Fanatec CSW/CSR Elite Modders Thread *UPDATE February 2014*

[HoiHman]

I totally agree with you, BUT i still think it's best if Fanatec CS determines which motorpack needs to be send to the end user before shipping it.

Why?

It's much easier to ask for a photo of the PCB board than asking if the " average end user " has the soldering skills AND equipment to rewire the motors if needed. They should just make sure they send the right motorpack instead.

I'm sure you agree they have to be soldered to prevent the the wires from getting loose eventually.

When Carson79 PM-ed me i immediately knew what was wrong, but honestly if you agree to replace the motors yourself, you should at least be able to expect they send a correcly wired motorpack.

Best of all would be if they could make sure we get motors that would last.

 

[fatkrakr]

I switched my wires on the connector end. There was no need to do any soldering that way. 👍

 

[eKretz]

I totally agree with you, BUT i still think it's best if Fanatec CS determines which motorpack needs to be send to the end user before shipping it.

Why?

It's much easier to ask for a photo of the PCB board than asking if the " average end user " has the soldering skills AND equipment to rewire the motors if needed. They should just make sure they send the right motorpack instead.

I'm sure you agree they have to be soldered to prevent the the wires from getting loose eventually.

When Carson79 PM-ed me i immediately knew what was wrong, but honestly if you agree to replace the motors yourself, you should at least be able to expect they send a correcly wired motorpack.

Best of all would be if they could make sure we get motors that would last.

That would probably be the easiest way for all involved...but Fanatec sometimes don't seem to be interested in suggestions like that. Don't ask me why. I am with fatkrakr on the soldering part, too. Anyone with a needle or pin can swap the leads in the connector.

 

[LogiForce]

I switched my wires on the connector end. There was no need to do any soldering that way. 👍

That would probably be the easiest way for all involved...but Fanatec sometimes don't seem to be interested in suggestions like that. Don't ask me why. I am with fatkrakr on the soldering part, too. Anyone with a needle or pin can swap the leads in the connector.

Are you guys saying the leads were not soldered at all? Just held in place with shrink tubing?
I must have looked wrong on the beta wheel as I thought a solder was loose, so I 're-'soldered the stuff instead. Oh well, at least the connection ended up being more reliable I guess.

 

[eKretz]

Logi, we're referring to the leads on the connector end where they plug into the board connector. Those leads are crimped into pins and held into the connector with bent tabs. If you use a needle or possibly even a paper clip you can press the tabs down and slide out the pins and rearrange them in whatever order you need, then push them back in and the tabs will pop back up and lock into place.

 

[Carson79]

Well during the scratching my head part when the wheel was acting crazy it started to give off that smell of burnt motor so my confidence in this motor pack is very low.
It may just be my imagination but it doesn't feel as powerful as it should either

 

[RacerXX]

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[RacerXX]

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[Mr Latte]

Well during the scratching my head part when the wheel was acting crazy it started to give off that smell of burnt motor so my confidence in this motor pack is very low.
It may just be my imagination but it doesn't feel as powerful as it should either

As you know mine as new had that mate.
Although I bought it in November I havn't used it more than 15 hours in total.
Keeping it for when I can use it properly and knowing my luck what will happen is it will go pop come that time.

Why is it that Fantec products always seem to be great but flawed, well that is the impression some might be getting. I will continue to buy them but just wish they could improve things a bit.

 

[Carson79]

As you know mine as new had that mate.
Although I bought it in November I havn't used it more than 15 hours in total.
Keeping it for when I can use it properly and knowing my luck what will happen is it will go pop come that time.

Why is it that Fantec products always seem to be great but flawed, well that is the impression some might be getting. I will continue to buy them but just wish they could improve things a bit.

It's marketed as high end equipment, but the motors are cheap cr8p at about $1.50.
I just don't see the saving when so many are faulty.
I hardly use mine at all these last few months mate so they aren't failing from hard use
Also I used to blow a gasket when something went wrong, now it's as if it's the most normal thing in the world ....Ah must email fanatec.....
Speak with the guy there so much I feel like we're close friends

 

[Carson79]

Just a part of my last email from fanatec

Just for information:
It might be that the wiring of the new motor is different, so please compare the wiring of the new motor with the one from the old motor and if necessary change the wiring. Don’t rely on the colors of the cables, they might be different as well.

Best Regards / Mit freundlichen Gr??en

I thought this was hilarious

 

[eKretz]

Haha! That's too funny. So basically, when you install your motors you have a 50/50 chance of having to rewire it since you can't really compare the polarity of the wires if the wires may not even be on correctly? Nice one, Fanatec! But at least they're informing people now.

Guess you have to use a battery and test rotation direction before you install and make sure both sets of motors rotate the same way.

Speaking of talking to service so much, I feel the same way about getting to be buddies with Johannes, lol. He's a pretty good dude though, I even asked him about some German I learned in high school last time I talked to him.

