Logitech DFP Wheel Replacement

In my never ending quest to make simulated driving/racing more realistic, I decided to replace my DFP steering wheel with one of a more realistic size. The DFP wheel has a 10" diameter, my street car has a 14 1/2" wheel. I decided on a 13" plastic go kart wheel from mfgsupply.com. This wheel is the right size, cheap (less than $20), the right weight (1.46 pounds) and it has the spokes in the right place (closer to 9:00, 6:00 and 3:00 than other go cart wheels that usually have spokes dividing the wheel in equal parts of 3.)

Attaching the Wheel
The DFP is attached with 4 screws and the replacement wheel has 3 holes. The holes obviously don't line up. They are unfortunately close enough to each other to cause interference when installing mounting screws and bolts. Because of this I went with a 2 plate design instead of 1 plate. This 2 plate design is also much easier to align during the build process.

Cautions and Things to Consider
-Make sure you can live without paddle shifters and wheel buttons or make sure you have plans on how to add them.
-Use the lightest wheel you can. By increasing the diameter of the wheel, you put more stress on the DFP motor even if your wheel weighs as much as the original DFP wheel.
-A larger diameter wheel means you will feel less force. If you run the force 30%, you may need to turn it up to say 40 or 45% for it to feel the same. Turning the force up to 100% with a bigger wheel will put more strain on the DFP and may not be a good idea.
-Think back to your geometry classes and use a compass to find the center point for the mounting holes. This removes the guess work and makes things much more exact.

This will be the weakest mounting point of the assembly. The electronics connecter is pushed back into the DFP since I wont be using it.

Much of the DFP movement is transferred to the shaft not by the 4 screws, but by the molded part of the wheel fitting the inside shape of the shaft. I made a similar shape out of wood to try and take some pressure off of the 4 screws. With this in place it is not possible to bring the wires up to put buttons on the wheel. A different design could fix that.

Although not exactly the correct shape, the wood has a tight fit when pushed in place. The wood is 2 inches long and will help to some degree once attached to plate 1.

Plate 1 is bolted to the DFP with the original 4 screws. The 5 remaining holes will be used to attach plate 1 to the wood center piece. The plates I used are made to cover round electrical junction boxes and are available at any hardware store.

You can see the 5 wood screws now in place on plate 1. Balancing on top of the DFP is plate 2. The nuts on the bolts act as spacers between the two plates. The long bolts for the steering wheel need to be put in place before attaching plate 1 to plate 2.

Plate 2 is attached to plate 1. The long bolts are hanging out of plate 2 ready to accept the steering wheel.

The steering wheel is bolted in place. The center cap that comes with the wheel can then be installed (see picture at top of page with the center cap).

The plates don't add much depth to how far the wheel sticks out. If more depth is need (say for adding paddles), you can add more spacer nuts (see picture 3 up from here.)

Conclusion
I am impressed with how great this feels. Although the difference in size doesn't seam to be much, it really makes a huge difference in feel. I could immediately relate even more to what my hands/arms do in a real car. Driving just feels better and in a steering intense situation such as an autocross layout in Live for Speed ... it just takes on a whole new level of realism.

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