My journey started with a T300 and the basic 2 pedal set, I wasn't sure if the racing bug would really kick in so I wasn't willing to invest all too much early on and ever since I have been chasing my tail in the Thrustmaster ecosystem. The dual pedals it came with sucked and I very quickly ended up getting T3PA Pros to replace them.
T3PA Pros
I bought a set of T3PA Pros and they were a decent improvement. The brake was still positional but the conical brake in the box was OK if a bit stiff. I found the BJS Conical mod about 18 months ago and the green rubber was actually quite a good feeling with a gamma of 1.4. I drove like that for nearly a year and I got a lot better. I had managed to dial in a mostly linear feel but I had two problems at each end. At the top end of braking, there were too few values to give smooth adjustments and secondly, I couldn't really feel where 10% was so coming off trailing was a bit hard. I figured I would work it out in the end but I never got the hang of it consistently.
6 months ago I got an SRS (https://www.simracingsolutions.co.uk/) loadcell mod. Unlike the Ricomotech one, this pushes directly horizontally into the loadcell via rubber grommet. It is really solid, the pedal barely moves with this installed. It's not configurable either, so all you can really do is increase the minimum and decrease the maximum in-game to dial it in. Supposedly it has a 20KG loadcell in it, I was mostly using it at 45% in AC. This took my braking up a notch and made trailing easier, but I couldn't really come off the brake smoothly and slowly, the lack of movement was a bit of an issue. Hitting the points (100, 80, 20) was all fine but if I came off the brake and then wanted a blip of it the minimum was about 10%. There was too much pressure to get things going at all, it felt like 50% to get the first 10% and then linear upwards to 100% and that was the biggest problem. I wanted the trail to be half the pressure I was using at least it was far too heavy from the outset. They did offer to ship me a 10KG loadcell and that might have helped but I think the problem was more inherent to the design than the sensor.
T-LCMs
Enter the Thrustmaster T-LCM pedals. The moment I saw reviews I figured the setup application combined with the configurable springs was likely going to be what I was looking for. I had a loadcell already and it had improved my driving but it wasn't easy to learn to use and I didn't like the pedal feel at all. I got them out of the box 3 hours ago (after leaving them for a week to de virus!).
I tried the initial medium brake setting, found about 60% brake pressure was similar, removed most of the minimum force and went for a drive. I drove the same car/track/grip I drove in an endurance race a few days ago so it was fresh in my mind for comparison. I dropped 1.5seconds at best, but more importantly I had a lap to lap variance of 0.2-0.3s. I managed maybe 0.6s with occasional bad laps with the SRS Loadcell, these things instantly fixed my inconsistency problem. Its one thing to eventually find the pedals help, but to instantly just find them amazing I was not expecting that. The confidence I have with these brakes within minutes of getting them out of the box is incredible.
The initial setup they have too much travel for my taste and I think I want to remove the preload motion, go a bit stiffer and get the throttle further away so I can heel-toe blip easier. But already I can see coming off smoothly is easy, hitting the key points for threshold was easy to learn and trailing was not a problem at all. I am impressed, as a combination its cheaper than the T3PA Pros and the Fanatec loadcell set which I nearly bought until these were announced. It is clearly better in every way than the SRS loadcell. Loadcells are not all equal and having that movement in the pedal helps with consistency just as the loadcell helps the muscle memory, I need both to race well apparently. My pedals were definitely limiting me and Thrustmaster has done a good job with these, hall sensors on the throttle and clutch and that smooth loadcell.
About the only thing that has irritated me is the need to unplug the USB for the pedals if you change a setting, but it's going to be an initial annoyance that disappears once I am done with the setup process.
T3PA Pros
I bought a set of T3PA Pros and they were a decent improvement. The brake was still positional but the conical brake in the box was OK if a bit stiff. I found the BJS Conical mod about 18 months ago and the green rubber was actually quite a good feeling with a gamma of 1.4. I drove like that for nearly a year and I got a lot better. I had managed to dial in a mostly linear feel but I had two problems at each end. At the top end of braking, there were too few values to give smooth adjustments and secondly, I couldn't really feel where 10% was so coming off trailing was a bit hard. I figured I would work it out in the end but I never got the hang of it consistently.
6 months ago I got an SRS (https://www.simracingsolutions.co.uk/) loadcell mod. Unlike the Ricomotech one, this pushes directly horizontally into the loadcell via rubber grommet. It is really solid, the pedal barely moves with this installed. It's not configurable either, so all you can really do is increase the minimum and decrease the maximum in-game to dial it in. Supposedly it has a 20KG loadcell in it, I was mostly using it at 45% in AC. This took my braking up a notch and made trailing easier, but I couldn't really come off the brake smoothly and slowly, the lack of movement was a bit of an issue. Hitting the points (100, 80, 20) was all fine but if I came off the brake and then wanted a blip of it the minimum was about 10%. There was too much pressure to get things going at all, it felt like 50% to get the first 10% and then linear upwards to 100% and that was the biggest problem. I wanted the trail to be half the pressure I was using at least it was far too heavy from the outset. They did offer to ship me a 10KG loadcell and that might have helped but I think the problem was more inherent to the design than the sensor.
T-LCMs
Enter the Thrustmaster T-LCM pedals. The moment I saw reviews I figured the setup application combined with the configurable springs was likely going to be what I was looking for. I had a loadcell already and it had improved my driving but it wasn't easy to learn to use and I didn't like the pedal feel at all. I got them out of the box 3 hours ago (after leaving them for a week to de virus!).
I tried the initial medium brake setting, found about 60% brake pressure was similar, removed most of the minimum force and went for a drive. I drove the same car/track/grip I drove in an endurance race a few days ago so it was fresh in my mind for comparison. I dropped 1.5seconds at best, but more importantly I had a lap to lap variance of 0.2-0.3s. I managed maybe 0.6s with occasional bad laps with the SRS Loadcell, these things instantly fixed my inconsistency problem. Its one thing to eventually find the pedals help, but to instantly just find them amazing I was not expecting that. The confidence I have with these brakes within minutes of getting them out of the box is incredible.
The initial setup they have too much travel for my taste and I think I want to remove the preload motion, go a bit stiffer and get the throttle further away so I can heel-toe blip easier. But already I can see coming off smoothly is easy, hitting the key points for threshold was easy to learn and trailing was not a problem at all. I am impressed, as a combination its cheaper than the T3PA Pros and the Fanatec loadcell set which I nearly bought until these were announced. It is clearly better in every way than the SRS loadcell. Loadcells are not all equal and having that movement in the pedal helps with consistency just as the loadcell helps the muscle memory, I need both to race well apparently. My pedals were definitely limiting me and Thrustmaster has done a good job with these, hall sensors on the throttle and clutch and that smooth loadcell.
About the only thing that has irritated me is the need to unplug the USB for the pedals if you change a setting, but it's going to be an initial annoyance that disappears once I am done with the setup process.
