Ricmotech has told me to fix my own $1700 pedals

[Sonder13]

If you frequent r/simracing you've more than likely seen this already.

Long story short I called them asking to repair the pedals and sent them pics of what was wrong. I explained I would pay for everything to include shipping. After a brief phone conversation the gentleman I spoke with said he would show my documentation to the designers and well here we are now.

Customer service goes a long way and this is something I feel could have been rectified a bit better. Shame on me I guess.

 

[AccAkut]

I'd be more concerned about there being more damage on the cylinder under that rubber boot.

 

[Wilko Jones]

How did that happen?

 

[Sonder13]

How did that happen?

Jose from Velazquez Engineering nailed it with one of the reddit replies. Me using the bushings they sell as an upgrade are apparently too soft.

This failure mode happens when you use a soft bushing set on the brake pedal slave cylinder. The Ricmotech design hydrolocks one of the master cylinders (the one with the bent pushrod in this picture). This means that the hydrolocked master cylinder does not have any displacement when you push the brake pedal. All of the pedal displacement is done by the other master cylinder which is connected to the slave cylinder. When you use a soft bushing stack on the slave cylinder, you get a lot of pedal travel. The large pedal travel creates some really large angles on the master cylinder push rods which eventually leads to bent or broken push rods on the hydrolocked master cylinder.

Source: I am the owner of Velazquez Engineering and I have changed my design to use 2 separate slave cylinders on the brake pedal to avoid this failure mode. The hydrolocked master cylinder works just fine when you use a stiff bushing set with small pedal travel but when the customer wants a lot of pedal travel, this failure can happen.

 

[Wilko Jones]

That is ugly!
You appear to be in need of a new master cylinder, not a pin as the customer service claims. The "pin" is part of the master cylinder assembly.

 

[Sonder13]

That is ugly!
You appear to be in need of a new master cylinder, not a pin as the customer service claims. The "pin" is part of the master cylinder assembly.

oh trust me I know

 

[Clover11]

Wow, never herd of just replacing the pin in the master cylinder. I'm sure it would be cheaper but I bet it would leak. I would save myself the trouble and replace the entire master. Sorry buddy. You would think with their premium, they would have better support. Seems to me like they did not want anything to do with it.

 

[JJ Gordon]

How long ago was the purchase? Is it still under warranty?

 

[rikirk]

I accidentally stumbled in the Reddit thread and for sake of transparency here, the OP is not the original owner and the pedals are not under warranty.

Furthermore, in this post there's less than half of the story and I invite to read that thread before judging either parties. To my understanding they offered to repair when the part would became available, or alternatively suggested to replace the part as DIY to save money and time.

If the whole cylinder has to be replaced I don't see why they shouldn't do it at cost.

I own the same pedals that I purchased directly and my customer service experience with Ricmotech is nothing less than top notch.

After two years of use I had a leak and despite being out of warranty they provided the service free of charge.

Different from many manufacturers or retailers they do have a phone number to call and they respond promptly.

Couple of times I asked for help to fine tune the pedals and calibration and they assisted me live on TeamViewer and made sure I was completely satisfied with the result.

Despite I purchased the brake kit, in over 2k hours of use I prefer the original bushings since it's by design the one that simulate the load for GT3 and independently of the load leaking is expected as per the majority of hydraulic pedals.

Ricmotech themselves recommend that over the optional kit.

Because of the above, I felt the need to chime in and share my own experience before people in this community make the wrong assumptions based only on the partial content offered by the OP.

It's easy nowadays to jeopardy reputations with the power of few digital clicks, instead I would like to know how this story ended for the sake of the truth and the benefit of our community.