The Thrustmaster T500RS Thread

[PLazarou]

Ok... so here's another video:



Some detailed explanation of what I'm trying to show:

From 0:02 to 0:10 I am turning right and left around the centre point of the rotation, so this is what I usually hear when driving, i.e. no sound right, rattling after turning left.

I then turn the wheel all the way to the right stop (0:16). From 0:18 to 0:27 I turn it in stages all the way to the left. It rattles after each turn.

From 0:32 I do the same starting from the left lock. Notice it makes the rattling noise turning right as well at this point (something I hadn't noticed before). It does this until about 0:37, where it has just passed the centre point of the rotation again. After that there is no noise turning right as before.

I then reach right lock at 0:43, and then show the rattling turning left a couple more times.

 

[mrbasher]

I'm tellin' ya... It's that idler pulley. Almost certain on that.

 

[PLazarou]

Right. So you're suggesting that I take it apart? They don't seem to be interested in helping me, but is this going to affect my warranty?

 

[mrbasher]

I am not suggesting that... It's up to you whether or not you'd like to take it apart to investigate.

Getting the wheel apart isn't the easiest thing in the world either But definitely doable with care. The guide dainbramage was given should help with that. In taking one apart, I can tell you there is nothing in there that would "signal" them to the fact that it's been opened. As long as you can put it back together properly....

 

[Motorcycle54]

The guide dainbramage was given should help with that.

As soon as mrbasher gets over his phobia of rotting in a french prison cell, perhaps he will be so kind to post the link.

 

[NeoAgent]

If that is the case, why does the one on the left make no noise?

The noise I'm hearing is the same on both, it obviously isn't the noise you are talking about.

 

[NeoAgent]

Ok... so here's another video:



Some detailed explanation of what I'm trying to show:

From 0:02 to 0:10 I am turning right and left around the centre point of the rotation, so this is what I usually hear when driving, i.e. no sound right, rattling after turning left.

I then turn the wheel all the way to the right stop (0:16). From 0:18 to 0:27 I turn it in stages all the way to the left. It rattles after each turn.

From 0:32 I do the same starting from the left lock. Notice it makes the rattling noise turning right as well at this point (something I hadn't noticed before). It does this until about 0:37, where it has just passed the centre point of the rotation again. After that there is no noise turning right as before.

I then reach right lock at 0:43, and then show the rattling turning left a couple more times.

Ok, I hear it on this video. Just to be sure the noise starts when you stop the wheel, sounds like a rattling or a bearing spinning correct?

 

[PLazarou]

The noise I'm hearing is the same on both, it obviously isn't the noise you are talking about.

Mmmm indeed. Which is why I'm concerned that Thrustmaster support also have terrible speakers.

Ok, I hear it on this video. Just to be sure the noise starts when you stop the wheel, sounds like a rattling or a bearing spinning correct?

Well, it's hard to tell whether the noise starts after I stop turning, it could be starting while I'm turning and being masked by the normal motor noise, but it certainly continues after I stop, yes.

 

[NeoAgent]

Mmmm indeed. Which is why I'm concerned that Thrustmaster support also have terrible speakers.




Well, it's hard to tell whether the noise starts after I stop turning, it could be starting while I'm turning and being masked by the normal motor noise, but it certainly continues after I stop, yes.

Here's a video of taking the T500Rs apart to replace a fan I think (didn't watch it all the way through) but it's not in english. Still you can follow the steps.

 

[Michelcleo]

Ive ordered from ocuk now, they say they have v4's and i believe what they say, obviously they can only believe in what the box says

I'll update tomoxz when its here

 

[Michelcleo]

I have now paid for the wheel and asked them to open it up as its mine , great service
I have a v4 on the way , lets hope i dont see the same issues, from some other forum post's hardcore racers say there wheel is very powerfull throughout t here time trials sessions so the odds are good.
Shame i missed ocuk's £299 deal so i paid £330 with free next day delivery, makes you wonder why ebuyer and amazon are so expensive ?

 

[PLazarou]

A wild V.4 appears! Michelcleo used weird triple finger attack! It's super effective!


Another reply from Thrustmaster:

We thank you for your reply and for providing us with this third movie.

As mentioned in the previous email the sound feedback that comes from the unit may vary from unit to unit due to the numerous moving components involved in the movement of the steering wheel and of the FFB rotor.

We regret that your retailer supplied you each time with an older model of the unit but as long as each of the steering wheels are properly calibrating and are not showing problems when used in games there is nothing that we can do.

This version is no longer manufactured so we cannot provide you with an explanation why they still had these units available on stock.

As mentioned in one of our previous emails you can try returning both wheels to amazon.co.uk and ask for a refund so that you can purchase a newer version from the other retailer.

I don't know where to start. So many questionable things about this reply.

