Project Hybrid - Force RS with Logitech Wheel

                                                            By: GTX_SlotCar

    For quite some time I've been wanting to change the steering wheel on my Force RS. Don't get me wrong, I like the feel of the wheel. It's thick and I like the leather-like rim cover. Even though it makes my thumbs sweat a little, the material feels good in my hands.  I just don't like the style or the color of the spokes. I could probably live with the Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon styling, a throwback to the early 60's Sci-Fi movies, if the spokes were silver, maybe, and the hub was black. But that tan color looks cheap to me and drives me crazy. On the other hand, I've always thought the LWFF was one of the prettiest wheels around. I'm not particularly fond of the red rim color, but it does look good with the red shift knob. So I decided to try mounting this wheel on the Force RS. I may still dye the rim black, and maybe paint the hub or the spokes silver.

    Anyway, actually mounting the wheel was quite easy to do. I sliced off about 1/4" of the Logi's hub so the paddle shifters would still mount properly, and then I screwed the wheel to the RS's steering shaft flange. At this stage the wheel rim is about an inch further from the front of the case than the stock wheel. To move it closer, I will have to cut the flange down a bit. This is easy enough to do, but then it will be hard to ever mount the stock wheel again. I can live with the wheel position as it is now, but moving it closer to the stock position is really the right thing to do. My  problem is that I may decide I don't want this conversion. I drove some NFS:PU this evening with the stock wheel mounted, and just enjoyed the feel of it. Well, more on this later .......

    I've got to change the Logi's hub logo, so I decided to try the Lotus emblem.  I'm still looking for a high quality picture of this if someone can point me to a url that has one.

    That's about it for now. As the project progresses, I'll keep you informed.

July 20, 2000

    I decided to change the wheel color to black, spokes to silver, hub unchanged (for now), and paddles silver (on the front only). Look pretty good? To me, it looks a whole lot better than the stock wheel.  I used bumper paint for the wheel. I'll run it a while and see if the paint holds up. That'll give me time to think about cutting the steering shaft.  Here's some up to date pictures. I know, they're almost the same. Well, the details show up a little different in each one. I took the pics without the lowered shifter kit because it was faster to stage them, but it does look good with the kit.

July 24, 2000

July 27, 2000

    I changed the hub color to black instead of the gray, and I added real hex head screws to it's perimeter. They're just decoration, but they look like they're doing the same job as the real ones.

How is it looking so far? I kind of like it. It's funny, you know, that driving with something that looks like a real wheel gets you even more involved when you're sim racing.

Gary DeRoy