Points taken, Lupus. I am on the same boat, I don't have a separate PC for other games. However, I'm building my pit for a better simming experience and thus the "desktop projects" and other non-sim games may suffer. I am thinking about making a over-the-lap keyboard and mouse tray that I can remove.

Anyway, regarding the steering wheel, it would all depend on how the G27 clamps on, how much clearance it needs, etc., but I would not recommend you use the keyboard tray for the same reasons of stability. I prefer to do my own wiggling, not my desk/surface mount. Also might want to make an angled assembly to mount your pedals at an angle, much more comfortable to drive that way.

I have toyed with the idea of a pivoting pedal mount for my driving gear and flight pedals but instead of doing that I have decided to sell off my driving gear.

I also thought about that, some kind of Lazy Susan setup. I even thought about incorporating stops so it won't spin more than 180* to keep the cables from getting twisted, and with some sort of cabled pin latch to lock them into place so it won't spin when I'm using them. Just not sure it would all fit under my desk. My CH pedals are about 14" long, the G27's according to my research are 17", so the whole assembly would need to be about 32" in diameter. I originally planned on mounting them on a sled, as shown in the first drawing, and then sliding the right set of pedals in front of me for whatever I'm currently doing. I still think this may be the way to go. That would only need about 24" of width and about 12" of travel on either side, so a total of 36" under the desk from one side to the other. This would also allow me to mount the pedals differently for the best fit for each, so If I decided to go with an inverted 'rally style' pedal mount for the G27's and mount the CH's on a wedge for an incline, I still could.

After much consideration I'm looking at modifying and ABC to see if I can get that to fit my needs. Think I may buy an old car seat to use instead of the two boards and foam that the default uses, although from what I've read its actually fairly comfortable. I don't know though, we'll see.

Instead of the pivoting lazy susan idea you could do the sliding sideways mount...unless that is what you are talking about above. It would allow you to keep the cables separated and allow you to do a nice easy setup for driving or playing. Also you could attach a pull and open latch to it and mount the thing on drawer rails for cabinets and keep the cost nice and low.

Yeah, thats what I was talking about, but I hadn't thought of mounting it on drawer runners to make the slide easy and the pin latch idea. That sounds great. I think I'll go with that. I've already looked to widen the ABC desk to 47" to accommodate the sliding part. I"m currently trying to work out the additional support needed. I think I may use 2 1" steel pipe run under the middle to provide cross support, similar to the pipe your supposed to use to support the seat.

Ok, after spending the day working on modifying the ABC, I decided to throw that out the window and go 'Whole Hog' on this project.

I'm greatly inspired by this simpit:


Thank you very much Dudley for sharing your creation with the world.


And so I have come up with this so far:



My next step is to begin collecting lots of cardboard so I can make a mockup of the basic shape and make sure I get the ergonomics right.

Re: the ergonomics... good idea. The last thing you want is to do all the work and for it not to fit you.

You do know that that pit is about 10X or so out of your budget, right?

I"m not planning on doing all the electronics and panels, at least not initially, although I do plan on allowing for that expansion later. I'm laying out the plywood requirements now to see how much plywood I'm actually going to need. We'll see how it prices out.

The seat I"m planning on using is actually going to be a car seat I pick up from the junkyard. I'm not going with an AcesII. I just used that model for size reference.

Ok, laid out the plywood and I should be able to build it out of 4, maybey 5 sheets of plywood and a few 2x4's. Depends on how I lay out the base on the plywood as to whether or not I'll be able to get it out of 4 or have to use 5 sheets. I should be able to build the wood structure for about $150. Then of course there are the latches, hinges etc. before paint, I"m looking at about $175.00 probably.

Estimated cost of primer and paint will probably run about $80 (if I use spray paint). Would probably be cheaper to use bucket paint, and I have a buddy that paints for a living so I may be able to get it painted cheaper. We'll see.

A little more than I really wanted to spend, but with the modified ABC I laid out, it would have required 4 sheets of plywood as well, so It's not significantly more expensive, and I will be much happier with it in the end I think.