Sim. Racing Shifter Project #1

I decided to make a shifter because there was an extremely limited number of options out there. Here is what I came up with on my first attempt. It was made simple (needing as little fabrication and special tools as possible.) Bottom line, it works well, feels fairly good and is sturdy.

Since the gears assignment is controlled by the sim you are using, they can be assigned however you want them. For this article, I'll refer to the position 1-6 as the following: (note when I mounted this into the race frame, I had to flip the shifter assembly around.)

1 3 5
| | |
+-+-+
| | |
2 4 6

1	3	5
2	4	6

Electrical

The electrical part was easy once I found the information. Many people choose to hack a USB game controller, but I went with the wiring setup like used by the Act Lab shifter. The Act Lab shifter is set up using a CH design to allow more than 4 buttons on a joystick. This solution required building a circuit board. That wasn't so difficult because it only contains diodes and wires. See http://www.massey.ac.nz/~jcmarsha/Wheel/hshifter.htm for details. This gives 14 buttons and x and y axis (one of which I use for my clutch pedal.)

The switches look like they are mounted to withstand a lot of force. Actually the mounting is so that I could make adjustments. Working in wood with big screws means there is a lack of precision. The mounting I used allowed me to adjust the switches so that they have no more force on them than is need to activate them and so that the lever hits them squarely. You can see they are set differently (hight and width). That is due to how I had to adjust them.

Mechanical

For the hardware I thought of a universal joint to get all the movement of the shifter. Then I realized it could be separated into two parts; 1. forward and backward movement and 2. side to side movement. Once the two were separated, applying a force to one wouldn't affect the other and wouldn't have to be duplicated 6 times.

The main design consists of a top plate and a bottom plate. The bottom plate controls the forward and back movement of the shifter (1 to 2, 3 to 4, 5 to 6). The bottom plate moves (connected to the top by 2 pivot points). The movement of the bottom plate comes into play when you go between 2 and 3, and 4 and 5. The springs between the top and bottom plate only affect side to side motion of the shifter and not the forward and back movement.

Originally this is all the shifter had on the bottom plate (without the thread bar in the above picture.) It would would move forward and backward freely and stay in gear based on the weight of the metal rod I used for the shifter. It would not stay in neutral unless I pulled the lever a bit to the the side and leaned it against one of the tines. I used it this way for a while before deciding on what changes were needed.

The entry to the gears needed what I started to call a "bump". The "bump" was that little bit of extra pressure needed to get the shifter to go into gear. Since the movements were isolated to the bottom plate ( front to back vs. sideways), anything I applied to forward/backward motion would work for all gear positions and not affected the side to side spring motion. For the bump I bought a large screw and with a rat tail file, filed the slot so that a bolt connected to the shifter shaft would ride up and out of the slot. This was attached to an assembly with springs that would move up and down. This gave me the "bump" feel of going in and out of gear and it kept the shifter in neutral. I am thinking of a redesign this assembly, but the concept will be the same.

Hopefully you'll get some ideas from this. Have a successful project!

Here are some more picture:


The bottom plate is in position to be attached to the top plate. The 2 attachment point provide the side to side pivot.	The plates are attached with bolts (nuts and washer not yet in place.)	One the sides are springs that connect the top and bottom plate this gives side to side pull on the lever and makes it stay in the center (side ways center).

Another shot in position 1 ...	and in neutral ...	and in the 6th position.

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