Why building your own steering wheel and pedals is worthwhile As many players have noticed, playing formula games with keyboard or joystick is very boring and unreal. With steering wheel you can get a feeling that is more real and playing is fun! Once you have tried wheel and pedals, you don't want to play formula games with keyboard anymore. You don't need to have a lot of knowledge in electronics in order to build your own steering wheels and pedals. There are lots of ways to do it and I'll introduce one way for You. The instructions below are not perfect, but this information will give you the basics to a build wheel and pedals.

Because I like handicrafts, I didn't go and look for an old steering wheel from a junkyard. If you make a steering wheel yourself, you can use your imagination to create the kind of wheel you like most. And this way the whole system will not be heavy and will be easily portable. Wood is quite inexpensive material so making you own wheel and pedals is a very cheap project. If you make your system by yourself, you can add your own features like I did. For example the wheel angle is easily adjustable just by releasing the screws on the both sides (see the picture). There are pictures of some wheels I have made. You should use your own ideas in design and I hope these pictures will give you more inspiration. I recommend you to read the whole story before you do anything!

Here we go... first the wheel The best way to start is to make the woodwork first and finish the project by doing the electrical work. I have made five sets of wheels and pedals and every time I have started the project by making the steering wheel. If you want to inlay the gear switches and the wires (like I did) to the wheel, the best way is this: shape your wheel by jig shaw, but don't put the finishing touches to it! Drill hole for the axle to the back of the wheel. Saw the wheel into the two pieces (cutline in the picture) and drill holes the way shown in the picture. Thread thin wire through the holes. The wires should be long enough so that it would be easy to install the switches later. Glue the two pieces back together. Now you have two wires that come out of the axle hole from the back of the wheel and the other end come out of the switch hole in the front of the wheel. Glue a piece of wood to the back of the wheel for the axle and finally finish the wheel.

I made the axle for the wheel from a plastic tube that is normally used by electricians when they install electrical wires in a new house (at least in Finland). There are two sizes of tubes. The smaller fits perfectly into the bigger one (see the pedals). The smaller one is used for the axle. A wooden plug must be installed in the end of the axle in order to center the potentiometer correctly to the axle. Drill also a hole to the side of the axle to get the gear switch wires out of the axle. After you have made the wheel, you can make the rest of the wheel system. In order to repair your wheel later, do not glue every part together!! Do not use nails, only screws, so the whole system can be taken to pieces later.

Pedals I used normal pots for the pedals, because they are cheaper and for my experience, they last longer than slide pots. The implementation with slide pots would be much easier and I recommend you to use them if possible. Despite of that, I'll introduce the way I implemented the pedals with normal pots. There is one potentiometer for both pedals, accelerator and brake. When the brake is pressed the brake switch switches the brake pot to use and when the brake pedal is released the switch turns the accelerator pot to use. (see the picture) The best switch for this purpose is microswitch, because the change from state to another is faster than in normal switch. Because there are two pots for y-axis, I had to make also a brake balance pot. With that pot the resistance of the brake can be adjusted to the right level. An extra rubberband might be useful just to be sure that the brake pedal is pulled up enough that the microswitch connects the accelerator to use.

The brake microswitch

Make the pedals base large enough so that the pedals are not just in the front edge (see the picture). That's better because when your heel is on the base and you press the pedal, the pedals don't "run away". In the newer version of the brakes the brakeswitch is attached to a little piece of wood which is mounted to the front. The piece of wood also prevents the pedals to raise too high. The material of the strap, that rolls the potentiometer, must be inelastic. Remember to put some vaseline between the axle and tube, so the pot rolls better. You have to install rubber band (or something) to make the pot roll back when the pedal is released. It's clever to install a box on the top of the pedals where the brake balance trimmer exists. In that box there are almost all the wires and connections you need to make, so there are no wires outside, except the wires that come from potentiometers and switch to the box. On the top of the box there's a jack where the plug from the steering system is connected.

The size of the potentiometers depends on the diameter of the axle you use in the pedals and the size of the pedal movement. If the pedal moves about 40 mm and the diameter of the axle is about 15 mm the size of the pot should be 100K. If the diameter is about 30mm and the movement is about 20 mm, the pot should be about 200K. Those are the pots and diameters I have used and it have worked well.

Wiring

Adjusting the brake balance pot

Closing words