'The sound ... may vary from unit to unit' = poor production tolerances?

'as long as ... the steering wheels ... are not showing problems when used in games there is nothing that we can do' = making an extremely annoying and unusual noise when used in games is not considered a problem?

'We regret that your retailer supplied you each time with an older model of the unit' = admitting that there are still older models being sold at full price?

'This version is no longer manufactured so we cannot provide you with an explanation why they still had these units available on stock.' = poor business practices, not in control of their own stock distribution?

 

[Michelcleo]

LOl, the triple finger attack had me laughing aswell.

Tm does suck alittle from that message, you have a wheel that dont make the noise and one that does.
The wheel i had made a different horrible noise to the left but yours has a different sound that should'nt be there fullstop.
My sound i believe could of been caused by the belt, i cant rememeber the details but moving wheel lets say left had the belt running down the belt pinions and moving the wheel right had the belt moving up the pinion so there was 2 ifferent forces at work in each way so yes the sound can be different if thats the case but that does'nt sound anything like your sound and rattle.

At least you can return to amazon, i know its wack, i allso had paid out for 2 wheels at one stage so had spend £700, thats a damn lot of money, try and get a refund and hit ocuk, they did say i believe in somebodys earlier posts all the boxes was v4.

One thing i will know 100% tomoz is wether or not these wheels lose alot of there ffb strength asi will have a different version maybe i drive the wheel too hard or expect way too much from it, however do do expect tobe able to have a good session without the power feeling like i have hamsters for a motor.

 

[PLazarou]

Yeah I'm just considering the options at the moment. Whether to wait for OCUK to come back down to £300, to spend more hours on the phone with Amazon to discuss their stock situation, or opening the thing up to see I can fix this rattle myself. Opening it up seems fiddly but doable, but I have no idea what to do after that.

By the way, is OCUK free delivery all the time? When I put the T500 in the basket it adds £10.50 for DPD delivery.

 

[Michelcleo]

The top delivery option for me is free.

FREE SHIPPING (DPD Next Day)

£0.00


And then

DPD Next Day Parcel

£10.50

 

[RacerXX]

One thing i will know 100% tomoz is wether or not these wheels lose alot of there ffb strength asi will have a different version maybe i drive the wheel too hard or expect way too much from it, however do do expect tobe able to have a good session without the power feeling like i have hamsters for a motor.

But don't we already know this 100%? The basic hardware, motor, motor controller, belt drive ratios, and so forth are unchanged. The fan(s) changed, but not really in terms of actual cooling effect.

For strong / endless FFB you need to "Beat The Heat". Firmware and later versions of the wheel with tiny detail changes won't accomplish that feat. More heat sinking and airflow for those heat sinks and not just the case of the device would be a good start. Make sure the motor controller H-Bridge chips that send current to the motor are well cooled too.

 

[Michelcleo]

But don't we already know this 100%? The basic hardware, motor, motor controller, belt drive ratios, and so forth are unchanged. The fan(s) changed, but not really in terms of actual cooling effect.

For strong / endless FFB you need to "Beat The Heat". Firmware and later versions of the wheel with tiny detail changes won't accomplish that feat. More heat sinking and airflow for those heat sinks and not just the case of the device would be a good start. Make sure the motor controller H-Bridge chips that send current to the motor are well cooled too.

H bridge chips, would you know where this is ?
Ta

 

[RacerXX]

H bridge chips, would you know where this is ?
Ta

Follow the motor wire back to the circuit board. Near where the wire connects will be the H Bridge circuit. Take a picture of it. If possible remove any heat sink from it so that the chips can be identified and datasheets looked up for current and voltage limit data. Look for the temperature sensor…it is probably fixed to the motor somewhere and will have it's own wires back to the circuit board. When that sensor reads high…the FFB gets cut back to prevent damaging the motor. Your goal is to pull enough extra heat out of the motor that this sensor keeps seeing "all is well" and so the controller never has to get turned way down to the point that you are running on one cylinder.

The H Bridge circuit directs the FFB energy to the big FFB motor. So it carries a lot of current. When maxed out, the motors will receive close to the limit of the 6.67 amp / 24 volt power supply.

You can run the wheel with the covers off and use a thermometer or your hand or an IR thermometer to search for heat.

In the end those two zones (motor and it's H-Bridge) handle the heavy loads and need adequate cooling. The H-Bridge is easiest to cool and may be okay in your case. So most likely the motor will be the main target for your efforts.

I'd make some nice heat sinks for it. Large, well-fitting heat sinks cooled by their own fans (maybe 2) will make a huge difference. The stock heat sink is not overly large and mostly cools just one side of the motor. If air cooling is not enough then you can go to water or peltier to blow away the heat issues once and for all. I have a different wheel whose motor can be kept about 20º F below ambient even during long rally events. The multi-thousand dollar wheel rigs run water cooling similar to that used in high end gaming PCs.

