I am searching for good open wheels and your home made wheel is in my list now.

 

[Chris Knight]

I think I have all the parts for the build now so ill make you this list.

G25 (had when first came out so was a lot lol) £250
Sli-M (Leo Bodnar) £45.42
Williams f1 wheel (check ebay) £26
Black Plexi (ebay) £3.55
Roatary switch (Leo Bodnar) x4 £15
Mixer Knobs (ebay) £3.75
Tactile switches (ebay) £3.20
3M Carbon vinyl (ebay) £3.90
Green stuff Kneadatite (for filling the gaps) (ebay) £8.00

TOTAL (doesnt include G25) £108.82

 

[ufunacaoenn]

Deffinatly a good price for what you get.

My only question is, the grip on the William F1 wheel, is it better compare to the G25 (or G27 which I have) or worse?

 

[Chris Knight]

the grip is like a rubber feel so grips better I've not done a full race type yet only quali laps but so far feels comfortable there are some ridges at the back of the wheel so you put your little fingers about these so stop the wheel slipping

 

[Chris Knight]

Hi all just to let you know im just waiting for some parts to arrive then ill be back on this. They should be here tomorrow I hope.

Anyone else wanting to do this heres a link to one on ebay

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Playsation2-Steering-Wheel-Williams-F1-Set-/160595499893?_trksid=p5197.m263&_trkparms=algo%3DSIC%252BSI%26itu%3DUCI%252BIA%252BUA%252BFICS%252BUFI%252BDDSIC%26otn%3D10%26pmod%3D130521057933%26po%3DLLIW%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D323663893211398198

 

[Roadster-2]

When searching for the Joytech Williams F1 wheels be aware that you will find these in both Black and Blue colour but some models have two shifter paddles and some have four. So if it's not clear on the photo it's worth checking with the Seller if the number of paddles is important to you.

There is also a variation in the internals as some have a force feedback motor (although very small) and some simply use a pair of springs. This really doesn't make any difference as we're only using the wheel - and possibly the quick-release mounting barrel (will be adding to this post soon regarding this).

To reduce the postage cost you could ask the Seller to dump the pedals. These are poor and therefore of no use and as they contain a lump of concrete inside getting rid of them reduces the shipping weight.

 

[Roadster-2]

Ok, finally managed to get some photo's sorted of the disassembly of the Joytech Williams F1 wheel unit and the attachment of the wheel to a Logitech G27 (need to check but I think it should be the same for the 25). The majority of the photo's are of the spring type Joytech unit but from image 18 onwards it shows the internal assembly and barrel of the force feedback type.

http://img585.imageshack.us/slideshow/webplayer.php?id=dscf0959x.jpg

Once stripped to the barrel the idea of using the two Stainless Steel discs to mount the barrel to the Logitech housing would be similar but I think that the barrel from the force feedback type would be slightly better and stronger. This barrel has grooves on opposing sides and the top one needs to be made deeper and a little wider, then an additional two grooves need to be cut so that the barrel slides down between the three screw mounting lugs of the Logitech housing (image 23). This is a really firm, secure mounting and there is no slip as the three mounting lugs sit tightly in the grooves.

This is as far as I've got at present as the G27 needs a new pcb. I have noticed that the hole in the bottom of the Logitech shaft, through the centre of the small worm gear, is not very large. The plastic sheath from the Joytech quick-release connector cable may need to be removed and just the wires taken through.

Connecting the Logitech pcb to the Joytech wheel/buttons will need to be done but this shouldn't be too difficult a task. Initially I will probably use the two lower shifter paddles as two of the original six buttons on the G27. If you have a G25 then you only have two buttons anyway.

Further work needs to be done now on how to use the multitude of buttons on the Joytech wheel. The original Joytech pcb uses capacitive effect, similar to a PC keyboard. To try and marry the original Joytech pcb would I think be a nightmare so currently I am looking at using a piece of standard Veroboard to fix small TACT switches underneath the buttons, so that the button sits nicely on top of the switch with hopefully little play, and wire these to the Logitech. An alternative to the TACT switches would be to fix the original buttons to small circular switches and glue these into place into each button shaft in the top cover. As with the use of Leo's SLI-M, SLI-PRO or the Symprojects displays this is still being looked at.

Hopefully this will give you some idea of the possibilities and provide a little help to anyone else wants an F1 type wheel without taking out a mortgage to pay for it.

 

[Roadster-2]

I don't have the bases from the previous Joytech wheels I've stripped but I do have the Model number of the last one, the one that I took the photographs of. This unit is a model JS-507, Blue wheel, 4 x shifter paddles, carbon fibre finish front and internally has a couple of springs rather than a force feedback motor.

If anyone else can supply a model number for the Joytech units with force feedback then please pm me the details and also let me know the wheel colour, front colour (carbon fibre or Silver) and number of paddles. Hopefully over a period of time we can build up a list of model numbers and their specifications.