My $50 diy sim rig build

Figured I would put this here. I've been playing GT5 with the guys in the off topic forum for a couple years and just recently got back into iRacing. Now that I have a game room I figured it was time to update my old rig that has been modified several times over the years. After looking at several different designs online I got a vague picture of what I wanted.

First of all It's going to be fairly obvious that I'm not a carpenter. And I didn't have any plans or drawings to go off of, it just kind of came together as I was building it. I did take some measurements off of my car to try and get it as close to a real driving position as possible.

A couple pics of the old setup. It wobbled around a bit and if I got excited with the brakes I could push the whole thing away from my seat.

My wife bought this bookshelf for $10 at a yard sale. I decided to use it to make my new rig. Unfortunately it is made out of particle board but it should be plenty strong. I moved it into my work room and took it apart.

I went to the hardware store and spent $39.42 on jigsaw blades, four 2x4's, screws and some Gorilla Glue. I then laid out the floor frame and put the floor down.

When it came time to build the TV/monitor stand I used a wire wheel to remove the wood veneer from the particle board to allow for better adhesion for the glue. speaking of the glue it really seemed to help firm things up as it began to set. Like I said I really didn't spend a lot of time on fitting everything just kind of threw it up.

I spent a lot of time trying to get the height and angles of the pedals correct. I really like the inverted pedals. Much better feel of the brakes this way. I used a piece of shelving I took down for the pedal mount. I was worried that the particle board wouldn't hold up with just wood screws holding them on. I didn't have any bolts long enough to go all the way through.

I stopped taking pictures here and got on with the build. Laying everything out and fitting everything how I wanted it. Here is some pictures of the end result.

All in all I'm very happy with how it turned out. It's very solid. You can see the little flat spot to the right of the wheel for a mouse. I do need to raise the seat height a couple inches. Not bad for $50 in my opinion.

Santa should be bringing me a new TV that I can use for GT5 and iRacing. So I can get rid of that huge old thing. I am planning to put some carpet on the floor. And I'm thinking about flocking the dash area. I'm debating on painting the thing black or covering it in vinyl.

Eventually I'm gonna upgrade to triple monitors. Of course I have to upgrade to a true gaming computer for that instead of my laptop. But I think this is a good solid platform to build off of as my system grows.

Looks good!

Nice work Nick! I wish I had the extra space in my house to build something like this for my wheel. My next house will have to have a spare room for this

2 things:

-Buying a used entertainment center to do this... Clever!

-Inverted pedals? AWESOME!

What kind of laptop do you have that will run iRacing? Mine would barely run NR2003.

In reply to turbojunker:

It's a HP Pavilion something or other. Just got it a couple weeks ago just for iracing. It's not a gaming laptop or anything. But it runs it twice as good as my old desktop. Someday I will start collecting parts to build a gaming computer until then I 'll have to settle for 45-70 fps.

After many years of hard use the old rocking chair I had rigged up kinda gave up the ghost. I decided to replace it with a car seat which was the original plan when I built it.

I went to the local pick and pull today in search of a passenger side seat that was in good shape. I found several candidates but most of the mounting bracket would have been a little difficult to sort out. I found a 94 Camaro that was dirty but in perfect condition, not even one flaw in the upholstery and very little signs of wear and the mounting bracket were oriented in a way that allowed an easy instillation. Not a bad upgrade for $40.

Couple little stains but nothing too major. It even still had the plastic seatbelt holder unbroken and intact

After a good scrubbing.

It's going to be nice to be able to hit the brakes hard without the seat sliding back. And also the added adjustability with the sliders and tilt.

I also cleaned up those wires hanging underneath with some wire ties.

Ive been thinking about doing some online racing. What's the buy in?

Biggest cost apart from a capable PC or PS3/PS4/XBox is going to be a decent steering wheel.

PC or game box? or do I need both?

Depends - iRacing is on PC and Mac, Forza is on XBox, Gran Turismo is on Playstation so you have to pick your poison. I like iRacing as a simulator but didn't renew my subscription this year because I rarely ever use it. This may change when I build the new PC next week.

GT6 is fun, plus there is a GRM league...

GT6 = Playstation?

In reply to bentwrench:

Yes, Playstation 3. GT7 will be on PS4 if it ever comes out. I've heard however that Logitech wheels will not be compatible with GT7 so if you're trying to buy in now I would keep that in the back of your mind. You should be able to find a cheap copy of GT6 an you don't need a wheel right away to start participating. We have a couple guys still using the controllers and are very competitive with them. But once you go wheel you will never go back.

I have not participated in it (because X box is the Devil) but we also have many Xboxxers playing Forza.

You can read up on all the goings on in the simulation forum.

Nick_Comstock wrote: In reply to bentwrench: Yes, Playstation 3. GT7 will be on PS4 if it ever comes out. I've heard however that Logitech wheels will not be compatible with GT7 so if you're trying to buy in now I would keep that in the back of your mind. You should be able to find a cheap copy of GT6 an you don't need a wheel right away to start participating. We have a couple guys still using the controllers and are very competitive with them. But once you go wheel you will never go back. I have not participated in it (because X box is the Devil) but we also have many Xboxxers playing Forza. You can read up on all the goings on in the simulation forum.

Man that looks really nice..how is it holding up?

BBC

In reply to Billy_Bottle_Caps:

It's held up fine over the years. No issues even with moving it halfway across the country.

I really want to finish it up and make it look nice. I may start shopping prices this weekend.

