My thoughts after 5 Years with my DIY Sim Rig

have you been wanting to get into SIM racing but are put off by how expensive everything is of course steering wheels and pedals and shifters can cost a bit but what about cockpits this might sound crazy but it's not uncommon to see Sim cockpits priced at over 5 or $600 fortunately there's another way and that's to build your own with most people opting for a wood or PVC construction and many YouTube videos claiming you can do it for under $100 but is it really that cheap how hard is it to build a DIY Sim rig and are there unexpected problems that you'll run into over time in this video I'll answer these questions and share what I've learned over 5 years with my DIY Sim rig but first let me tell you how my setup went from this to this in 2018 I built a Sim racing cockpit out of wood and over the years I've used it with a budget Logitech wheel a mid-tier fanatic wheel and a monster 20 newon met direct drive wheel it started as a single monitor setup I've tried it with VR and these days it's evolved to use triple monitor after 5 years together this DIY Sim rig has had a huge impact on my real driving skills my YouTube channel and quite possibly my life this gives me a lot of insight about their pros and cons and I've come up with five key categories we can explore to see if building a DIY Sim rig is the right choice for you and if you like how mine turned out stay tuned because I'll give you the plans to build a Sim rig just like mine we'll start with the one thing car guys never have enough of money this is often the most important factor for beginner Sim Racers who are trying to get into the sport affordably and looking to minimize cost where they can at first glance DIY Sim rigs are a significant cost savings compared to buying one I spent $40 on materials for my cockpit and 85 for the Triple monitor desk meanwhile buying a cockpit can easily cost three to five times as much on the ultra budget side you can get a wheelstand for around $130 a foldable cockpit for around $250 and it costs closer to $400 to get something that's similar to what you can build out of wood another cost savings for DIY is that you don't have to wait on or pay for shipping everything you need is easily available from your local hardware store so when it comes to cost DIY Sim rigs are an easy win right well there is a potential Dark Side to going DIY that can raise the cost considerably you need to Source your own seat and rails and of course you also need tools to build it the chair piece can be discouraging at first if you search online for a bucket seat or Sim racing chair you'll quickly find surprisingly high prices personally I think Sim cockpit sellers charge a premium for individual seats to lure buyers to purchase entire rigs from them but with some effort you can sidestep this rather than pay $3 to $400 for a chair from them Source One used from a real car here are a few places to start go to your local junkyard and you can find shares for closer to 60 bucks another option is to search the used Marketplace online every every real Motorsports fan who puts a racing bucket seat into their sports car ends up with the stock when taking up space in the corner of their garage you can easily find someone local who's happy to let their seat go for way less than a Sim company charges for their bucket seats and you'll get something that's way more comfortable too since you aren't going to have g-forces slinging you around there's not really a need for a bucket seat anyway unless you just really want your setup to look sporty it could take a little patience to track one down but you can absolutely find a seat on the cheap to suit your DIY setup and take care of the first challenge with a DIY Sim rig the second one is tools while it's possible to build a rig with a hand saw hammer and nails ideally you'll want access to these an electric saw for cutting the boards this could be either a miter saw a circular saw or a sawall a drill with bits and screwdriver heads for making pilot holes mounting holes and fastening all your boards together a level and a triangle or t- Square to help you get everything decently flat and squared up and you might want a jig called a corner clamp to help assemble your boards at nice 90° angles these aren't strictly required but they make assembly much easier and especially so for people who haven't taken shop class in a while if you already have some tools and know how to use them it's a huge Plus in favor of building a DIY cockpit if you don't have the tools but would like to make DIY projects like shelving or Furniture in the future it can be a good investment to buy some and if you want to go DIY but can't afford tools hardware stores will often rent tools out by the day or see if you can borrow some from a friend the next most precious resource for many of us is time where the picture gets a little bit more complicated on the plus side everything you need is always available locally but where the DIY route doesn't require waiting on shipping you'll absolutely spend longer on assembly compared to a pre-made product since you'll be measuring and cutting the pieces in addition to bolting them together which leads us nicely into our third section ease of assembly to build your own Sim rig you'll need some skills first you'll need to design your own rig prep your pieces by measuring and cutting and finally assemble them without messing anything up this includes keeping everything square and