When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Any folks with experience selecting sim rig components following ?
I know nothing about them but am looking to build a setup principally for training purposes.
I’d like to keep budget at $5K or under including PC if possible and can utilize a spare seat I have hanging around.
Not sure if I’d want to go with a single or triple monitor setup. The more realistic the control weights and responsiveness the better.
Thanks in advance.
Sims are so fun. I have a complete Fanatec setup with a Porsche wheel that I'd love to sell to another enthusiast - our team used to train on it before Global Time Attack / Gridlife but I don't have time anymore since our newborn popped out.
If you nab this from me for $1200, the rig to mount all of it on isn't expensive, I found several made of 80/20 alu profiles (stiff enough unless you're crazy violent) in the $600 range. That leaves $3200 for PC and monitors which is plenty. I run Assetto Corsa off an $11000 off-the-shelf NZXT PC, one $300 1440p LG monitor, and found it to be overkill. The game was telling me it was running at 500FPS lol. If you wanted triple 1440p monitors you'd want to upgrade the graphics card, but you have plenty of budget to do so. We can discuss details if this all sounds appealing to you.
After a good long time of not worrying about the car, I have finally started to allocate some mental resources to trying to position myself to have a good 2024 season. That really brought me to a number of facets of the car that I am not happy with.
Stock GM ECU. Someone smarter than me could likely make the stock ECU work well for them. For me, deciding to go this route assumed that I would not have any issues that could be related to the ECU, because my ability to troubleshoot the stock ECU for my hodgepodge of parts is... none. As it ended up, I did have an issue with the DBW cutting out. While still even today, I can't with certainty say this is an issue with the stock ECU, I can say that I am using a throttle pedal that never came with this ECU. My pedal is from a C7, the E38 ECU I have is from a C6. I also know that the stock ECU control strategies for the DBW are very strict and small variances to expected values cause the types of issues I saw. My tuner does not have a fix for this (If it is the ECU) that he feels he would rate as reliable. Additionally, the stock ECU is limited in its overall configurability and ability to scale. It has what GM needed it to have and nothing else.
So, the solution is what I should have done in the first place, an aftermarket ECU. After a lot of research and talking to people, I ended up with a Haltech Elite 2500 along with their dual lambda can box. Looking for an aftermarket ECU is a bit of a fiddly process. You have the top of the top, Bosch Motorsport for factory supported stuff, the top, Motec, Life Racing, Pectel and then the goldilocks zone for budget minded people (where mine falls), within that everyday man group, while they pretty much all do the same thing, how they do that thing and what they come with, along with their price swings pretty wildly. The Haltech had advantages here mostly because, its what my tuner likes to use but also because by the time I added in the stuff I wanted that it didn't come with (dual lambda, unterminated harness), it came in a fair bit less expensive than the Holley unit I was comparing it to. While there were some other options that may have saved some money for the options I wanted, my tuner advised me against them as in his experience, the factory support was far behind both Haltech and Holley.
So, what does the Haltech do... Well, it controls DBW in a far more simplistic method than the factory GM ECU and can be easily calibrated to any pedal. Next, with the dual lambda option, not only will I see AFR on both banks, but the ECU will use these values as part of its control strategy. It has a bunch of free inputs and outputs that can be used to add sensors or switches the ECU can see and react to on the input side, or turn stuff on or off on the output side. It allows for the configuration of safety strategies to be enabled to try to prevent faults from becoming too catastrophic including utilizing the factory knock sensors. And everything its doing can be logged for data analyzation. It will also communicate with the Aim PDM in the car through can enabling the PDM to see basically everything the ECU is doing, so I will be able to view a lot of log data in the both the Aim and Haltech software programs.
