How to make your shaft longer (The wrong way)

[SegaOutrun]

Inspired by Vandale, I decided to extend the shaft on my driving force gt. I went the super cheap route and used what my dad had in his backyard. Total cost $0.

Both my dad and I, are measure once (or not at all) kind of people so hopefully you can get an idea of what we did and do it better than we did.

1. Took my wheel apart. There are 13 screws on the back of the wheel. pretty simple (3 on the left spoke, 3 on the right spoke, 4 on the bottom spoke and 3 in the center rear of the wheel).  The front clear "GT" circle pops out by sticking a thin knife in the wedge. After removing the "GT" logo, there's 4 screw holding the wheel to the shaft. There is also one plug that connects the buttons to the main board to the shaft. See step 4 on how to extend this cable.


2.Luckily we had a spare metal tube laying around that was the correct size (sorry i didnt measure it so, i dont know what size it is)




3. We decided to weld bolts to the tube to be able to screw in the wheel and to reuse the mounting points on the wheel for stability. On the bottom end, we riveted the tube to the original shaft. Make sure you plug in the wheel and mark the real center of the wheel before working the shaft. 


4. While not necessary, I recommend opening the top cover of the wheel, removing the metal brace and rerouting the control wiring. This will give you a few more inches of cable in the shaft so you dont have to worry about the wiring disconnecting inside your new shaft. (it happened to me, I had to replug it with tweezers and pen inside the shaft). With the wire rerouted, my control wire end connectors is now extend and sticking out past my new shaft so, I wont have this issue again if it become unplugged again.


5. its not pretty, but itll do its job. I can now hide the base inside my control panel and only have part of the shaft sticking out.


ORIGINAL SHAFT (Tiny)


6. Bonus Mod. While searching for Driving force GT Mods, I can across this simple color mod. Take out the "GT" center piece and sharpie the inside of the GT logo to add color when it lights up. (Note: Blue is a sharpie, Red was a cheap marker I had laying around, im going to buy a red sharpie and redo the red side to get a better color)


I played a few runs of outrun and it felt sturdy. My control panel will finally be done next weekend (fingers crossed) so, I will take some pics inside my cab once its done.

[Howard_Casto]

Fantastic job man. 

I'm going to attempt this on a cheaper model wheel soon so I'll add it to your tutorial assuming I can remember to take pics. 

Just a suggestion for anyone wanting to do this.  Since marking the center position the shaft might be hard to read after you install the extension, I would suggest you take your extension and mount it to one end first (doesn't matter) and then power the wheel on and activate the center spring.  Then you can test fit everything to get the centering right and mark the outside of your shaft extension, which hopefully will be easier. 

[Howard_Casto]

Well I looked into mine today, I'm not sure if I'm going to do it now, but I'll post for documentation purposes. 

First off if any of you guys like any of my racing related software, you ought to thank Badmouth sometime.  A couple of years back I was working on force-feedback drivers in mame and mamehooker (primarily for gun recoil) and people started asking about racing games.  I went as far as a could and then basically had to stop because I didn't have a wheel to test the code on and at the time at least, I wasn't interested in racing games in the least.  So bm up and sends me this little guy.... yeah so it's all his fault. 

Anyway, even though it's a cheaper model wheel it's grown on me a lot.  The poor thing has went through hell with my testing and initial inability to code FF effects and still works fine.  I was going to upgrade, but considering I want to mount a custom, larger steering wheel later on, as well as hand-built pedals and shifter I'm not sure if it makes any sense to buy an expensive wheel I'm going to hack up anyway. 

Enough blabbing, on to the pics:

As you can see below, the original GTs have a rather unique shaft.  I don't know if you can tell from the pics, but it's all a single piece of plastic.  There is an inner shaft molding, that seems to be the structural part and an outer collar that's about 2 inches long molded around it, which locks into the base and acts as the stops.  The back half of the wheel is molded onto the shaft as well. 

So if I do it (I might have to admit defeat on this one), I see two ways of doing it. 

I could either cut the outer collar in half and put a sleeve on the outside of them, screwing into the sides to attach it like outrun did, or cut the wheel part off completely, do an outer sleeve and drill the fake screw holes on the front of the wheel to screw it directly to an end cap. 

Ideas would be welcomed. 

