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one night in the middle of my TEE exams (end of high school, standardised exams, so that would be late november) a friend and i came up with the idea of building a cockpit for me to play GT4 on. I developed a few concepts as to what i could do to differentiate my cockpit from the many others i had seen here on the forums. after about 7 concepts, this is what i arrived at:
it was going to be a bright yellow Mitsubishi EVO IX with doors, a bonnet and a boot, and i was going to house the ps2 in the bonnet. My friend and I agreed it was a very ambitious project and that i should go for it, hard out. if you scroll down a bit you'll see i that i deviated from this concept, just a little bit!
Anyways you might remember, though i doubt it, that i posted some pictures of my "Coca-Cockpit" previously:
This very dodgy cockpit, as i posted, was just to shakedown some proportions, sizes and angles that i would use in the Real McCoy. And then the fun began! I bought myself AUD$200 of power tools (that netted me a table saw, hammer drill, angle grinder, jigsaw, orbital sander, cordless screwdriver, stud detector and an engraver - bargain!), and for the wood i dismantled an old TV cabinet to get to the precious, precious chipboard...
i bought the seat from a wrecker's for AUD$40, and its seat rails were on different planes, and each rail had a distinct design too, so i had to take some measurements and make some customised mounts. Since the seat is not adjustable for slide, i took advantage and mounted the seat at an angle of 20 or 25 degrees (i cant remember). now, before you techno-philes complain, i am well aware that wood is stonger under compression than tension, and i ensured that the seat, under all conditions, is freestanding in equilibrium, and hence the wood is under compression.
i then created a pedal box. i felt that i needed a place for my left foot when i was going flat out (oh yeah! rally finland in WRC4) so i engineered the pedal box with a footrest:
Then i knocked up a simple wrap-around frame to go around the seat and tie it together. this was gonna be implemented somehow into my EVO IX design. then i took a photo and drew a rough picture of the car, and BY GOD IT WAS HORRIBLE!! i deleted the pic so i cant quite show you, but the proportions were totally out of whack so i decided to build a cockpit somewhat similar to Lyle Beach's:
so i knocked up a front frame similar to that one, but keeping in mind i had a seperate pedal box, as well as a seperate seat frame assmbly. so i decided that the cockpit would slide into itself on rails that i pulled from the TV cabinet. anyways this is what i ended up with:
it desperately needed a paint job. beige, on beige carpet simply did not satisfy my sister's aesthetic requirements. so i bought two cans of matte black spray paint, sprayed it, then gave it a big coat of clear gloss. this is what i used in the meantime while i waited for the paint to dry:
Shockin' huh? anyways after the paint job i addressed the cabling issue with some hook type things that i nailed into the structure, and voila! we have one perfectly good racing cockpit! OK im the first to admit that i buggered up the paint job a little bit - there are big drips of gloss here and there, but from a distance it looks beaut. also, due to the sliding requirement, the table isn't 100% as unshakeable as i would like: rallying on GT4 gives it a bit of a scary shake. but it's not horrible... and yeah it slides into itself for more efficient storage... the wheel only just makes contact with the seat - not enough to cause any damage, for sure - that was pure fluke! perfect dimensions man... oh yeah it locks into place with 4 hex-bolts on the frame bottom under the table you'll see.
So that was about 1 month from concept to reality, which included about 2 weeks of actual woodwork. i like it!
oh yeah, dont read too much into the very dodgy tv cabinet or the planks of wood lying in the background. i just havent found a good tv unit to replace the one that i took apart, so i ripped that one straight out of the old one to use for now. and those planks of wood will be used... sooner or later.
Oh and the rust looks a lot worse in the pictures than in real life, as does the condition of the trim.
Anyways, thanks for hanging around and reading my long-ass cockpit thread.
it was going to be a bright yellow Mitsubishi EVO IX with doors, a bonnet and a boot, and i was going to house the ps2 in the bonnet. My friend and I agreed it was a very ambitious project and that i should go for it, hard out. if you scroll down a bit you'll see i that i deviated from this concept, just a little bit!
Anyways you might remember, though i doubt it, that i posted some pictures of my "Coca-Cockpit" previously:
This very dodgy cockpit, as i posted, was just to shakedown some proportions, sizes and angles that i would use in the Real McCoy. And then the fun began! I bought myself AUD$200 of power tools (that netted me a table saw, hammer drill, angle grinder, jigsaw, orbital sander, cordless screwdriver, stud detector and an engraver - bargain!), and for the wood i dismantled an old TV cabinet to get to the precious, precious chipboard...
i bought the seat from a wrecker's for AUD$40, and its seat rails were on different planes, and each rail had a distinct design too, so i had to take some measurements and make some customised mounts. Since the seat is not adjustable for slide, i took advantage and mounted the seat at an angle of 20 or 25 degrees (i cant remember). now, before you techno-philes complain, i am well aware that wood is stonger under compression than tension, and i ensured that the seat, under all conditions, is freestanding in equilibrium, and hence the wood is under compression.
i then created a pedal box. i felt that i needed a place for my left foot when i was going flat out (oh yeah! rally finland in WRC4) so i engineered the pedal box with a footrest:
Then i knocked up a simple wrap-around frame to go around the seat and tie it together. this was gonna be implemented somehow into my EVO IX design. then i took a photo and drew a rough picture of the car, and BY GOD IT WAS HORRIBLE!! i deleted the pic so i cant quite show you, but the proportions were totally out of whack so i decided to build a cockpit somewhat similar to Lyle Beach's:
so i knocked up a front frame similar to that one, but keeping in mind i had a seperate pedal box, as well as a seperate seat frame assmbly. so i decided that the cockpit would slide into itself on rails that i pulled from the TV cabinet. anyways this is what i ended up with:
it desperately needed a paint job. beige, on beige carpet simply did not satisfy my sister's aesthetic requirements. so i bought two cans of matte black spray paint, sprayed it, then gave it a big coat of clear gloss. this is what i used in the meantime while i waited for the paint to dry:
Shockin' huh? anyways after the paint job i addressed the cabling issue with some hook type things that i nailed into the structure, and voila! we have one perfectly good racing cockpit! OK im the first to admit that i buggered up the paint job a little bit - there are big drips of gloss here and there, but from a distance it looks beaut. also, due to the sliding requirement, the table isn't 100% as unshakeable as i would like: rallying on GT4 gives it a bit of a scary shake. but it's not horrible... and yeah it slides into itself for more efficient storage... the wheel only just makes contact with the seat - not enough to cause any damage, for sure - that was pure fluke! perfect dimensions man... oh yeah it locks into place with 4 hex-bolts on the frame bottom under the table you'll see.
So that was about 1 month from concept to reality, which included about 2 weeks of actual woodwork. i like it!
oh yeah, dont read too much into the very dodgy tv cabinet or the planks of wood lying in the background. i just havent found a good tv unit to replace the one that i took apart, so i ripped that one straight out of the old one to use for now. and those planks of wood will be used... sooner or later.
Oh and the rust looks a lot worse in the pictures than in real life, as does the condition of the trim.
Anyways, thanks for hanging around and reading my long-ass cockpit thread.
nice! Thats heaven for me
Love Red bull.