Bear in mind that the large, heavy motor in your T500 will take some time to heat up. This means that to test your cooling mods you can't do say 2-3 minute tests. You need to go longer until the heat stabilizes or protection/limiting kicks in. And log things into a notebook, try different strategies. Change one thing at a time. You know, like in a school science lab experiment.

 

[mrbasher]

FFB loss has been unnoticeable on the T500RS wheels I have owned thus far, V2 and V3 both. This is even after several hours of hard racing at a FFB setting of 7 in GT5 and 26 in iRacing. The motor case itself is only warm to the touch during and after these times.

If your wheel is losing that much FFB, you need to exchange it for a new one, not open it up and mod it. If the wheel is incapable of operating in the manner you wish it to, then by all means mod it. However, I have used several of these now and none of them have exhibited what you have described.

 

[Michelcleo]

Thanks for the info RacerXX
I have to test the wheel for a few days first to make sure it works and then if i am not happy and it is infact a matter of bad cooling then i will take the wheel completely apart and take pics and add heatsinks.

The cooling mod i done with all the fans kept the main ffb motor cool/warm so that was'nt my issue unless it has something todo with the pcb/chip on back of motor.

I like how some electronics ( i dont know there names but there under the motors pcb/chip ) are welded to the heatsink holder that wraps around the motor and holds the large heatsink in place, whats all that about then as it looks tome that the heatsink holder cannot be removed from the motor ?


Edit

Thankyou MrBasher for your valuable info, as you say you have no ffb loss i tend to believe that as i have heard others say the same hence the reason im still buying t500rs's and i have allso seen one of my wheels keep its power after many hours racing time trial with loads of fan mods but it did'nt stay that was for more than a few days before power went week so possibly faulty component somewhere.

 

[mrbasher]

Best of luck Michelcleo. Honestly, it should really be working out of the box for you. If it's not, you deserve to get what you paid for and not find it necessary to mod it.

That said, modding it could prove to make it last longer.. That's your discretion of course. Just be careful not to mod it in a such a way that it voids the warranty. Remember, these have a 2 year warranty...

 

[Michelcleo]

Thankyou, i hope i have the best of luck allso because not having a wheel for the last 7 days has killed me.
I got a few Noctua fans for the top vents, if the wheels ok like it should be then i'll just throw them ontop, no need to take the wheel apart, i brought them for the last wheel so i may aswell use them, they are silent and suck up the ffb shaking without a sound

And thanks again for your info, its happily recieved

 

[RacerXX]

Thanks for the info RacerXX
I have to test the wheel for a few days first to make sure it works and then if i am not happy and it is infact a matter of bad cooling then i will take the wheel completely apart and take pics and add heatsinks.

The cooling mod i done with all the fans kept the main ffb motor cool/warm so that was'nt my issue unless it has something todo with the pcb/chip on back of motor.

I like how some electronics ( i dont know there names but there under the motors pcb/chip ) are welded to the heatsink holder that wraps around the motor and holds the large heatsink in place, whats all that about then as it looks tome that the heatsink holder cannot be removed from the motor ?


Edit

Thankyou MrBasher for your valuable info, as you say you have no ffb loss i tend to believe that as i have heard others say the same hence the reason im still buying t500rs's and i have allso seen one of my wheels keep its power after many hours racing time trial with loads of fan mods but it did'nt stay that was for more than a few days before power went week so possibly faulty component somewhere.

I'm a fan of "heat mapping". Finding where the heat is produced and dealing with it on the spot. The extra fans you added mostly just cool the case. You can still have excess heat in the motor or circuits or PSU.

FFB motors mostly heat up in the coil region which is toward the drive end of the motor can. These are permanent magnet DC motors. You have the cylindrical case/ferrous flux ring. On the other side of the motor case are some round magnets. Then an air gap. Then an iron armature and steel shaft wrapped with many turns of copper wire. If the case is hot…well the coils are much hotter if you think about it. And the heat has a hard time getting out quickly.

Are you familiar with building tower PCs? Even cheapies NEVER use just a case fan. They'll have dedicated fans, heat sinks, heat pipes, etc wherever they are needed. Plus the case fan. If you run just additional case mods and run the PC hard you will still overheat. Adding more case fans won't solve the problem, you need local heat removal too.

 

[Michelcleo]

RacerXX

I was hoping that excess heat build up was the issue so the fans being added would get rid of that but sadly not.

Yes i'm familiar with tower pc's, here's a pic of mine so i know what your saying about air cannot really give good performance, with the few added fans and mods i've done to the case i managed to get my sli temp down considerably, this was done with just adding fans and rearanging intakes and outtakes to find the best possible airflow to remove my gfx heat but i have huge heatsinks on everything where as the t500rs does'nt.