Made some more improvements on a whim. After watching all the videos and reading all the reviews I decided I needed to try some tactile transducers aka: Bass Shakers. There are lots of options out there. And it would be easy to spend lot's of money. But I decided to spend the absolute least I could on them. If I would have had some old blown speakers laying around I would have made my own set, but I didn't and all of the speakers on the local CL where way too much money.

What I found was this Dayton Audio TT25-8 PUCK Tactile Transducer Mini Bass Shaker on Amazon for $10. I bought two.

To power them I found this cheap amp again on amazon for $30. Lepai LP-168HA 2.1 2 x 40-Watt Amplifier and 1x68W Sub Output.

I decided to mount one of them to the board that I have the pedals mounted to and one to the seat frame.

The pucks so not mount flush and require a 70mm hole to mount. Not having any hole saws I attacked it with my dremel.

I tried to mount the pedal one close to the center of the board to get the best response out of it.

Figuring out the seat was a little more difficult. How I have the seat mounted is basically a couple 2x4's and 1x4's screwed down to the floor of the rig, to get the height and angle right, and the seat is just bolted to that. I wanted to mount the puck directly to the seat frame but there wasn't a good place for that. I also really wanted to avoid any non-reversible modifications. After pulling the seat off and looking at it for a while I decided to make a board that would fit between the seat sliders and the actual seat base. Thankfully, the bolts where just long enough to clear the 3/4" plywood that I scavenged out of my old gaming seat.

I made some spacers for the front to keep the angle the same.

I mounted the amplifier in an easy to get to location.

Everything all wired up and ready for testing.

I use a set of Turtle Beach PX21 headphones for gaming. The transformation of the experience is very hard to describe. Pictures and videos will not do it justice. It's nothing short of amazing. I can not imagine going back to the way it was, even after just a short time trying it out. I turned the amp off and it just felt so dead and lifeless, I immediately turned it back on again. Even after two hours of solid play the amp was only ever so slightly warm to the touch.

This is with GT6 on the PS3, other systems and different games may have different settings for audio and may have different settings needed.

I first set the audio output from the in game menu to "normal living room".

In normal mode the sound through the headphones was very loud. I had to turn the headphones way down. The volume control for the sub channel on the amp is extremely sensitive. From off to completely over barring is only about 1/4 turn. I didn't like this setting very much. It didn't sound good through the headphones and the response from the shakers was kind of muddy.

I tried "small theater" next.

The headphones sounded much better but the shakers were still too sensitive.

I tried "large theater" next.

The sound from the headphones was very low, I had to crank the most of the way up to get good volume. However the shakers preformed so much better on this setting. I have the ability to fine tune it from the amp. This is the setting I stuck with.

I tried all sorts of various cars. The muscle cars are cool because sitting at idle you can feel the rumble, this thing is awesome just shaking away. But even the four cylinder cars give great response, maybe not at idle but rev it up in neutral and it's just amazing to feel the harmonics and resonance coming up through the rev range.

Driving down the road these things give great response. Put the car on the edge of adhesion and you can feel it, It's so much better to actually get tactile feedback when your right on the edge, push a little too much and it all goes smooth and you know your loosing time. Same with the braking, smooth up to the limit of adhesion and then as the tires are struggling to maintain traction, the little shakers are just vibrating away, lock them up and it all goes smooth again. Combined with the sound in the headphones it's a very natural sensation. The wind noise when your really moving adds a little drama to the speed that you can feel in your body and gets more intense the faster that you go. Hitting curbs at slow speeds give huge response, less the faster you go. Get it all wrong, hit the wall and your whole world shakes. You get a nice little kick on bumps and transitions, also when you land after getting airborne. One other nice thing is you get a solid little kick on downshifts. I can't imagine a more cost effective and trans-formative upgrade.

I don't own any FPS games anymore so I went to YouTube and watched someone else playing Call of Duty MW3. WOW! is all I can say. The explosions rock you and you can feel the helicopter blades.

Lastly, I listened to some music. It's sooo good with music. I put on some bass heavy tracks and it honestly feels like sitting in a car with a good set of 10's in a tight box.

I'm completely sold on them. I will be installing some in my couch, tied into my home theater system very soon. Movie nights are going to be so much better.

Great review. Always wondered about these, now you got me wanting them and the way my rig is assembled I have room.

Of course I haven't really had time to fire it up in several months so maybe i should focus on that first.

I really like that!!! Now you got me thinking!!

I promise that if you try it once you will never go back. It's more addictive than meth! In GT6 it sounds better with the in car mic than any of the others. The game will let you set it to whichever mic you prefer from the options menu. The normal racing view doesn't produce near the bass as the in car does.

Since you don't have the G loading you would in a car I'm guessing that all improvements to the other senses that are possible would improve the experience.

How are you driving the amp? I see nothing in the aux input and a double stack of RCAs..

I wonder if there are surround headphones that will run straight off a 5.1 sound card?

I put together an old PC and picked up a G27 set and am working on Iracing settings.

I like your idea for the transducers adding tactile input to the sound ++++

I wonder if 3 monitors would make a worthy difference?

If im lookin at the right one, its got a power supply that plugs in to the bottom of the amp. And i think the double rcas are for his headphones. I love it. I need to find me a book case or something of the sort.

Awesome stuff. I may have to investigate these little shakers in the near future.

The amp comes with a 12v 3A power supply. Some people upgrade to a 5 or 6A supply but I am not planning to unless this one dies.

I have it set up where it's pretty subtle while racing. I had a buddy over and let him run about three or four laps, he said I feel it but it's not that noticeable. I reached down and turned the amp off and he realized how much it was really doing. He said turn it back on and never turn it off again, lol. You get a pretty good jolt from contact with another car or hard contact with the wall but most of the time it pretty subtle. I think that's the way it should be.