This morning Thomas surprised us with a video from the Clubsport Wheel production line in China. While visiting the manufacturer, he recorded a 4 minute long video with his mobile phone, showing many steps in the assembly process of the Clubsport Wheel base.
Here is my rough description of what workers are doing in the same order a shown in the video. Please correct me in the comments, if you think I got something wrong or if something should be added.
Assembling dual motors in one unit
Mounting heat sink to the motors
Pushing ball bearings into the frame
Assembling main axis/rotation limiter
Mounting rotary encoder to the big center pulley
Mounting the big center pulley to the main mechanism
Mounting motors, side pulleys and main mechanism to the thick front aluminum plate
Adjusting belt tension
Preparing/connecting cables
Mounting the optical sensor
Checking mechanical quality of the base
Mounting dust filter to the left side ventilation grill (probably also mounting fan to the right side ventilation grill)
Mounting metal sides (ventilation grills) to the base
Installing/connecting the main PCBA
Thomas wrote on his blog that production preparations took them a bit longer than expected, because they decided to make a lot of customized fixtures for each assembly step in order to get maximum quality. Read more »
"Evolution of a legend". That is how Thomas described Clubsport Pedals V2 as he announced them on his blog today. He he posted interesting information about new features, a few photos and a video showing the new pedals.
He made it clear that the new Clubsport Pedals are more of an evolution than a complete redesign, but it is hard to argue about that, when you look at how successful CSP V1 were. Why would you make too much changes to something that clearly works, right?
Here are the new features as described by Thomas:
1. Look
The pedals now come in anodized black and polished aluminum parts which gives it a more exclusive and classy touch. Of course the colour kits are fully compatible so you can change the look to all black or combine it with grey, orange red or blue.
2. Hydraulic brake
We have added an oil damper to the load cell brake to give it a more realistic and dampenend feeling. The feeling can be adjusted by replacing the silicone oil and use different viscosity and by changing the spring tension on the damper. It is simple but very effective. We also made the load cell brake stiffer and with a shorter travel by default.
3. Degressive clutch mechanism
Our Japanese friend Teki Ei-Ichi developed a new mechanism for the clutch for us. It gives you a degressive feel just like in a real car. Of course you can still adjust the spring strength.
If you were hoping for an upgrade kit, you are, unfortunately, out of luck. Upgrade kit from CSP V1 to CSP V2 would need to include many parts, the whole upgrade procedure would be quite complicated and the end result would not looks like CSP V2. Those are the reasons for why they decided not to offer such kit. Interestingly, Thomas is suggesting potential buyers to sell their existing Clubsport Pedals V1 on Ebay, where they usually reach a descent selling and afford the new ones that way.
He also revealed that first Clubsport Pedals V2 will become available in June, together with the new Clubsport Wheel and that they would start taking pre-orders in May.
EDIT: Pricing information was added afterwards:
Price: 249,95 € (incl VAT) in EU and 249,95 USD (excl sales tax) in USA. Australian prices still need to be determined.
Does the name Stephane Turpin ring a bell? Yes, you are correct, he is the author of Fanatec CSP brake vibration plugin for iRacing, which is an amazing piece of software that uses the brake vibration motor of Clubsport Pedals to warn you about wheel lock and is a must have for all Clubsport Pedals owners.
This time Stephane made something different, he built an iRacing plugin that takes advantage of Clubsport Wheel's shift lights and Tuning display. In the video below you can see him racing a Lotus 79 car on Virginia Raceway with a Formula rim attached to a Clubsport Wheel base. 9 shift lights (3 yellow, 3 red and 3 blue) are working as intended and in this case the 3-digit display is showing fuel consumption in l/100km, but can be used to display any value.
In his blog post regarding this video Thomas Jackermeier of Fanatec clarified, that while the first three LEDs in this video appear red, they are actually yellow and that intensity of the blue LEDs will be increased in the mass production units.
But that is not all, he also announced that they will send wheels to all major racing game developers along with a software development kit and that we can expect broad support in the upcoming game titles. Read more »
Developers of Project CARS released a new exe file that contains a few helmet camera tweaks, but more importantly it also contains a fix for the problem where game would not load if you had firmware version newer than 721 installed on your CSR or CSR Elite wheel! This means you can now enjoy Project cars with firmware 737.
You can read more about it and download the exe here.
Please also read the disclamer posted by the development director Andy Garton:
Usual disclaimer applies - this exe may very well not work with build 192 as it's latest code which has a few other changes and may depend on data you don't have (SMAA specifically has had some data updates so could be broken with this exe, if it starts at all). But nothing lost by trying it.
UPDATE on 18.April 2012: This fix actually became a part of the game in version 194, so as long as you download version 194 or newer, you do not need to download the fix.
A while ago I added a new section to this website, but since I did not link to it anywhere else than on our forums, it never caught too much attention. I hope that is about to change.
You probably all know that the upcoming Clubsport Wheel is going to have a quick-release mechanism that will allow you to replace rims quickly and easily, without even exiting the game. Fanatec will release two rims at Clubsport Wheel launch (Formula and BMW M3 GT2), but they are planning to develop and start selling many more during CSW's lifetime. It should be very interesting and since most rims are still under development or in planning phase, I thought it would be interesting to give you, visitors of Fanatec wheel fansite, an opportunity to submit your own rim ideas and let you vote up the ideas you like and would like to see made. There is no guarantee that your ideas will come true, but voting should definitely make it clear, which rims would be them most popular.
CSW rims section is exactly that. You can vote, sort submitted rims by either date or rating and use the submission form to add you favorite rims. If this becomes popular and there are many submissions, I will add more sorting/filtering options as time goes by. Read more »
Today Thomas mentioned that he hid an easter egg somewhere on his blog, but did not reveal what it is nor did he give any tips on where to look for it. It almost looked like no one would find it on the first day, but then Simracer92 announced that he finally found it "after hours of easter searching". Thomas hid it among the community test links in previous week's blog post. If you look closely, you will discover that a communtiy tester named "RaceRabbit" from OvalEggRacing.com brough us something.
The link underneath this posting leads you to a Yousendit page where you can download version 737 of both CSR and CSR Elite wheel firmwares.
For now we do not know any details about these firmwares and will have to wait for Thomas to post an change log, but I am sure that the new CSR wheel firmware adds so called "autoclutch" function that many people were anxious to get.
Even though we still do not know a release date for the Fanatec Clubsport Wheel, I would like to inform you that Fanatec is starting a big search for Community testers, who would want to receive a test sample of the Clubsport wheel and post a review of it in their community. I would also like to mention that I will be handling Community testing for Fanatec. There will be over 30 communities in which it will be possible to apply for this and in the end one community tester will be voted in in each of the communities.
If you would like to find out in which communties it is possible to apply, you can find a list of all the websites where the process has already started on Thomas' blog. I would like to mention that list is not final yet and more websites will be added to it as Community test managers start the Community test threads!
If you are a member of our forums here on Fanatec wheel fansite and want to participate in our community tester selection, you can get all the information and apply right here.
About Clubsport Wheel pricing
Today Thomas revealed final pricing information for the Clubsport wheel base and the two quick-release rims, which will be available at launch. Read more »
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