So a bit of an update on my sim rig. It showed up about 2 weeks ago and the day it arrived I had it assembled. Took a couple hours taking my time. The seat is free and crappy. It was part of a Playstation "racing cockpit" of some sort and is pretty old. I'll replace it with a more conventional reclining car seat. Nonetheless, it's better than the office chair I'd been using! :mrgreen:
You may be able to notice it's sitting on a desk in my living room. That's because I'm redoing my hobby room. Old desks are gone and I've got a new desk for working on RCs and I decided to build the rig on it. The room was getting emptied so I could paint it. That's done now and pics of the completed project will be coming later.
Here's the rig placed into the room. It's heavy and was fun to remove from the desk by myself!
A few things to note and general observations....
The pedal plate is as low as it can go. I would like them lower.....or the seat higher. Since the pedals can't go lower, I ordered some taller 8020 profile (40x80) to raise the seat 40mm. That may be enough, but we'll see. The wheel and shifter can be adjusted fore/aft and in height so no issues there.
The throat of the clamp mount for the Thrustmaster TH8A shifter isn't tall enough to go over the 80mm tall profile. So for the time being I rotated the profile to its side. The shifter now mounts to it, but as you can see it now intrudes into the driver area. It's not bad, but Randy (hpiguy) generously offered to send me a mounting plate for my shifter that should make it easier to attach to the profile properly! Thanks, Randy! Here's a pic of the current configuration:
The monitors (triple 24"s) are mounted on an old desk I had. Height-wise, the monitor mount is as low as it can go and it's perfectly centered with my eyes. Great! And when I raise the seat, I've got plenty of room to raise the monitors accordingly. However, I really want to get the monitors as close to my face as is reasonably possible. Looking under the desk you can see that it has a back wall and that my rig is pushed under it as far as it can go.
I will cut a large hole in the back of the desk. This will allow me to move the monitors closer to me. it looks like I can get approximately 9-10 inches closer before the steering wheel base will contact the desk. If my calculations are right, that should get me about 25-28 inches from the center monitor to my eyes. Hopefully that'll be close enough.
I also noticed that the Thrustmaster steering wheel base and pedal assembly only mount with 2 screws each. For the pedals that seems fine. However, the steering base can still move just a bit. It's not really noticeable while driving, but I'd hoped for better. It doesn't appear the bolts are too long and bottoming out. I also tried tightening the bolts down more and I've gotten to the point where I'm concerned about stripping the threads if I go any tighter. So I think it's as good as it'll get. It's not bad, though, and I'm not really disappointed. The 8020 profile and Sim Lab mounting plate are dead solid, by the way.
So how do I like it? Well, it's awfully low right now and is rather awkward to get in/out of. Once in it, however, it's a huge improvement over sitting at my desk is an office chair on rollers! :ror: I actually feel like I'm sitting in a car now. Actually, because of the low seat height I feel more like I'm sitting in an F1 car, but that's temporary. I actually found myself being able to concentrate more on my driving because I wasn't concerned about the wheel base moving on my desk.....or my chair moving away from the desk as I apply the brakes really hard... It was a much more immersive experience overall!
My experience thus far is limited to iRacing, specifically the Lucas Oil trucks and the Vette at Spa. But the fact that the Vette felt half @$$ decent was a testimony to the new rig! :mrgreen: While my initial laps were pretty confidence inspiring and fairly quick, I feel there's going to be a learning curve here and I hope to get faster as I get more comfortable with the new setup. Racing is already SO much more fun, though!!
I need to figure out what to do about a keyboard/mouse now. I will likely just get a small table to place to the right of the rig for my mouse. I will look into some sort of swing-out keyboard mount to attach the keyboard on the left side. I could attach it to the 8020 or to the desk, but need to locate the desk/monitors before I decide on a solution. Right now, my PC is just to my right so the mouse lives on top of it and that's working surprisingly well, but I don't want that for a long term solution.
Anyway, so far I'm loving this setup and have a Fanatec handbrake on order so I can try my hand at AC drifiting again. Can't wait to try some rally, too! Oh, and American Truck Simulator!! :mrgreen::mrgreen:
Worst case, I'll put a small table on either side of me. LOL
