Why?
I have been wanting to get one of the Hyperstimulator cockpits for years but the price was just too high for me to even consider, and I didn't drive many open-wheel type racing games so the enclosed cockpit would have been a bit weird. I'd also looked all around for some sort of cheap design/solution for a cockpit as well but never found anything I really liked that much so I decided to embark on designing and building my own. The plans are freely available to whoever wants them, with licensing details to come (GPL probably).
The Cockpit
The only factors I considered when designing the cockpit were low cost, simplicity and usability. I wanted something that would be more like a tourer (my main driving game being Gran Turismo 3) and allow for flexibility in foot, steering and seating position in case others wanted to use it as well. Most of the design comes from an aesthetic perspective rather than an engineering perspective, so there are probably many design decisions which aren't too brilliant but so far I have found it very effective.
The cockpit is very rigid and very stable, I am happy with the design of the front end but more work needs to be done on the seat mount which will eventually attach to the front when in use. Only a few minutes after I had the seat mounted to the base the front cross member split at one end where it was attached to the side. Evidently a 10mm hole (for a metal threaded insert) in the side of 18mm MDF is not as good a load bearer as I initially thought. I will be changing the seat base design to use some cheap steel angle brackets I noticed at a hardware and timber shop nearby. They were only about au$4 each and were made of ~5mm galvanised steel.
I am also working on adding a custom pedal assembly, which is necessary if you have a logitech type wheel as the pedal assembly is not very comfortable at all when used in this cockpit unless it could be elevated at one end. There will also be a proper steering wheel added (I already have a nice steering box I made up a few years ago that I never got around to finishing), a hand brake as well as a sequential shifter. I started writing a small program for a PIC microcontroller that would convert a H-pattern type shifter to sequential up/down shift pulses which is unfinished. I don't think I will be implementing this as I'd prefer a typical sequential push/pull lever instead.
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The cockpit in mid-development stage, these images are of an older version with a solid one piece base and a monitor stand (which sits too low to be much use). |
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Here is a built cockpit. Only a jigsaw was needed to cut out the shapes from the plans below. The shapes are a little rough, but good enough for proof of concept. |
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Notice the sides are on an angle (about ten degrees). This appears to give the front end good rigidity and stability. I was originally intending on cutting the edges of the horizontal pieces with a matching angle for a proper fit however I ended up just doing vertical cuts because I was in a hurry. This didn't affect the rigidity of the unit at all. |
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Cost and Tools
So far There has been very little cost in building this project. All amounts shown are in Australian dollars.
2400 x 1200 x 18 MDF = $ 39 (still half a sheet left)
100 50mm wood screws = $ 8 (only used 32 so far)
2 car seats (2nd hand) = $ 60 (I have 1 seat spare, but it's in pretty bad condition)
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$107
Tools used for construction: jigsaw, drill, screwdriver
I initially experimented with using metal threaded inserts with 6mm allen head screws to assemble the seat base, resulting in a broken end on the front cross-member for the seat. I decided to use plain wood screws to assemble the rest of the front end which works just as well if not better.
Plans
The plans are in PDF format and are set out on A4 sheets. Print them all out and attach them together to make the complete plan.
The entire plan should end up being 1200mm across and a bit more in height. There is 20mm overlap on each page with crop and overlap marks, so when you have the printed pages you will need to crop two edges to be able to attach it all together properly.
Part 1 (1.08MB)
Part 2 (1.75MB)
Part 3 (835KB)
The entire plan layout is available in 2 formats, EPS (356KB) and DXF (1.86MB).
A 3D version also in 3D Studio MAX format.
Assembly
There is no set order just yet, but a really rough overview of how I built the cockpit is as follows:
- Mark out and drill at 10 degrees the hole locations to attach sides to front and rear base. This would mean that the holes will be closer to the bottom edge on the outside face of the sides and higher up on the inside face. Assemble these loosely for now.
- Sit the bottom brace on the rear base (this should hold the sides at roughly the correct angle) and mark out its location on the base and sides. Mark out and drill the hole locations in the rear base and sides.
- The base, sides and bottom brace can now be assembled to see how it all fits so far.
- Next attach the mid-brace, steering mount sides and top brace, with the steering mount base as a guide for the separation of the steering mount sides. This didn't come out too square at all for me due to the rough cuts the jigsaw made, however when it's all assembled there was enough strength in the structure to straighten it out.
- Attaching the top structure to the sides was the hardest part. I basically lined up the mid brace to the top of the sides however far forward it sat, and lined up the top brace about 10mm in from the back edge of the sides and whatever height seemed to work. From memory the top brace sat about 30-40mm from the very top of the sides. Mark out the locations and drill the holes. (only 1 hole was needed on each side for the mid brace)
notes
Don't do the screws holding the sides to the base too tight if you cut the base sides with a vertical cut rather than a 10 degree cut or attaching of the top structure to the sides will be a little difficult as the sides will sit at less than 10 degrees.
License
©2002 Vaughan Whitteron <cockpitinfo AT firetooth DOT net>