The brand new Fanatec ClubSport Wheel and Version 2 Pedals are reviewed by Community Test Reviewer Conny "F19_CoNa" Naslund and SimHQ Motorsports Editor Darren Blythe.

http://www.simhqmotorsports.com/articles/motorsports_190a.html

Great...Was waiting for this review, happy with my GT2, but looking at the CSP v2... Thanks.

Thanks guys for the super work in methodically going through all of the various areas of interest. Fantastic work. We are in your debt and quite a bit jealous too.

The coolness factor of the wheel that was shown off when the BMW car-to-simpit transfer video came out has had me lusting for this wheel ever since. I may not be able to resist the damage to my bank account (I am soooo weak when it comes to new sim toys).

I hope you don't mind if I ask for a bit of clarification of one aspect of Darren's reports. In several instances he uses the word saturation in describing the FFB forces. An example from the FFB section is:

"The addition of the extra ‘Force’ parameter to the tuning menu allows extra saturation separate from overall strength which i found extremely helpful."

Could you help me understand what you are getting at here? In my experience, once something is saturated (receiver front ends, dish rags, etc.) you can't change its state by increasing the input (more signal, more water, etc.).

Dave Bradley

Hi Dave,

Good question. With hindsight i should have been a little clearer about that. The wheel has two 'overall strength' force feedback parameters. The first is FF (Force Feedback) which is the one that's always been present on Fanatec wheels and controls the overall feedback strength in it's entirety. The new one is the FOR (forces) parameter which controls forces apart from damper or centring (That's the official description from Fanatec). In practice I found using this allowed me to find a better balance between all the effects much more quickly and to a more precise amount than tweaking stuff individually or upping the overall FF.

Magnum, if you don't already own a set of V1 Clubsport Pedals then getting the V2's is a no brainer. While the wheel is somewhat of a slightly flawed masterpiece (although Fanatec are working hard to iron out the wrinkles), the V2's are simply beautiful.

While i'm here, i'd also like to add that the last build of rF2 (90) works much better with the latest firmware/drivers than the combination i had during testing. I've since managed to get rF2 working just as good, if not better than most other titles.

Outstanding. I've read several reviews by now and while there are a few really good ones out there, yours is the most professional and well-rounded one. Kudos.

For now I got two questions remaining. When writing "The previous CSR Elite wheel has been somewhat criticized for being plastic, flexible and rough around the edges. However, the benefits of that design would be the weight of it. The less weight the rim has, the easier it will be for the motors to rotate quickly.

CSR owners will be happy knowing Fanatec has advised that they will release some rims for their wheel too… without quick release of course.", Conny means the CSR Elite, not the normal CSR? If so, using the full CSR Elite name twice might help prevent confusion.

Second issue. While I am aware that multiple aspects including a bit of randomness factor in when running timed laps, a very rough comparison how the new gear tends to influence lap times would be great. Thank you.

Thank you, guys! Great job!

You have saved me lots of frustration from buying the GT rim as it's clearly not for me due to distance from rim to shift paddles.

Will wait to see how F1 style rim is conctructed before further decisions whether to break my piggy bank for that wheel.

Yes, you are quite right.It's the CSR Elite of course.

Regarding the laptimes, It's extremely hard to say .3 or .5 of a second as it depends on the lenght of a circuit.
But I can tell you that with iRacing I have lowered my personal best times on most tracks with between 0.3 and over a full second after I got this wheel.
As I have written in the review, the main thing is really how I now can constantly keep good laptimes.
With the GT3rs I could put one really fast lap of 100, then 10 that was good and then the rest was "less good"
With this wheel I put 10 as fast laps, if not faster, and 80 are good.
That's where you win the races.

The full production wheels have fixed this issue as the reason why we cannot adjust the GT paddles was that it hits the PCB
when we have decreased the travel of it.

