Fanatec Club Sport V3 Pedals 2021 Review

[Music] today we're going to take a quick look in 2021 because that's where we are now at the trusty fanatic club sport v3 pedals now i thought there's two reasons i do this i did a pedal review of those obp ones last week i think it was and also i'm in the middle of swapping over all my sim racing equipment from my old gt amiga art cockpit to the new prime cockpit so these are off and what better time to take a look a little look a little look at them i have had a couple of people ask me um after i put up the video sort of doing the walk around on my rig whether i'd sort of comment on my pedals and whether they're still you know worth getting and what have you so the short answer is yeah very much so because these come in at 400 pounds plus delivery to wherever you might live and for 400 pounds i honestly can't say i've seen a better value three pedal setup um let's start off with the construction these are heavy right i'm going to estimate i don't know six or seven kilos maybe they're they're pretty they're pretty hefty they're all aluminium construction which again shows you how thick the metal is that's being used here because aluminium is quite light and yet these are hefty we haven't got like a big thick base plate like on some of the really high end ones we've got this sort of frame made up of the side pieces here and then these tubular sections that run across here um and they're all bolted together but they are heavy and they're solid um you know they feel like you've you've got your money's worth straight away so to speak and also i really like the finish on these there are different pedal faces you can fit which i'll show you in a second but i really like the finish on these i think they just look good you know and we all like something that looks good on our sim rig as well as performs well so the um it's like a brushed brushed aluminium finish as you can probably see and a lot of you will have already seen these before anyway but um the pedals are all adjustable up down left right uh i don't think you can actually slide the pedals left to right because you'd need additional of these sort of tubular type inserts which they didn't come with at least mine didn't i got these second hand for 250 pounds would you believe um and they basically looked like brand new when i got them so i was really chuffed i did have to drive from where i live to london central london and back to gem which probably put another 30 notes on the price in fuel but still 280 notes you might say and still still an absolute bargain and i've had these i don't know well over a year now in fact probably another two years um so you've got you've got your usual pedal adjustments up down left and right and the angles as well and the travel in fact on everything i think we can adjust the travel on or is it yeah most i think we can just hold on everything and we've then got these additional uh you like it so it's like an extension piece and then a different face plate or you know you don't have to fit those extensions you can just fit the the face plate on its own but i think these look a bit pony to be honest i i really they're just plastic i really like the brushed aluminium ones so that's what i've got on there you've got a nice heel plate at the front as well to rest your heels on obviously um and yeah i pretty much like everything about them there is one thing that's quite laughable but we'll get to that in a minute but the build quality is great they're hefty they don't flex or wobble around they don't squeak normally but i did get a squeak on my accelerator pedal now very usefully it comes with a little bit of grease um and so i was able to just whip it apart lube up the bit that was squeaking and put it back together so that was no bother either it also comes with a few different springs you've got red and black ones they are lighter and harder or heavier and stiffer or whatever you want to describe it therefore the clutch pedal and the accelerator pedal now the black ones are the heavier ones which is what i'm using i think um yeah they are the brake pedal itself to adjust the stiffness of that is load cell obviously and it has a 90 kilogram load cell there is this you see that red sort of sleeve there you can wind that in and out and that will determine how stiff your brake pedal is now i've got it on setting sort of two and a half i think it goes up to eight might be ten second two and a half so there's way it can be a lot stiffer than what i've got it but for me this gives me just the right amount of stiff in fact i can't it's going to be hard to show you on camera because i could do with a table at head height but here's the travel before it gets stiff so from there to there it's like barely maybe an inch or two before it really gets stiff um and i really like that for me that's spot on again those obp pedals last week the brake pedal just good yeah all the way to the floor so to speak you know and and it was just a horrible experience this is so much nicer but uh yeah so for me the the low cell and the stiffness or the weight of the pedal is plenty and the still overhead should you want it to be stiffer um the accelerator pedal again like i've said in the other video the other day accelerator pedals are the easiest thing to uh to simulate because in real cars from the late 90s onwards they're just plastic pedals with