[TacticalChaos]

"How to make your shaft longer"

I thought they made a blue pill for this.

[Xiaou2]

Its very difficult from the blurry flat pics, with low contrast, no angles..etc..  and only partial assemblies, to know whats going on... or Id give my best advice.

 However, even as much as I admire a cheap solution...  I think its a sad route to go.   PC wheels are weaksause.   Moastly flimbsy thin Plastic... that bends, creaks, and cracks under strain.  The look and feel of the wheel is like that of a toddlers toy..   and its force feedback is usually underpowered and poor in response effect.   And if you jack up the power with mods... your probably just going to break the thing even faster.

 Honestly, its pretty easy to make a pot driven wheel assy.  A good strong one, built like a tank... that children could hang from.   And cheaply.   The real issues lay with designing a good strong arcade level force feedback system, that anyone can buy and put into action..  and will work with mame as well as any other windows game (any possibly even console games too).

 Id like to see something similar to what Namco did with their dial based PS1 racing controller.  Its basically a spinner.. so theres no physical stop.   But there is force feedback.   In this way, you can play both analog pot drivers.. as well as games like supersprint.   And heck... if your good at hacking... can add force feedback effects to the dial based games too.   Both in typical rotation..  as well as optional outrun style left-to-right sliding assembly.  (the old 'steam engine' drive assembly)

 It would also be possible to then have it set up to set physical stops, using some sort of heavy duty locking rubber brake mechanism ..that can engage and disengage, based on the presets you program in.

 In this way, you could use it one games that had typical analog rotation range... as well as games that have 900 degree support... and even games in mame such as Race Drivin, which has like 6 full wheel rotations from one side to the other.   (The best arcade wheel ever created hands down, IMO)

 I can design the physical mechanisms pretty easily.. but the electronics, software and the rest.. are beyond my level of depth, to get the desired quality and functionality.

[Howard_Casto]

I agree with what you are saying mostly.  A heavy duty solution would be better, but I don't know if it would work for my particular application.  I'm making my rig collapsible to save space.  I've mocked some stuff up with scrap already and I can make the dashboard really sturdy, even with a collapsible design.  Unfortunately the more weight I add to the thing, the more bulky the columns holding up the dash need to be, which makes it less and less portable. 

If you want force-feedback you've pretty much got to use a pc wheel.  That's why every thread in this forum typically has an arcade cab with a Logitech wheel hacked in.  I've looked into other solutions and there really aren't a lot out there.  Happ sells a usb ff interface to some of their replacement assemblies, which is great if you want to spend more money on your wheel than you would the entire cabinet.  I added it up one day.  I think it would be around 600 bucks for a brand new setup from them after all is said and done.
There are a few homebrew solutions, but none of them are really great.  For the most part the software isn't a problem for me.... until you get to the actual force-feedback.  Direct-input will send a device a few variables and it's up to the driver author to use complicated math to figure out what to do with them.  Some of it I can do, but honestly stuff like spring effects and damper effects are a bit beyond me. 

In terms of other wheels, the g25/27 is pretty much the gold standard and if you are going to use it as-is, it's undoubtedly the way to go.  It's got a metal wheel, better switches and a dual motor setup.  If you take it apart though, it isn't all that different from the one I've got now.  It has two motors, which is nice, but they are still really small.  The pot is the same as is the housing.  While the shaft is definitely easier to hack and customize, it's still plastic.  I've got some arcade steering wheels and I probably want to mount one of those on the assembly.  I can upgrade the pot to a digital one for a couple of bucks, and I can probably overdrive a more powerful motor which would give me similar force to the 27.  It's just the shaft itself that has me worried.  It isn't exactly sturdy, as you've pointed out. 

[Brian74]

The shaft I had made works pretty good. I used two bearings to support the shaft. So they take most weight for the wheel. It was not cheap, but in the end. I felt it was the best solution.

[Howard_Casto]

How much did the bearings themselves set you back?  I'm thinking that I might remove the shaft from the large outer sleeve forward and mount some metal pipe on two bearings, which will take care of things structurally and then just screw into the remaining plastic shaft on the ff.  I might even try to replace the whole thing, but things get sketchy towards the pot area... I would need to mount things at the same angle so the FF gears don't bind. 