 

[HoiHman]

Just a part of my last email from fanatec

Just for information:
It might be that the wiring of the new motor is different, so please compare the wiring of the new motor with the one from the old motor and if necessary change the wiring. Don’t rely on the colors of the cables, they might be different as well.

Best Regards / Mit freundlichen Gr??en

I thought this was hilarious

It IS hilarious Mark, so is THIS :

4 weeks ago i mailed Fanatec with a picture of the PCP board of my CSR Elite.
After waiting for weeks i finally got my replacement last monday.

I took the old motorpack out yesterday evening, checked the wiring and decided to put the new one in this today, because it was getting late. My 12 year old son asked me if he could take the old motors appart. Because everything seemed OK, i gave him the old motors and he totally took EVERYTHING appart

This afternoon i had some spare time and wanted to mount the new motorpack into the CSR Elite.

Sady i came to the conclusion that the plug of the temperature sensor of the 'new' motorpack is not of the same size as the old one and DOES NOT fit on the PCP board

Offcourse he use a hammer and completely crushed everything included the plug of the old temp sensor. LOL

.........But i'm not laughing

So i have to get back on my previous post : sending them a picture of the PCP board does not solve potential wiring issues.

Offcourse i should have seen it, but the differnce is so little that i needed a magnifying glass to see why it didn't fit. I do not dare to use the wheel without the temperature sensor.

Guess i will be contacting them somewhere this week. AGAIN

They are nice guys and so now i can practice my german some more

 

[eKretz]

LOL, moral of the quoted story: teach your kid how to use tools properly! My step-father is one of those "get a bigger hammer" type guys. I hate loaning him things. Last week he borrowed my table saw, and in the process destroyed my garage door. Told him the opener took a crap and that I had the manual release pulled but it would catch partially open when it locked back in. Instead of crawling under the door to release it he proceeded to gorilla the thing up until he gave up, having already bent the **** out of the door. So he crawls under and releases it, then loads up the saw. Goes to close the door and instead of partially closing, making sure the release was past the catch, and crawling under the door and then closing it he just slammed it shut, stripping out the worm gears and rendering the door completely frakked.

I spent 2 hours removing the top door panel, cutting out the spot welds, straightening out all the bends and wrinkles, then refastening everything. Another 15 minutes to swap out to a new worm gear set. One minute to change the start capacitor that was the only original problem before he got hold of the door. My boy will be learning to do things the right way from the start!

 

[RacerXX]

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[Carson79]

Haha! That's too funny. So basically, when you install your motors you have a 50/50 chance of having to rewire it since you can't really compare the polarity of the wires if the wires may not even be on correctly? Nice one, Fanatec! But at least they're informing people now.

Guess you have to use a battery and test rotation direction before you install and make sure both sets of motors rotate the same way.

Speaking of talking to service so much, I feel the same way about getting to be buddies with Johannes, lol. He's a pretty good dude though, I even asked him about some German I learned in high school last time I talked to him.

Johannes is my agent too, I agree really nice guy.
Problably why I stopped getting so upset as it wasn't fair to take it out on him

 

[eKretz]

OK, for anyone interested, here was the problem with my CSW board that blew when my son had snuck the voltage adjustment up on my power supply while it was off.

The small transistor T1001 on the left (you can just make out "01" to it's left) had been damaged (though I was unaware of that until much later, after I had killed another looking for it) when it got overvolted, which burned out all clockwise wheel rotation. If I rotated the wheel myself to the right on startup, it would take off to the left itself, then finish calibration when I manually turned it to the right again. While probing base, collector and emitter voltages on the transistors trying to find the problem, I, with my klutzy fingers and too-big multimeter probes, shorted the legs of T1005, just to the right of T1001. This fried it, and I got a little light show as it burned up. That in turn vaporized the SMD pad and trace on the lower right leg of T1005. I have been waiting for weeks for my desoldering braid to get here from eBay as I had run out (there was a great deal on some Soder-Wick, but it came from Taiwan, which took forever). Finally it arrived this week and I got to finish my repair.

I took a small piece of 28AWG motor wire and flattened it to approximate the original trace, then used emery cloth to clean off any leftover enamel insulation, and cut it to size and tinned it and the old trace. Using some Kapton (polyamide) tape, I fastened the new trace down in place and soldered it to what was left of the old trace. I then soldered the 2TY transistor (T1005) back into place and checked all my connections with a multimeter (and my nice new SMD type probes). You can see the repair in the photo.

In the meantime I was able to obtain a new PCB from Fanatec and was able to use it to compare resistance values and transistor voltage drops to try to pinpoint the problem. By looking at voltages at the transistors while the circuit was sending voltage to rotate the wheel during calibration, I was able to narrow down the problem area and finally find it. If you look at the photo of the transistor T1001 you can see a tiny dot over the "J" in "J3Y" that is actually a burn-through of the epoxy coating. It's much more clear in the magnified photo (which is at 30X mag) than it was with the naked eye. I noted it originally but thought it was just a nick where I had bumped the transistor with a probe. It's something like .005"-.010" in diameter.