level drilling pilot holes and screwing pieces together without stripping the holes or splitting the wood you might make a mistake during cutting or assembly I need to remake a piece this could cost you another drive to the store adding time and expense to the project but I don't want to scare anyone off from trying this even if your cockpit isn't perfectly Square this is a low stakes project and not much will go wrong if you're slightly off for example looking at my sim rig from behind you can actually see the seat doesn't face perfectly straight it's off by a degree or two but I don't notice it at all when I'm actually driving it's worth mentioning though that if you do too rough of a job your rig might not be as rigid which we'll cover when talking about the performance of DIY Sim cockpits another Nuance for assembly unlike a pre-built rig you'll have to come up with a mounting solution for every single accessory you have but on the bright side it's really fun to know your sim rig is custom built to your size and your Hardware which leads us on to what I'm calling flexibility both adjustability and how well your rig moves from room to room or breaks down if you move to a new house or apartment on the plus side DIY builds especially those from wood and PVC tend to come out lighter and easier to move than most pre-made options which tend to be steel or aluminum if your DIY rig is metal this will probably be a wash you can help either Case by installing casters to your rig so it's easier to move when required Beyond this we begin to get into the limitations of home brew Sim cockpits we've already touched on needing a mounting solution for all your current Hardware but something unexpected that I've learned from 5 years of driving on my setup you may have to rebuild mounting points every time something changes too now this sounds obvious and assuming you already had the main accessories like a shifter and handbrake when you built your rig you might think to yourself like I did that you simply hold won't make any changes but in my experience it's not that simple something will break or you'll discover a new piece of gear that you just got to have and all of a sudden you'll find yourself staring at your rig and getting ready to pull out the drills and saws again and you might find that your roommates don't appreciate you making clouds of sawdust in your sim room this has happened on my rig in two specific ways first of all my e braake broke twice so I bought a better one that won't have that problem but I found the wooden shelf I had made for my old handbrake was now too short so I had to remove it and move it forward about a foot and then drill new mounting holes to position the handbrake correctly a few years later my fanatic wheelbase which I bought used bit the dust no worries I thought I was wanting to upgrade eventually so I did and I got this awesome 20 newm direct drive wheel from vrs I realized I'd need to drill new holes in my wheel deck to bolt it down but one thing I didn't expect was that the dimensions of the new wheelbase might be so different and that its mounts might be in different spots that limited my ability to position it well it drives tolerably but it's not as good of a fit as the wheelbase that I designed the whole cockpit around if it were easy to reposition the wheel I would absolutely make changes unfortunately since I'd have to cut and install a new upright and wheel deck in order to do that I've been living with it for over a year now and this is the double-edged sword of DIY Sim cockpits it's really fun to customize your build so that it perfectly suits your height and the hardware you're using today day until something changes compare this to off-the-shelf sim cockpits these tend to have multiple mounting positions or rails which give you somewhere between several and nearly infinite options for all of your Hardware so anytime something changes including your preferences it takes just a few minutes to adjust your setup this is a win for metal cockpits next we have taking the chassis apart to move between homes DIY cockpits built from PVC and wood like mine generally don't go back together as strong as they used to be so I try to keep disassembly to a minimum this is another area where you might think I'm not planning to move so this doesn't matter but life has a way of throwing you a curveball right after you say that though on the bright side if you had the tools and skills to go DIY before building a whole new rig in your new location would be just as cheap and even faster than your first build that's what i' do if I had to move finally we have the most important long-term Factor performance this is what it's all for after all and perhaps the most contentious aspect of DIY rigs first we have to acknowledge that some people are better Craftsman than others and a sloppy home brew attempt will underperform compared to the work of someone with a little experience but let's set that aside and assume that you do a decent job will it perform I think my wood rig works well it easily handled my gear Drive Logitech and belt drive fanatic wheel keeping vibrations almost unnoticeable while I focused on the driving the same goes for my shifter handbrake pedals and seat nothing shifts or creaks while I drive my hardest I do think my 20 newm direct drive wheel from vrs has vibration at maximum power but most of the time I run it closer to 50% and there it doesn't feel much different than my belt drive wheel did the