In the previous part, I restored the pedals. That turned out to be an absolute doddle compared to the dashboard and steering mechanism. Buckle up. This is a long one…
I disconnected the dash from the cabinet and put it on the workbench to take a closer look. As well as it being really dirty and greasy, it had a few problems…
The A gear on the right wasn’t too bad, it was just covered in grease. The blue B gear on the other hand had 2 teeth missing and was held together with a cable tie. The steering springs were also held on with cable ties…
The C gear was absolutely caked with grease and had 3 splits across it…
You can see the 3 splits clearer here. There’s also broken weld in the left corner of the stopper tray, so the tray was loose on that end…
The D gear attached to the pot had a small split just above the grub screw hole…
With the steering column and gears dismantled, I got a clear photo of all 4 gears. A and D were on their way out… B and C were completely knackered…
The steering springs had cable ties on them to help keep them attached at the ends where the metal posts had worn away on the arm plates…
I had 1 decent-ish arm plate, and one broken one. You can see that in the photo below – the one on the right is missing the top section….
The last remaining problem was a missing small metal rod that holds a small roller in the top metal section (I think it’s called the roller bracket). The two rollers seem to assist the smooth running of the metal frame on the wooden control panel unit when the shaker motor activates. I don’t think this will be a problem as the other roller is performing the role of both of them, and didn’t seem worn at all…
At this point I had everything taken apart and organised so I could remember what order to put things back. I used the helpful diagram from the Reassembler blog to assist me. The gear shifter and pedal assembly were nothing compared to this…
I didn’t have the use of my friend’s ultrasonic cleaner this time, so I used Autoglym Engine Cleaner, rust remover, toothbrushes and a heavy dose of elbow grease to clean all the metalwork…
Here’s another shot of the roller bracket where the missing rod is. Here’s before it was cleaned…
And here’s after the cleaning…
And here’s a before and after of the shaker motor. That came up really nice…
I needed to sort the broken arm plate. Luckily a nice ukvaccer from New Zealand offered to send me a bunch of spare parts he had for free (thanks Michael). This was a saviour as it contained 2 non-broken arm-plates. He also helpfully sent me some more green cable-ties. 😉
So now I had 2 working arm plates… but there was a problem: The bit where the springs attach was worn away on both of them, so much so, that the springs were not attaching well enough and were loose and prone to falling off (hence the cable ties)…
Time to call on my friend Ed with his tig welder! We welded the spring-retaining post on both arm plates so that they wouldn’t fall off…
Here’s how they turned out after using an angle grinder to cut new grooves where the ends of the springs slot into…
I had everything ready now to rebuild the steering. For the A and B gears, I got a mild steel reproduction gear set from giz10p. These are super quality and will probably outlast the cab! For the C and D gears, I found some replacement 3D printed ABS plastic ones on ebay. They’re not metal, but I’d been told the A and B gears are the usual ones to break…
The original springs were ok, but a little bent. I got some reproduction ones from ArcadeFixit. These are the same tension as the originals…
Time to put it all back together. First, the main steering column with the new metal A and B gears and the welded fixed up arm plates…
Then the new C and D gears and the shaker motor back on…
Moving on to the rest of the control panel, the front of the wooden frame was disgusting…
But not for long…
The back of the plastic dash and the plastic instrument panel were equally as disgusting…
The front of the plastic dash was actually pretty clean, apart from around the steering wheel and shifter plate…
They also cleaned up quite nicely…
And the small cracks and scratches around where the shifter sits are hardly noticable with the new shifter in place. I decided to leave the cracked/missing piece of dash around the right mounting bolt hole. All in all this dash was in great condition, and it was original. It is very thin plastic and I didn’t want to tempt fate by trying to repair it and making it worse. I didn’t want to get a repro dash and when you’re playing the game you hardly notice it anyway (half of the damaged area will be covered up by a black washer anyhow)…
I added grease to the gears, put the dash plastics back on, bolted it all together and went through the testing menu to set the correct steering value for the pot that’s connected to the D gear. Then I went for a test drive, and it was spot on! The steering centered beautifully and everything was really smooth and perfectly calibrated. Very happy!
Phew… that was a long one, but a lot was accomplished! Shifter, pedals, and now the steering was sorted. Time to move onto the cabinet itself. Feels like I can see light at the end of the tunnel now. See you in the next part.
