Home made vs Fanatec Clubsport V3 pedals?

Gents, I am in a quandary. It's quite a nice one as they go, but hopefully you guys can help me decide which way to go.

I'm redoing my rig. I have been an ardent fan of rFactor for years, and although I tried other titles including rF2 I never had the same pleaseure with them. However after all these years rF is dated, and I have to move on. Automobilista and Alletto Corsa are in my sights in order to get a better visual and hopefully sim experience.

When it comes to hardware, that's where I'm stuck. I built my rig many years ago, and it turned out ten times better than I had hoped. It had home made welded alloy pedals, using first pots then converted to hall effect after a few years. I set up the brake pedal using springs and varying hardness types of foam and got a really good feel.

I made a triple H pattern gear shift from aluninium plate, some ball spring detents, microswitches and an old gamepad circuit board, and that, (aside from a bit of a loose side to side feel) is really good and is going strong today.

I used a Cobra 7 racing seat on an adjustable subframe, a Logitech G25 wheel, and made a welded frame with some alloy panels drilled for switches, again connected to the gamepad circuit board

For everything except rF2, it worked brilliantly, far better that my expectation and realistically at the time (2007) was the equal if not better than anything commercially available (for affordable money) at that time. However it was a lot of work, I ran down a few dead ends on some of it and had to rethink bits of it and it probably took 7 or eight months to get working properly. Yes, I enjoyed making it, I'm an engineer by profession and so it gave me some interesting challenges and certainly was an interesting project. I also had spare time.

So time has taken its toll and I come to renew it, but with that time has come a plethora of new products. I am now looking at it all and wondering whether, despite having a lot of resources at my disposal, can I really make anything that equals or improves on what I can now buy.

I'm going to take the plunge with a Fanatec CSL Elite wheel and base; while I can make substitute steering wheels, the base unit is beyond my tech abilities. I haven't read a bad review about it, and although I briefly flirted with the idea of the v2.5, I think the CSL will be fine.

The remaining items are the the pedals and the shifter. I think the shifter is one where I think I can match commercial products, after all it is not a high tech item, and I think with R/C car shock absorbers I can give the give the lever on the existing unit some weight.

But the pedals? My initial plan was to get one of OBP's universal pedal box units, and then modify it to suit. I was going to use the hydraulics it comes with and get a simple brake caliper, and use that with a load cell to replicate the brake. That would give me the feel of a hydraulic brake, and as the OBP unit comes with a balance bar, there would be a certain amount of physical adjustability. The clutch and accelerator would be relatively easy to link up to potentiometers (I've come to the conclusion that they are easier to set up than hall effect for home brew stuff), and I'd just connect it all to a Leo Bodnar controller that over the passage of time took over from the gamepad circuit board.

The OBP pedal box can be bolted down easily on the rig, so getting it positioned would be simple. However, my crackpot plan of using the hydraulics and the load cell is the unknown. That's probably where I have the biggest dilemma.

The Fanatec Clubsport pedals look good, have a load cell brake that is adjustable plus also have some tactile feeback on the accelerator and brake pedal. The accelerator and clutch will be good as they are correctly set up hall effect units that will work out of the box with the base unit above. And let's not forget, I don't have to spend weeks trying to get the homebrew solution to work

The downsides are:

they are more expensive, at least initially - to be fair I'd probably end up spending the balance getting the homebrew system working correctly

With the homebrew setup I can modify it to suit whatever I want in terms of physical shape and how I mount it, plus if I want to put different pedals or space them differently I can - with the Fanatec ones Warranty prevents this

To get the feel of a hydraulic brake you have to spring extra for the hyrdaulic damper kit, which for what it is is not cheap - not sure whether it is worth it

I have seen reports that the pedals are too closely spaced

Lastly, while I fully accept that they will function very well out of the box, will they allow me to get the proper car 'feel' of a brake? I can't believe that there would be any issue with the clutch and accelerator, but the brake feel is so key that this is the big issue.

So help me out here, what should I do?

Cheers

Les
 
I use the Clubsports V3 meanwhile more then 1 year.
I am very happy about it and i dont have any problems with them.
From time to time i disassamble the main rod where the pedals are atached and after cleaning i lubricate it again. Thats the only thing what i have to do to keep it working.

The price is for sure not the smallest one but imo the quality and driving immersion are very good.
Especially the vibration motor on the brake is very good. I like it.
Meanwhile i cant drive without it.
Some games (pcars2) dont offer that and it feels for me now like to drive a wheel without FFB......

The vibration motor on the gas pedal i didnt felt it in action because the games dont support it.
Dont know why...

I dont have the additional damper kit and its ok. A collegue in our community has this dampers and he said it feels alse a little bit better. But i think they are not really necessary..

The distance between the pedals is good but you can change the position of the pedal plates (not the pedal itself). I left it in the standard setup and i am fine with it.
 
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will work out how to post pictures on this thread and do so

Choice 1: host somewhere and use the image tool, next to the smiley on the toolbar, to embed a link. If you use flickr, you only need the link to the image rather than the full embed code.

Choice 2: copy & paste (provided it isn't too high res)
 
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