List of improvements made in the manufacturing process

Quite a few changes have been made since the first community test Clubsport Wheels were produced this is a list of all the improvements that will be a part of the final production wheels:

• Depth of holes on the base-side of the quick-release has been reduced. This eliminates any play on the quick-release mechanism because metal balls now have less play.
• Dimensions of the base-side part of the quick-release have been slightly reduced to make the rims slide on and off more eaisly.
• Layout of the PCBA inside the BMW M3 GT2 rim has been changed so that paddle shifter does not hit one of the elements if moved closer to the rim.
• A shorter cable is now being used to connect quick release pins to the main PCBA inside the CSW base. This solves the issue where the same cable would rub against the main PCBA and produce unwanted noises.
• A fixture has been added in production to eliminate any BMW badge alignment issues on the BMW M3 GT2 rim.
• Springs and switches inside paddle shifter mechanisms have been changed for higher reliability.
• Metal screw inserts are now used for shifter paddle attachment - increased reliability.
• Grease is now used for lubrication of paddle shifter mechanisms instead of oil. This prevents potential problems with squeaking.
• Belt drive is now better aligned and with optimized inner friction of the drive system.
• Sequence of LED shift ligths on the BMW M3 GT2 rim has been changed to: YYY-RRR-BBB
• Brightness of LED shift lights has been increased on both rims.
• Type of Loctite on several screws has changed for easier disassembly.
• Position sensor mount has been changed for better stability.
• Due to problems with leaking, different bottles are now used for CSP V2 damper oil.

excellent review! thanks for your time, guys!

OT but whos setup is that on the front page... article introduction? I'd like to know more about the tac and gear indicator devices? What are they? how they work? USB? how they work with games/sims?

Lol, it's Darren.
He uses Symprojects revburner, SPI-D and GI Pro.
www.symprojects.com

I have their GI Max and it's really good.
All of theses are USB connected.

Works on many sims/ games. The list is growing as they update the drivers.

Thanks for the info, very appreciated.

Conny's almost right. I use the Revburner, SPI-D, GI-Max and SimScreen. The simscreen is user configurable. (i normally use it to show lap-number, position, time and fuel level) I also have a retina burning shiflight that i wired into the SPI-D. Software is updated regularly and works with many titles, GTR2, rF1/2, iRacing, NFS, Dirt, CodiesF1, RBR, GSC etc, etc. Here's how it looks in my setup:




Here's a quick vid. The Tach isn't 100% accurate as i didn't calibrate it for the mod.

Personally I didn't notice much improvement in laptimes but this wheel does give you the confidence to push harder so at first i actually found myself making more mistakes as you redefine your limits. Once you get used to it, the car goes exactly where you point it and it eliminates all those psudo-random errors leading to better consistency. Of course, now there's no excuse for driver error

Great job on the review guys, I think there is a CSPv2 set in my future.

I am sold!
After reading and watching the reviews I plan to preorder a CSW and Formula rim on Thursday (maybe a CSPv2, too) depending on the wait time for delivery! If the wait is too long then I will likely hold off and order in early 2013.

For those with the CSR-Elite, the formula rim will de released soon.
http://www.911wheel.de/?q=node/8672
http://f-wheel.com/news/csr-elite-wheel-formula-rim-introduced

Thanks Darren and Conny for your excelent review! Great job, you guys are at the right place ;o)
Just a little note: Latest production of SCP(v1) having the same cable management and covers too.
I bought CSP back at January this year and PCB cover / sensor covers are there, but it's really a minor detail. I'm sure when someone wants to buy CSP then he jumps straight for v2 anyway, mainly for the clutch and better breaking smoothness ;o)
PS: LoadCell was a big improvement for me and I started to be more confident with breaking, but the truth is that I had plastic pedals before (DFP) so enthusiasm was logicaly much higher from Load cell breaking :o)
For all the owners of theese great new stuffs I wish a lot of fun and great racing and don't forget to clean and lubricate your peals time to time, keep all screws tight, but not too much, so you will not damage PCB with too much tightness ;o)