Showroom Barry's Racing Sim - IT'S ALIVE (with motorcycle capability (sometime in the future))

Back in the 50's (I know I'm the ancient one) I suspended an old turntable with a small audio transformer (anything would do) attached to the platter to make it unbalanced. It worked like a charm, even had variable speeds 78 33 etc. Something you'd find in nearly every man cave or shed

Well I just ordered some bolt on adjustable feet for the base of the sim. Have to try and get it ready for powdercoating now. At least if I have the frame finished I can potter around with the electronics.

Base frame is now drilled and captive nuts are ready to be installed for the feet.

The frame is going off to get blasted and powder coated next week. I'm finally getting there with this build. I'm looking forward to getting it all put together when it comes back.

It's been a while but my frame finally got powdercoated and looks amazing. Time to start reconstruction. I only have one change to make and that's to get a larger U joint for under the seat. I've been very busy with my business and I've also been working on my arcade machine too so I'll post some pics of that.

This was a long time coming. Just a few wires to connect and it's time for testing.

Well, looks like I have a faulty JRK. NO power being sent to the traction loss motor. I've swapped a JRK and the motor is fine so it must be the controller. DAMN!!

Always a hurdle, just need to figure it out and get it fixed.

So aside from my faulty jrk everything else is wired and running.
Now... FANS. Would 2 x 80mm pc fans blowing air onto 3 jrks with small copper heatsinks be enough to keep them cool?

heatsinks dont need a Tonne of air flow per say....., as long as you have the air passing over the sinks, your good.

Do most people wire their fans direct to the PSUs powering the motors?
I just mounted 2 fans and realised one is way faster than the other. Lol

Back to my pc graveyard to see if i have another good one....

Looks like I need to rethink my fans. I think it'll mount them directly facing the JRKs. One of my controllers isn't getting enough airflow because of the way I mounted them in a staggered pattern. I didn't let them climb above 40 degrees before shutting them down. Last thing I need is another one failing. I also took out the busted JRK. I included a couple of pics. There's a bulge on the chip and some kind of de lamination on the bottom of the board. Some day soon I'll get this damn thing running.

IT'S ALIVE!!!!!

I mounted 3 x 50mm fans so one is facing each jrk about 2 inches away from the board.
Reset all the settings, reinstalled simtools because I had an error that wouldn't go away from the project cars plugin. I fired it up with Dirt 3 and experienced the sim running fully for the first time. It feels very smooth. Very happy that it's all running although I'm still concerned about the JRKs running pretty hot. I understand that this is normal for them to run pretty warm but i'm not sure how far i can push it at the minute.

I have a feeling I need better heatsinks and this might help with the issue.

Nice job

I seem to have a JRK issue.... again, or maybe a settings issue.

As the faulty JRK i had nearly broke my wrist the first time I set it up I was wary about doing it again but decided to give it a try today. I set up the normal settings to play project cars and dirt 3 and during play one of my JRKs started running very hot and flipped out so i had to hit the emergency shut off. This was after maybe only 5-10 minutes of the sim being on. I'm not sure if sim tools crashing caused the issue or one of the settings caused the JRK to go mental and then crashed simtools.

Not even sure where to start to diagnose it but i have my fans running cooling the controllers at the minute and i need to try again to check i haven't damaged something. Is there a process I can run though to test. I have a feeling that if I start the JRK utility that it doesn't close down properly and may be responsible for the overheating.

In my traction loss motor I have the lever disconnected and a piece of tape on to show movement but i'm not getting any feedback. Does anyone have advice for what way to set up the axis for traction loss in simtools game engine? I have project cars and dirt 3 on my machine. I assume they have traction loss somewhere in the plugin?

You cant run SimTools and the JRK utility at the same time, (at least with Simtools V2.5, 1.3 you used to be able to, but moot point)

Dirt aka Codemasters data is rather sketchy at times and yes if your tuning center isn't very well polished and you have aggressive setting's, i can see it contributing to a Drop out, be it Power side (PSU's) or USB Side due to signal noise. When you say "running very Hot and flipped out" What do you mean exactly ?

" I have a feeling that if I start the JRK utility that it doesn't close down properly and may be responsible for the overheating."

Care to clarify that ?


Traction loss is dependent on the plugin Yes (not all games support TL) your Traction loss Axis is Axis 3 in your Axis assignments, and is set to normally Extra 1 in the Tuning center. However again Some games vary for example Iracing is Extra 2.

ok, so when I say flipped out:

The motor lever dropped basically to a resting position (as if the motor power was cut off) out of it's normal range and basically just made a vibrating and clicking noise. I shut it down with the cut off switches within about 2 seconds. When I felt the heatsink on the related controller about 5 seconds later it was very hot.

And as far as the JRK utility goes.
Any time I start the computer, flick on sim tools and start playing normally it's perfectly fine. However, on the couple of occasions where i've had overheating problems the same as mentioned above, I have had the JRK utility running to set up the controllers initially, then closed it down, before switching on my simtools and playing. For some reason on these occasions I have JRK problems.

I would say balance is decent. Probably only a couple of KGs more on one side with the gear shifter. When the sim is at rest it does tilt forward but i would assume it's normal as the uni joint is around 2/3 forward on my seat base. My right hand motor got a little warm the last time the sim was on but not 'hot'. I would say luke warm.

Bare in mind I have had this sim running multiple times since I set it up. I've only had an issue yesterday after using the JRK utility to set up the 3rd traction loss JRK controller and then trying to play.

I'll check my game engine settings again. I'm about to test it now.

thats more than a few kg to one side and forward to overpower the motor's gear ratio (as weak as 25:1 are) when not powered. IMO you are Not balanced properly, Tho that technically shouldn't cause a motor to overheat per say.


The Vibrating and twitching you felt was 100% the motor being pushed out of range and then you maintaining said pressure on the motor causing it to cycle the max duty and eventually If not stopped Via Kill switch will kill the Connection due to Motor driven errors. Or will manage to work itself back into range, if you lift the pressure on the motor and allow a duty cycle pulse to jump it back into the window.


When its in this Recovery/ duty cycle mode, its got a fraction of the power to really move itself back into range (JRK doesn't know whats going on so its trying to fix the problem also while trying to protect itself) , so if your rig is poorly balanced, i could see it being hard to bias your body weight to alleviate that weight thats holding it out of range.