Adding traction loss to my static setup, hope I go faster.

I have a hard time responding to the steering wheel feedback. It seems uneven and usually too late or too abrupt for me to react. I've raced and rallied for years and my brain is more in my butt than my head so that's my theory. I'm not too worried about making the simulation realistic, I just want feedback I'm used to for side grip and sliding. This frame is what I'm starting with. The difference is that I want to start out by using a whole electric steering rack, not just the motor. If it is too slow, I can remove the motor and use a bellcrank on the shaft like I've seen so many use. I also hope to decode the pinout on the built-in position sensors.

I tried and tried to get SMC3 to recognize the existing sensors on both the smart rack and a Saturn motor. No luck at all with any combination of wires. A standard old 10K pot worked so I am using that. I welded an arm onto the smart motor and removed it from the rack. It packaged well using the input shaft as the driver and trimmed back the worm drive gear. I hope that wasn't a bad decision. A couple of 1" square tubes made a motor mount. I drilled into the floor and put four anchors in. Two for the front and two for the motor.

I have experience with using server power supplies so I ebay'd one for ~$40. 80A, 5, 9 and 12VDC output. It just takes a small jumper to get it to start up. I had a UNO and an H-bridge so I found an old 3d printer cover that was a perfect mount for the parts.

I drilled a hole in the shaft, took the soft plastic p\art out of a control knob and stuffed it into the hole. The pot fit nicely. I bent up some welding rod, attached it to the motor and soldered it to the pot.

I had an old "lazy Susan" bearing I'd bought 30 years ago, so I tried using it for the front pivot. It was just too weak to trust on it's own so I added some nylon sliders and a metal pivot to the front, bringing the chassis level to the skateboard wheels in the back. ($16 skateboard on Amazon supplied the trucks and wheels).

The motor chose a center I didn't plan on and I see no way to change it so I modified the arm. The tie rod ends came with the smart rack. The smart had an accident and the only way to replace an inner tie rod is with a complete replacement of the rack. It was given to me. I couldn't find a good way to use the complete rack so I took the motor off it. The tin for under the wheels was $21 in the "drop bin" at Metal Supermarket.

Looks like I'm ready to try to load SimTools and see what happens!

After I blew the IBT2, I couldn't understand why the chair would zoom to one side and not move again. I tried to fix every questionable part until I finally discovered it was a blown IBT2. I cleaned up wiring and connections, I made a proper bracket for the pot (using the wire form as a template) remounted the motor and made better adjustments to the tie rods, moving them to the furthest back part to get better leverage. I had a really small fan so I used the 3.3v off the UNO to power it and blow on the IBT2.

So, Am I Faster? I've done most of my tuning using iRacing and it mostly confuses me. It moves left before it moves right and gets to the limit too quickly when more is called for. I'm sure this can be dialed in better as I learn. I jumped into an A/C race and it was GREAT! With no help from me, (I never made one setting decision for AC) it was set so the motor would "growl" as the limit was reached and it ended up moving very little. I outperformed that night and it was because of the feedback I got.
In spite of all the confusion and setbacks, it's been an interesting project.
Because I had so much on hand, it was about $100 in extra stuff plus the software.

I really don't know how to translate all this info into a one motor traction loss setup.
I only have "Axis 1a" named as Extra 1.
I think the directions are correct but iRacing at Suzuka going into 130r moves the seat left first, then right.
I don't notice this anywhere else.

I was told the filter section is the last to be used but that feature I can understand the best.
I just now found the button that allows changing the values captured in the tuning center.
I can really get myself in trouble now.

Here are the settings I have right now for AC and it was great last week. Things are OK but if anything is really wrong, let me know.

Here are the settings I have right now for iRacing. Things are OK but not like AC is. If anything is really wrong, let me know.

iRacing traction loss movie

Assetto Corsa video.

Well, it was working OK but I never got the limits and braking right so the linkage would go over center a lot.
I saw a Force Dynamics set up in Canada and figured I'd use a big Saturn Vue power steering motor I had to at least use the wheel part of the concept. That would eliminate all the linkage and motion ratio problems I had with the weak smart motor.