two potentiometers or hall sensors so it's very easy to replicate a brake pedal um this one does a nice job the pedal feels nice under foot the spring tension with the black spring is just nice for me again in a real car accelerator pedals they're not heavy you know they are just a spring and often a plastic enclosure with two putts and you're just pushing against the spring and you're turning the potentiometers so it's you know it's not not much to get to get right and and be very difficult to get it wrong when you're simulating a real life pedo obviously again race pedal faces will look um and be much nicer than plastic ones you might find in you know uh day-to-day cars they're gonna be aluminium or or possibly steel so we've got a nice aluminium you know accelerator pedal here but yeah that works just fine you can adjust the travel you can adjust the strength for the spring you can adjust its position so and that's not a hall effect sensor on this rather than potentiometers so there's technically no moving parts as such so it should last a very long time so yeah accelerator pedal is good brake pedal's good clutch pedal is one of my favorite pieces on here the way they've got it this mechanism here it's on like a almost like a can type setup so when you get to it's gonna be hard for me to show if i can yeah when you get to about there it just starts to go light and you're past what i'm gonna call the simulated buying point of a clutch in real life again i touched on this last week with that obp review in a real car that has a traditional style three piece clutch so you've got your friction plate in the flywheel and your friction plate your pressure plate and a release bearing the release bearing pushes on the pressure plate and disengages the springs to release pressure on the friction plate that's between the flywheel and the pressure plate when you overcome those springs in real life your clutch feels noticeably lighter now in day-to-day normal cars you won't really notice that happening unless you pay attention if you get in your car and you move your clutch down very very slowly you you'll notice it's it's a little light to begin with where there's just some play once the play has been taken up you feel the weight of the springs and the springs look like fingers on a clutch uh pressure plate which is why i'm doing this so you feel it get hard and then once you've overcome those springs and they've folded in so to speak the pedal goes noticeably lighter but again if you're just driving you know i don't know a nissan micra or ford fiesta okay something small with a very light clutch you you won't notice it day to day and you'd have to very slowly move the clutch down and very slowly move it up until you just feel that change in tension on the pedal but it is there um again this is for cars with traditional three-piece clutch setups we're not talking you know um triple plate style ones or race clutches of that sort of clutch again even a race clutch if it's a three-piece clutch setup like i've just described with a pressure plate a friction plate and a release bearing what i've just described that biting point is actually really really noticeable i work on a lot of the old classic forwards that i've mentioned before the escort rs turbos fiestas sierras things like that when i put an ap racing clutch or a helix paddle clutch in some of these old cars the clutch is super heavy and you can really feel when you're pushing against those springs and then when you get past them when you've overcome them it is super noticeable and that's what i like about this clutch here is it's really very clear and very obvious when that happens now you might be wondering carl why does it matter because there isn't really a biting point well if you configure the clutch in your chosen sim properly then there is a biting point um so like obviously as an example in dirt rally which is what i play the most of you've got your clutch dead zone which is how much you can move the pedal until it starts to register anything in the game and then you've got your saturation which is the opposite end of the scale now if you left the saturation at 100 for example you would need to put the clutch all the way at the floor to be able to change gear and as soon as you left left lifted the pedal up just a fraction the clutch would engage that's obvious that that's basically putting your biting point on the floor so what you do with these phonetic pedals and other pedals that have a simulated button point is you adjust that saturation so that it matches where you feel the change in pressure on your pedal so as i lift this pedal back up again and i feel it gets to its heaviest point or just before that's where i adjust the slider to very roughly in the game and then i'll sit there at the line and i'll do a test i'll bring it up and just as i as i feel the springs re the springs re-engage does the car start to creep forward if it doesn't i'll adjust the saturation down a little bit if it's already started to move and i haven't yet got to my biting point and adjust the saturation out a little bit and the reason i do all this is so that when i'm sat there at the start of a stage ready to launch i can bring my clutch pedal up to the biting point and minimize the time it takes me to launch once those lights go green so i really like a simulated biting point on a clutch pedal for sim racing