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Basically, the wheel unit consists of a wooden 'box' and an aluminium construction to which the actual wheel is mounted. This aluminium bit can easily be mounted to the wooden box. As a steering wheel we've bought a karting wheel. (a three spoke 30cm wheel) The wheel can turn through 300 degrees, using a steeringlock system, and is directly connected to the potentiometer. The below picture shows the wheel unit without the wooden enclosure and the gearbox.

There are 2 steeringwheels to use with the A.K.N. Racing System. The 30cm round wheel as seen in the above picture, and a 'Knight rider' type wheel, taken from an old Quickshot flight yoke. This one has 4 buttons on it, so we're using it for modern day F1 games.

For the enclusore, we've use 18mm thick MDF, which is strong and easy to work with. From the AutoCAD render below, you should get an idea about the look of the enclosure. The bit sticking out on the low-right corner is for mounting the gearbox.

We've taken the gearbox directly from an old Thrustmaster T2, because we didn't have enough time to make one ourselves. When turning the wheel, an elastic cord is stretched, making the wheel self-centering. The picture below shows the aluminium construction and it explains the cord stretching.

The wooden construction has a 130x75 square hole in the front. It also has 4 holes at exactly the same place as the four holes near the edges of the front sheet. Four bolts/nuts make for a sturdy connection of the frontsheet to the wooden enclosure.

The steeringlock block goes 'on top of' the rear sheet. A bolt, screwed in the thread at the 'top' of the axle, will 'meet' a bolt screwed in the M6 in the steeringlock block, giving a range of about 300 degrees.

The steering axle bearing is made of NYLON. You're going to need two of these, one mounted in the front sheet, and one mounted in the rear sheet. (Explaining the M4 screw-thread in those two sheets, they're for mounting the bearings)

As said, the steering axle 'rolls' through the 2 bearings (previous drawing) It's made of aluminium, which isn't an ideal material to make an axle from, as it isn't hard enough. (you can easilly scratch it, making the surface rougher) We'd rather use stainless steel for this part, but you can't make something out of a material you don't have, so we had little choice. The same goes for the use of Nylon bearings. At least there is room for improvement.

The one without screw-thread is fixed to the axle by a M6 bold, for which there is M6 thread in the axle. The one with screw-thread has to slide over the axle until it's up against the 'front' bearing. Then it is tied to the axle by a M6 bolt. These parts rotate with the steeringwheel. We'll continue with the final NYLON parts for the cord stretching . .

Use the clever pictures (top of this page) to find out how these parts are put together. The only thing left to do is finding a way to connect the potentiometer to the axle. We screwed an 'S' shaped sheet on the rear sheet, (this has to be 1 or 2mm steel) which looks a bit like this:

There is a 10mm hole throughout the axle. For securing the potentiometer axle to the steering axle, we've made a small NYLON axle, about .1mm wider that the hole in the axle. We drilled a hole exactly in the center of this NYLON axle, the size of the potentiometer axle. (6.34mm)

Using a bog-standard hamer, we forced the NYLON axle into the steering axle. The potentiometer axle can now be 'pushed' into the hole in the NYLON axle. (did I mention the word axle?)

Hold it right there folks! While 'taking apart' an old laser printer I came across a piece of rubber that works a bit like the 'transmission' the chaps at Thomas Superwheel use, a clever way of preventing the loads on the wheel (and therefore the axle) to be transmitted onto the poor old potentiometer (they don't like being mistreated). No pictures yet (nor will there be any in the future) but this is an improvement I just have to mention.

That's it, we've finished the wheel unit!

(you can stop applauding now)