So, the upside / downside here is, I need to rework a lot of wiring and the engine will need to come out to access everything I need. Thats the downside, the upside its, I can do what I did better and thats what I'm going to do. I will be reusing the aftermarket engine harness currently installed but completely reworking it by removing everything I don't need, of which there is a lot, and adding wiring for stuff that I want to add, or may want to add in the future. Instead of running the harness through the factory harness pass through in the chassis, I am going to bulkhead connector the entire engine harness (the way the factory does it, kind of at least) so when I need to pull the motor for service, I only need to disconnect the bulkheads. Inside the chassis the unterminated harness I got from Haltech will connect to that bulkhead. This will make for a much cleaner and serviceable situation than I have now. I will also address some of the other wiring stuff I don't love throughout the chassis.
Next up, the cooling system - really, the cooling system is one part of the builds I am most proud of, it was done pretty elegantly in my opinion. What I don't love about it is the rubber hoses and hose clamps. When they are good and not leaking, they are great, but if you have to deal with a leak, the confines I'm working with make it quite a challenge. This was a problem that crept up on the dyno session and while we got it fixed up, it got me thinking, from a reliability standpoint, I don't trust those parts. So, I am going to convert all of the rubber hoses to 20AN, I bought weld on fittings for the oil cooler, factory Porsche hard pipe and the water pump. Also on the cooling system, some may remember I am using 997 Turbo rads, which are fine for the left and right but differ when it comes to the center. This created a whole bunch of fitment challenges I would say I only really band aided to work. Worst of all, effing with the airflow as I could not run the right ducting, so a 996 turbo center rad is on the way and that should be an easy fix.
And finally for the HAVE TO fix list is the main power. Too small a battery, too small main power wiring. I'm going to take the 20 or 30LB weight penalty and put a big battery in the car. For the moment, I'm done effing around with the tiny battery. Once I have a dialed and reliable setup, I may revisit this but at least for this season, I don't want to worry about it. And before everyone says just put an antigravity in... I don't sufficiently trust that the very expensive battery will be a good value proposition, at least I don't sufficiently trust them to drop the kind of money they command, for me batteries have always been thought of as a consumable and I'm not ready to change my mind there. Then there is the main power wiring which is 4 gauge - this also is not big enough for the lengths required. I settled on this because the main power to the PDM required 4 gauge and didn't really realize, well, maybe that won't be ideal for all of the other main battery wiring. Now I know. So I'll be running some beefy main power wiring that I'll never have to think about again, the weight penalty here will be well worth it and minimal.
So, thats the big stuff. The work that will be done in the near term is all planning for the wiring harness revisions and then getting the few parts I need to make that work. When the weather starts to warm up a bit, the wrench turning will begin. It took a bit, but I am excited for next season.
For anti-theft, swap every other Phillips with a Torx. Thrown in a triple square just to be mean. You really don't want your dash, or other equipment stolen while you're travelling.
For anti-theft, swap every other Phillips with a Torx. Thrown in a triple square just to be mean. You really don't want your dash, or other equipment stolen while you're travelling.
Thanks for the advice, I strip pretty much every fastener I touch but I like the idea of stripping some torx and triple squares just to up the degree of difficulty. There are no phillips on the car, if it doesn't use a socket, I aint using it.
The car stays close to home for now and when we start doing longer distances and overnights I will have to step up to an enclosed trailer and then worry about that getting stolen which is a very real concern.
Smart on the air tags John - remind me not to steal your work of art.
Smart on the air tags John - remind me not to steal your work of art.
Cheers brother. The AirTags are a cheap layer of protection. I have them in all my cars and trailer. I have some big changes coming on my build too, on the gearbox side. Should be fun.
Cheers brother. The AirTags are a cheap layer of protection. I have them in all my cars and trailer. I have some big changes coming on my build too, on the gearbox side. Should be fun.
Oh i cant wait...since my gearbox is the next thing i need to rebuild on my car
I can't wait to have this running more better than last year. Going to be great!
I need to do some work on mine soon, what with all the sunshine in my world lately.
12-07-2023, 05:06 PM