you don't really feel it when you're banging through the gears you know racing but when you're pulling away at the line when you're launching that's when i really appreciate that being there don't make me any faster because i'm not that good but i just like the fact that it feels realistic which is what simulation is all about so to summarize and to stop waffling on i think that's probably all there is to it i mean underneath you've got four rubber feet which is where your bolts go through to bolt it down to your chosen sim rig and you've got your usb interface which also allows you to plug in so you can plug this directly into the wheel deck you can go stand-alone usb you can plug the phonetic handbrake in and then you've got separate plugs clutch break and gas they are labeled on here and your wires are obviously all there underneath as well i like the red and black sort of combination the accents it actually matched my gt amiga art cockpit with my red and black seat and my red accent on there not anymore because i'm now silver and black but happens um i like the brushed aluminium finish i love the heft the weight i like the fact that it comes with different springs and different pedal faces and you can adjust the heights and the distance and all those bits and bobs oh yeah the thing that i don't like that's a bit pony these vibration mowers on the back here they don't do jack they're they're weird to you think they'd just work right out of the out of the box but they don't you have to run fanner leds is it the software which is like a combination of fanatic and leds put together to make up one word i think that's the software you have to run to configure them and like the vibrations you i can barely feel them you know they're supposed to be used for things like wheel slip and brake lock up but they just they're they're gimmicky is the best way to describe them they don't add anything to the game i can't really feel them especially not if you've got tactile transducers on your rig or any sort of motion you will never ever ever notice though so i just don't use them but they are there you know they just needed to be heftier in my opinion and maybe they would have proved a little more useful and also they're not really integrated into many sims either again it's been a long time since i've played with this but i don't think there's any any sims that sort of support it out of the box i'm sure again you have to configure it in phantom ledge something to do with it maybe to do with a telemetry feed for each i'm not really sure so i won't talk too much about that but all you need to know is i think they're a bit pointless you can barely feel them so i don't use them but other than that for 400 notes these are a very good pedal set and i can't see myself choosing to change them unless some kind sim racing manufacturer out there decides to send me a better set for review because they do everything i want the brake pedal is plenty stiff enough there's still some adjustment left for me if i wanted it to be heavier and again your brake pedal stiffness is going to vary not only on what you like but on what rig you've got them fitted to if you've got these because you could happily fit these to a playset challenge to a wheel stand any of the low to mid range stuff and they're going to work absolutely fine but you don't want for example on a play seat challenge or a wheel stand your brake pedal being stupidly heavy because you'll tip your chair back if you're on a wheel stand and if you're on the play seat challenge you'll lift the middle of the play seat off the floor so having adjustable pressure here where you can bring it right down is really quite useful because it covers a wider audience of us whereas even some of the the more higher end ones perhaps don't go quite as light even as what these do because they're not really designed to they're designed for people that have gotten fitted to you know solid rigs profile rigs and the like but um yes i really like these i can't see myself changing them you know for any what i mean what what else does it need to do the accelerator pedal works well as an accelerator pill they look nice they feel nice the brake pedal is load cell and is plenty stiff enough for me and the travels adjusted just nice i love the simulated bite and part and the clutch what would i gain by changing by changing my pedals they look nice on any rig i think i mean that's a matter of taste but um but yeah for the money i think these are well worth buying i will stick some links in the description both amazon and ebay if anyone's been you know thinking or should i get some um and i've and i've just decided to i've just made the choice for you and you're like yeah carl that sounds great i'll buy some there will be some links in the description as well sadly i don't have any discount codes for fnatic like purdue gtm a year and simulation studio but um but if you do buy any through my links it helps the channel so uh i appreciate that of course but um i think that's all there is to talk about with these i hope i haven't missed anything else out so um as always thank you very much for watching and and yeah take it easy you

Channel: Karl Gosling

Views: 12,839

Rating: 4.9535961 out of 5

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Id: oHU9nuDrEts

Length: 17min 5sec (1025 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 08 2021