[Brian74]

I got them at a store up here called fleet farm. I think you have something down there called tractor supply co? They would have them, cost like 5 bucks each.

[BadMouth]

Yeah, tractor supply has a selection of bearings and pillow blocks.
Usefull stuff for diy steering setups.

[Generic Eric]

Yeah, tractor supply has a selection of bearings and pillow blocks.
Usefull stuff for diy steering setups.

Don't vxb.com and pauaolo (<- I can never get the spelling right so I can't put an order in.) have stuff to? 

I bought a bearing on vxb.com to mod my xbox360 wheel. 

[BadMouth]

Yeah, tractor supply has a selection of bearings and pillow blocks.
Usefull stuff for diy steering setups.

Don't vxb.com and pauaolo (<- I can never get the spelling right so I can't put an order in.) have stuff to? 

I bought a bearing on vxb.com to mod my xbox360 wheel.

vxb is an online bearing superstore.  They have absolutely everything, but sometimes it's nice to walk into a store and see how the parts fit together in person.

Nearly all the stuff pololu has is too small to be of use for something that will be abused like a steering setup.
It's probably ok for gearing to the potentiometer, but not for holding the steering shaft in place or ffb.

[Howard_Casto]

Thanks guys.  I'll check out tractor supply once my ears clear up.  My stupid allergies are killing me to go along with everything else and that place smells like the back end of a horse. 

Went to the doctor for the third time this month, so hopefully what they gave me this time will take care of it.  It'd be nice to sleep more than 2 hours a night.

[Generic Eric]

Yeah, tractor supply has a selection of bearings and pillow blocks.
Usefull stuff for diy steering setups.

Don't vxb.com and pauaolo (<- I can never get the spelling right so I can't put an order in.) have stuff to? 

I bought a bearing on vxb.com to mod my xbox360 wheel.

vxb is an online bearing superstore.  They have absolutely everything, but sometimes it's nice to walk into a store and see how the parts fit together in person.

Nearly all the stuff pololu has is too small to be of use for something that will be abused like a steering setup.
It's probably ok for gearing to the potentiometer, but not for holding the steering shaft in place or ffb.

www.pololu.com  Thanks a bunch. 

[stafidani]

Hello!

I was wondering if you could help me with my DFGT. I wanna replace the cables that is circled on the picture, but i have no idea what is that called.


 

[thomas_surles]

When I get a chance I will see about doing one for the momo. Haven't taken it apart yet, so I hope it's not all plastic. (Probably is). I plan on figuring out how to take out the Shifter to be mounted somewhere other than on the wheel as well.

[BadMouth]

When I get a chance I will see about doing one for the momo. Haven't taken it apart yet, so I hope it's not all plastic. (Probably is). I plan on figuring out how to take out the Shifter to be mounted somewhere other than on the wheel as well.

yup, all plastic.  It's been a while, but I remember thinking that it wasn't conducive to shaft extension.
The shifter is just two tiny switches on a pcb.  They're on a separate harness IIRC.
Rather than building something, you'd probably be just was well off buying an UP/Down (return to center) arcade shifter and wiring it to the MOMO.

I'll see if I can find any pics.

EDIT: doesn't appear that I had any pics in the momo hacking threads, but this video (not mine) shows the shaft.
It's plastic and is keyed rather than having a bolt pattern.

[Howard_Casto]

I extended mine and it turned out ok.  I used really thick pvc sleeves for the extension.  I suppose I need to do pics. 

[thomas_surles]

When I get a chance I will see about doing one for the momo. Haven't taken it apart yet, so I hope it's not all plastic. (Probably is). I plan on figuring out how to take out the Shifter to be mounted somewhere other than on the wheel as well.

yup, all plastic.  It's been a while, but I remember thinking that it wasn't conducive to shaft extension.
The shifter is just two tiny switches on a pcb.  They're on a separate harness IIRC.
Rather than building something, you'd probably be just was well off buying an UP/Down (return to center) arcade shifter and wiring it to the MOMO.

I'll see if I can find any pics.

EDIT: doesn't appear that I had any pics in the momo hacking threads, but this video (not mine) shows the shaft.
It's plastic and is keyed rather than having a bolt pattern.

Well that sucks. But thank you for saving me the time of stripping it. I will probably just go with your Shifter idea then.