I've decided to put the full set of photos here on a separate page so that the main Steering Wheel page loads a little more quickly. As with most of our site images, click on the ones here to see the full size image.
The Wheel
1. Shaft from the ceiling fan
2. Normal 1/2" U bolt
3. 5/8" thread pushed through the ceiling fan shaft
4. Small angle bracket to hold the bungy cord for centering
5. Bearing from ceiling fan
Once I had all these bits, I used a drill press to drill the four holes for the U bolts and clamped the bearings on to the base. Just under the bearings you can see I placed two bits of wood to hold their bottom sides in place. Oh, the ceiling fan shaft had to be drilled out using the drill press as well so that the thread could go through it. Luckily it was pre-drilled to almost the size I needed.
1. Cut out for the dash board
2. Ceiling fan bearings
3. Ceiling fan shaft
4. 100k linear potentiometer mounted on an angle bracket
Not much difference here from the last photo. I screwed the pot into place and connected the thread to the pot using a short length of neoprene tubing (not shown). To get the pot shaft to the correct diameter I bought a small knob for it from the electronics store.
Pedals
Here's the front side of the pedals. It only took me about one night to knock this up and I'm reasonably happy with the results. The pedals are a lot smaller than other ones I've seen but I wanted to keep my heels on the base plate to move them. The eyelet bolts which go from the end of the pedal through the back board are the self tapping type. Most of the other plans I've seen use a nut and thread but this was more trouble than it's worth. That hole has to be straight so I used the drill press for it.
1. Potentiometer facing away from the camera
2. Plastic arm
3. Drawer knob
4. Eyelet bolt
This was my first attempt at the turning mechanism on the back of the pedals. I mounted the pot so it faced towards the pedals, cut the slot in a piece of plastic and drilled a hole to press fit it onto the spline of the pot. It all worked ok but was a REAL pain to calibrate and as you can see in the photo, only gave me aroun 90 degrees of movement. The more movement you translate to the pot, the more sensitivity you get in the pedal so I wanted something better. Note the bungy return mechanism. I used the smaller guage bungy cord for this and ran it over a simple pine drawer knob. Works really well!
1. Metal arm
2. Z angle bracket (partially obscured)
3. Pot shaft poking through arm with three screws holding the arm to the knob
4. Large plastic knob with screw to tighten/adjust
Although this new mechanism took heaps longer to do, it is far more sturdy and I get much more arm movement than with the previous one. I had to make the arm and Z bracket (to mount the pot on) from some sheet metal I found. The pot has a large plastic knob placed over its shaft and three screws secure the arm to the knob. It's a little more noisy than the plastic setup but I'm much happier with it and who cares in the middle of a race anyway?
1. Bungy cord in place to center the steering column
2. Angled wood to lift the wheel up a bit
3. Testing wheel (very rough!)
Here's a shot of the whole thing. As you can see I haven't got to the prettying up stage yet but I will soon. There's two F clamps holding the wheel in place and you really need something like this or the wheel walks all over the desk. As you see it there, it's all in working order.