Fix Thrustmaster Pedal Deadzone

[Pedro Gomes]

Hi I own a Thrustmaster T300 and I had deadzone on my pedals, as apparently so many others do in their TX and other wheels that come with these plastic pedals.

Please remember that opening something that is under warraty will void it, although there are no warranty stickers in these pedals.

I'm going to put some instructions on how to fix or improve this issue.

The 1st thing you will need is patience as this is not likely to take less than 1 hour. Be aware that getting everything back together and testing is a pain so, again, you'll need patience and some basic DIY skills.

Instructions:

1- Unscrew all the screws in the base.
2- Unscrew and remove the plates in the pedals
3- Carefully open the pedal base (It might be a good idea to also remove the brake's srping and keep it somewhere safe wrapped in paper)
4- Find the potentiometers/ sensors that are close to the base of the pedals
5- Take note of where the first tooth of the pedal's cog slots into the potentiometer's/sensor cog slot. This is crucial as if you do something wrong you can put everything back the way it was.

Click to zoom.

This is when the tuning comes into play, the potentiometer only starts to read movement after a certain position so you need to get as close as possible to that zone.

From the 2 pedals sets I fixed I found that making the 1st tooth of the pedal slot into the 4th slot between the teeth of the potentiometer usually worked the best. It might not be so in your particular case you'll need to find the ideal slot for each potentiometer.

You'll need to try and see where it works best for your pedal, slot it into a hole further down, reasemble the pedals, plug the the wheel in and open the Thrustmaster software, test the pedals at their full lenght to see how it's working, if you still have deadzone desasemble everything and try the slot further down in the potentiometer.

If when the pedal is at it's resting point and the software already shows the pedal bar has input then you'll need to go to the upper slot in the potentiometer.

It's unlikely you'll get rid of the deadzone entirely, all depends on the potentiometer you got.

If you get stuck with some weird calibration the only thing that I found out that reseted the pedal was to rotate the potentiometer to a new starting slot.

When reasembling the pedals the spring will be slightly out of place, you'll need to slide it into position with your finger during the process.

 

[jasoncrispe]

Hi, below is a thread I've just posted before seeing yours, just wondering if you're able to offer any help? I've tried fiddling with the cogs as you've suggested in your thread but doesn't seem to help. Any ideas? Thanks


I've recently acquired a Thrustmaster T100 wheel for the PS4. I bought it as spares and repairs, the seller advised that it powered on and the wheel worked but there was a problem with the pedals. He hadn't opened the unit up or anything though so I figured I'd take a chance.

Anyway, I've been using Project Cars to test it. The steering and FFB works fine and initially the accel and brake worked fine, RESULT I thought! But then the 2nd time I went to use it, they didn't work. The brake worked fine but the accel didn't.

I went into settings to calibrate the pedals and no response from the accelerator so I opened the unit up. I tested the pedals with the cover off and this is the strange thing, they work absolutely fine. I fiddled with the potentiometers and they both work fine too. It looked like perhaps the case was pushing the contacts on the potentiometers when closed so I cut some of the case off (on the inside).

Now this is where I'm stumped. Whenever I put the case back on, as soon as I depress the pedals slightly (which you have to do to get the case back on) they engage the L2 and R2 buttons (on project cars in the calibration screen the "calibrate ffb" and "calibrate pedals" buttons both become highlighted). When the case is then screwed back on, the accelerator doesn't work anymore and I'm back to where I started.

I really don't know what to do, obviously I know the warranty is void but it just feels like it's something that can be fixed, I just don't know how.

Any ideas or advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Jay

 

[Pedro Gomes]

Well looks like there's a mixed signal going from the pedal from you described but I never experienced, if it's doing that in all games it will need to go to warranty.

Appart from that, you have to try and shutting down the wheel, disconnecting it with the pedals open, then pluging everything back, test to see if the working range is good, put the case back on and test again. I had to do it 10+ times, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

It's highly dependable on the cog's starting position.

"If you get stuck with some weird calibration the only thing that I found out that reseted the pedal was to rotate the potentiometer to a new starting slot."

This was a 1h30 job for me and I didn't have that issue you mentioned... so good luck.

 

[Rixracer]

I found success! I opened up the cover on my T500RS pedals, which had a 30% dead zone. I tried changing the gear tooth as described above, but they were still either too much or a minor dead zone. So I loosened the potentiometer's locking nut and, while plugged in and viewing the Game Controller properties, gently turned the pot until it was right at the edge of engagement. I gently held the pot in place with a pipe wrench while tightening the 10 mm locking nut. Add some locktite. Success! Let's see how long I'm content...