signal is just smoother and it never Clips factor in the cheap cost of a DIY solution compared to a metal rig that you can buy and it's easy to argue that building your own Sim cockpit like I did has a great cost to Performance ratio but if you compare raw alterate performance there's no doubt that a mid-tier or better aluminum profile rig will outperform a wood or PVC cockpit in terms of controlling vibration helping you get the most out of your sim hardware and especially the Wheel by funneling all of the force feedback straight to your fingertips and giving you the most information about the car's attitude and unlocking for those with the skill to use it the potential for more performance and faster lap times personally I think this feels a little like the the argument for 88k TVs over 4K or even 2K options these luxury items are factually better but can most people actually tell the difference I mean really a bonus unexpected area that surprised me after I built my wooden Sim rig was actually the visual presentation of course unpainted wood will look very caveman compared to a chassis you can buy so I painted mine black and I think it looks way better than plain wood but that only lasted for a couple weeks you see one evening I saw the my simulator was looking a little Dusty and I wanted to clean it up so I grabbed a cloth and went over the monitor's wheel and shifter with care then I tried to dust the wooden chassis itself that was the day I realized that unless I'd spent way more money on wood with a much better finish or I'd spent way more time sanding the surface smooth during assembly I wasn't going to be able to dust my rig very well the construction Lumber that helps make most DIY rigs so cheap is quite rough and instead of the cloth picking dust particles off of the wood the wood with Splinter or Worse pick little particles off of the cloth even with a rougher or cheaper dusting option it's just not a good experience trying to clean this thing this is one of those things that might seem small or insignificant to some but it could be a massive irritation and drawback to others personally I've tried to find a middle ground to keep my rig looking decent but I have to say when I eventually upgrade to an aluminum profile rig I am looking forward to how much easier it'll be to keep it looking pristine this is another plus although a small one in favor of buying a metal rig we're about ready for me to hand over the plans to my personal Sim rig but there's one final question we need to answer the question that took us down this path in the end is building a DIY Sim cockpit worth it here's what I think personally unless you extremely limited on space in your current home I would advise you to skip the cheapest products like wheelstands and budget tier metal Sim rigs I really do think you can get better performance for at least half the cost by building your own wood rig as especially if you have the tools and you're comfortable using them yes DIY builds have their drawbacks but for most people in most situations you're going to be using the initial Hardware you buy for at least four or 5 years and at that point I'd say you've easily gotten your money's worth out of a DIY setup if by then you want to upgrade to an aluminum profile rig you'll know you're into SIM Racing for life and you can drop5 or $600 on a forever cockpit with confidence that you're making a good investment in your future if this sounds like you I think you should build first who do I think Should Skip DIY and go straight to buying a rig for starters people whose most limited resource is time rather than money if you're in that situation you should at least check what's on the market because part of the extra cost premium is paying for something that's well thought out and just works which for a lot of people is well worth it second if you're a content creator like me who's earning revenue and you can make your driving simulator a business expense it'll probably pay for itself in time you might as well and third if you're the type of person who just appreciates premium products and experiences I say go for it for most people simulators are the only opportunity they'll ever have to experience the world of Motorsports and performance driving firsthand so if your budget can absorb the cost of a medium to top tier Sim rig by all means treat yourself to something top shelf the only bad decision is not getting into driving simulators at all they're a blast you can learn a lot and you can make friends all over the world so have I convinced you that building a DIY rig is the best way to begin your journey into driving simulators if I have there's only one thing that you need and that's plans so that you can get to work and if you want to use mine you're welcome to them just use the link on screen or down in the description below enter your information in and I'll email them right over to you I hope that helps you out I hope you enjoyed the video and I hope I'll see you later here on YouTube or at a real life drifting event peace

Channel: Kame Trick

Views: 215,129

Keywords: diy driving simulator, diy wood driving sim, how to build a driving simulator, how to build a diy driving sim, sim drifting, assetto corsa sim drifting, how to build a drift simulator, how to build a drift sim, how to drift a car, motorsports driving instruction, diy furniture projects, power tools

Id: nRhL8hl7AJ0

Length: 14min 54sec (894 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 17 2024