As MrBasher says his wheel is fine, i believe he knows his stuff and would sureley notice a large drop off in power, how many t500rs you had or been able to test ?

I'll have my own views tomoz though as i have a different version so i'll comment more then.

 

[RacerXX]

RacerXX

I was hoping that excess heat build up was the issue so the fans being added would get rid of that but sadly not.

Yes i'm familiar with tower pc's, here's a pic of mine so i know what your saying about air cannot really give good performance, with the few added fans and mods i've done to the case i managed to get my sli temp down considerably, this was done with just adding fans and rearanging intakes and outtakes to find the best possible airflow to remove my gfx heat but i have huge heatsinks on everything where as the t500rs does'nt.

As MrBasher says his wheel is fine, i believe he knows his stuff and would sureley notice a large drop off in power, how many t500rs you had or been able to test ?

I'll have my own views tomoz though as i have a different version so i'll comment more then.

Yes cooling and heat are cooling and heat, does not matter if it's a wheel device or a tower PC device. The Laws of Physics apply to both. I had an old gaming PC running air cooled only well into the zones that the "forum gurus" said was impossible. Impossible just takes a little longer lol. Same concepts I've noted in these forums here and there, stick with it.

In your case you seem to love strong and steady FFB action, nothing wrong with that. Me too!

Even the best multi-thousand dollar sim wheels have heat issues in the FFB zones. Lotsa FFB force involves energy. That's a good thing. I'm not a turn it down type…I want MORE not less. And do what it takes to get there.

 

[JogoAsobi]

I wish we had a filter to just remove specific posts...

Its a shame such a fine thread diluted by...well...
...I don't know quite what to call it.

Carry on lads, hopefully it will pass.

----------------------------------
Seems as if I ran into the fan issue last night LOL.

I thought I had a British prince trying to lift off through the T500's housing.
Not surprised, I have had to replace fans in similar product's I have owned.

Thanks to the many fine posts on this thread I know what to do going forward.

 

[Michelcleo]

Wheel is here.

Its a v4 and teh outside boox has a date of april 2011.
It has 3 bumps/divots in the same place throughout the 1080 turning circle.
The bump/divot in normal position is 0.3% from center as this is where one of the divots is but a few wheels had this issue so i take it will wear out abit or 100%, wheel cant be recentered ect as the divot pulls the wheel into it.

The power of the wheel past its hard lock is'nt anywhere near as strong as the v2's i've had and is more like the same power as the ffb loss i was seeing, in game on high ffb is just as strong as other wheels i've had though so hard lock necver bothers me as i dont turn that far, just something i noticed.

 

[PLazarou]

It seems like the vast majority of stock still comes from 2011. Even V.5s are mentioned in 2011 in this thread. Perhaps they churned out a load of wheels in 2011, over-anticipating the demand. They were also releasing firmware updates regularly around this time, which is why so many version numbers were spotted in the space of a few months.

V.5s begin to be discussed here around October 2011, so even if you can find a V.5 it might be over 1 year old. Still, that's better than the V.2s that are still in stock, which are over 2 years old. The lumps in the belt seem more likely to disappear the less time the wheel has been left in one position.

Regarding re-centring, the lump does indeed pull the rim away from true centre if you have received a wheel that was packed very close to centre in the box. However the lump will fade (not 100% in my case, it's still there after two months of use), and if you have reset the centre properly (with the mode/start/select feature), then you should notice that the wheel will centre itself under high strength. Easiest way to test that is to go to Auto-Center Settings and select 'by the wheel' and turn up the strength slider. The wheel should pull itself exactly to the centre.

 

[RacerXX]

I guess when the racing is over it might not be a bad idea to store the wheel in different positions each time. You have to account for the belt ratios since some non-centered wheel positions would have the belts in the same positions.

On my CSR wheel, the belt that can get notchy is the one to the motor. This is because the small cog forces the belt into a sharp angle. Due to belt "gear" ratios, that wheel can be stored just slightly off of center for the motor belt to be 180 degrees away from its position when the wheel is centered. Perhaps this idea would help Thrustmaster wheels.

I wonder if T500s are still being produced or if it is all sell-from-inventory. Logitech has stock of g27s, not sure if they are or will be produced this year. Fanatec is still making batches of their newer wheels, but older ones seem to sell from the shelf.

 

[Motorcycle54]

It seems like the vast majority of stock still comes from 2011.

FWIW to Amazon buyers: The customer service manager there just told me the product description for the t500 says 'released in 2011' ..and used that to suggest that I should have *expected* my wheel to be 2 years old.
I told her I took that date to mean how long the t500 has been in production, not how old amazons stock actually is. Why is amazons stock that old? She didnt know. Thanks to this thread I felt confident to make that case with amazon and the result was a discount of $130. Not bad for a little thread reading.