After replacing the J3Y I replaced the board and checked the calibration and it turned clockwise right away and completed calibration. Success!! I have raced with it for a few hours now and everything seems good to go.

 

[RacerXX]

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[eKretz]

Well, I've been up for a while since I had the replacement board. Just now I can use my original and not worry about trying things since I have the spare. Are you finding "dead" GT2's and GT3's? You're going to end up with a brake pedal that shakes your foot numb, lol!

 

[FatnSlo]

I have had two CSR Elites fail so far and when the motors failed again recently I decided instead of getting it replaced this time I would ask for the motor assembly so I could do the water break-in.

But I am having a bit of a problem. I had planned on taking the motors out of their heatsink mount to do the water break-in, but I am not going to be able to get the tiny allen set screws out of the pulleys on the end of the motors with the allen wrenches I have. Although I have the right size allen wrenches, they are of low quality and I will just strip them I think as they are very tight and probably lock-tighted. I am using the old motor block as a test bed and I did strip one trying to loosen it.

So I was wondering, would it be ok to do the water break-in with the entire motor block assembly in water? My concern is the getting them dry completely because not much place for the water to come out of them (I do have an air compressor though to blow them out) and also I worry it may screw up the sensor that is glued to the heatsink.

What do you guys think?

 

[eKretz]

It will be fine to do it assembled. Just blow everything out good with your compressor when you're done and maybe throw the whole assembly in the oven or toaster oven on the "warm" setting to help dry things out when you're done for a few hours. (The temp shouldn't go over 150F on that setting). The "sensor" won't be harmed as it's just wire (thermocouple).

 

[FatnSlo]

Thanks!

Yeah I used the old motor block to do it first and then tested the sensor before and after with a ohm meter and a blow dryer and it worked fine so I went ahead and broke in the new motor block. Wheel works good so far. I also went ahead and flipped the CSR E fan so it blows directly on the motor block. Hopefully it will last longer than the last one did which was only six months at %60 FFB.

 

[eKretz]

Good deal. And good luck!!

 

[FatnSlo]

Still am hoping you can come up with replacement motors for the CSW/CSR E eKretz as once my warranty is up I am sure it will be much harder to get replacements from Fanatec.

 

[eKretz]

Yep, I actually just got off the phone with the gentleman working on the motors, we should have prototypes ready for testing soon. Things are sounding very good, but it's still all theoretical at this point until I get motors in the mail and test them out.

 

[Cote Dazur]

Yep, I actually just got off the phone with the gentleman working on the motors, we should have prototypes ready for testing soon. Things are sounding very good, but it's still all theoretical at this point until I get motors in the mail and test them out.

Good news, nice to hear it is moving forward.

 

[fatkrakr]

Yes I am very much intrested and watching for this also. Keep up the good work. 👍

 

[Crispy]

Hey everyone! I'm wanting to get into modding over the summer, and thought that maybe changing the wheel on the CSR Elite was a good start? Anyone know of good Adapters to use? I have found this one and would like to know how good it is.

I also want to start modding the CSP V1 a little bit. I understand that a damped brake is relatively easy to do, in fact I can order a kit for $50 that includes 3D printed things to make a really easy install of their included damper. What I want to know is how do I make a progressive clutch similar to the V2's? Does anyone have any pics of the Clutch on the V2's so I can see how it fits together?

 

[eKretz]

First of all, you don't want a progressive clutch, you want a regressive clutch. To do the regressive clutch you need two clutch springs and a cam or eccentric. The first spring gives you a constant spring force and the second is set up in conjunction with the cam or eccentric to reduce its action on the clutch pedal as the pedal is pressed further down, at some point resulting in a "let-off" that reduces its spring force significantly. Earlier in this very thread there are several links to a Japanese blogger's site showing how the parts are fashioned on the stock system and detailed images of how they fit and function.

 

[Crispy]

First of all, you don't want a progressive clutch, you want a regressive clutch. To do the regressive clutch you need two clutch springs and a cam or eccentric. The first spring gives you a constant spring force and the second is set up in conjunction with the cam or eccentric to reduce its action on the clutch pedal as the pedal is pressed further down, at some point resulting in a "let-off" that reduces its spring force significantly. Earlier in this very thread there are several links to a Japanese blogger's site showing how the parts are fashioned on the stock system and detailed images of how they fit and function.

So the first spring would be like the Stock spring of the CSP's, and the second one would be be the fashioned one?

EDIT: So how easy is it to get an RC damper, and use it for the Brake? How would you fashion it, and what RC Damper should I use?