I took a look at a friends FFB wheel , it hadnt been working correctly in quite a while ,
turned out there were a few problems ,
First off the magnet assembly of the brushless motor was rotating on the shaft ,so when force feedback was at around maximum an awefull chattering sound occured and the unit lost torque and calibration , I found the tip about it online ,tonight I dismanteled the motor and sure enough the tiny splodges of epoxy had broken away . First I used a few drops of cynaoacrylate to get right into the gap between the magnet tube and the shaft mounts then I dropped in a good blob of epoxy for extra strenght , I made sure to prop up the shaft verticaly so that the glue distributed itself evenly and didnt cause any unbalance . This seems to be a common fault with this style of motor used on Thrustmasters T 150 and T 300 models .Some might pass it off as cheapness I call foul here .
The auto cal that happens after power up where the wheel goes full speed against either end stop gradually kills this unit , The right hand turn end stop is cast into the main steering shaft and worm gear , over the time the self cal routine causes the end stops to become damaged . What remains of it tends to destroy the plastic threads , In this case i was able to trim off the first inch or so of the plastic thread and get it working smoothly again . I replaced the broken end stop by first drilling the shaft ,then tapping a thread and mounting a machine screw where the old endstop was .
Its quite obvious that this is bad code written into the firmware with the intention of making sure the unit doesnt live forever , along with the skimping on glue in the motor the its hard to believe the best of intentions on behalf of the makers .
I havent played console games in 20 years or more but the FFB wheel for racing sims is very immersive , your feeling the cars wheels react to the forces just like a normal car .
I might keep an eye out for a 'defektiv' one to fix up .
turned out there were a few problems ,
First off the magnet assembly of the brushless motor was rotating on the shaft ,so when force feedback was at around maximum an awefull chattering sound occured and the unit lost torque and calibration , I found the tip about it online ,tonight I dismanteled the motor and sure enough the tiny splodges of epoxy had broken away . First I used a few drops of cynaoacrylate to get right into the gap between the magnet tube and the shaft mounts then I dropped in a good blob of epoxy for extra strenght , I made sure to prop up the shaft verticaly so that the glue distributed itself evenly and didnt cause any unbalance . This seems to be a common fault with this style of motor used on Thrustmasters T 150 and T 300 models .Some might pass it off as cheapness I call foul here .
The auto cal that happens after power up where the wheel goes full speed against either end stop gradually kills this unit , The right hand turn end stop is cast into the main steering shaft and worm gear , over the time the self cal routine causes the end stops to become damaged . What remains of it tends to destroy the plastic threads , In this case i was able to trim off the first inch or so of the plastic thread and get it working smoothly again . I replaced the broken end stop by first drilling the shaft ,then tapping a thread and mounting a machine screw where the old endstop was .
Its quite obvious that this is bad code written into the firmware with the intention of making sure the unit doesnt live forever , along with the skimping on glue in the motor the its hard to believe the best of intentions on behalf of the makers .
I havent played console games in 20 years or more but the FFB wheel for racing sims is very immersive , your feeling the cars wheels react to the forces just like a normal car .
I might keep an eye out for a 'defektiv' one to fix up .
