My first impressions of the Fanatec Clubsport BMW GT3 Wheel, Base, and V2 Pedals.

good question. If the G27 is 200 euro and you buy fanatec gear for 1000 euro you will be 800 euro FASTER! haha (joke). From what I have seen from various drivers if you are not an "alien" getting the best simgear in the world will not make you an alien. One of the top drivers in iRacing recently sold his fanatec gear and iibc went back to the logitech dfgt wheel and he keeps winning races. If you are fast, you will be fast on any decent gear.

I did get faster in my laptimes, but nothing worth mentioning. What the fanatec gear gave me was more game immersion and driving consistency. After a few days with the fanatec gear is that in a few days I noticed my lap times were very consistent. I did one test to make sure it was real. Over 10 laps with the G27 I think my laptimes were about 0.7 second spread. I did the same thing with the fanatec gear a week later and my laptimes were withing 0.2s over 15 laps (same car, same track). A big part of it goes to the cspv2 pedals. With the loadcell technology I was able to brake later, harder, and consistently lap after lap after lap.

 

Thanks for the info, it's like I thought, better feel and thus consistency, but not really 4x times faster to justify the huge price difference most likely.
But like I said before the biggest deal breaker for me is reliability, for that expensive price tag, which is lacking. I would have looked better in my eyes even with this price tag if it had at least as good reliability, but preferably better than Logitech. Instead it's the opposite, it's worse, so nah I'll say pass.

 

Yeah not to buy if you think it will make you go faster although for me I clearly have better car control but adding to lap time speed? Dunno, just less crashes haha. The actual experience I have while racing, the fun if you will has gone right up. 4x better? Totally subjective but I am very happy with my experience so far, very happy.

I bought mine because I want the most realistic experience I can afford (planning on Oculus Rift and maybe motion platform eventually). As for reliability that is yet to be seen but if you want to put things in a little perspective google "Logitech g 27 problems". A real eye opener. Personally I have never had a problem with mine but goes to show all gear can be lemons, doesn't matter how much you pay for it and generally you don't hear too much from people whose gear is going well. Only time will tell from my perspective.

 

ffs ... still no news... no MP today then......

 

@Shrubbo: Well to be honest if my budged wouldn't be limited I would buy the most ridiculous sim racing gear probably, much more expensive than you gear. But I'm talking from a maximum 500 euros budget's perspective, so yeah that's why I'm saying what I'm saying, I have to be very careful with what I choose. I do get you point though. So good luck and enjoy your new toys.

 

ffs you can't even cry in the right thread

 

That's got nothing to do with this thread ...

 

@PAKFA There is no gear that is going to make you magically faster....better pedals will help with consistency, a better wheel might allow you to catch some drifts you otherwise wouldn't, but none of it is going to make you faster, sad to say.

 

yup, you upgrade for immersion not getting faster
although I often heared that a good set of pedals help a bit

and fanatec is not just the wheel that's unreliable , also pedals, shifters...

and every brand has some lemons between their good peripherals
but it seems more like fanatec has some good peripherals between their lemons
real sad but for that amountof money it may not break that easy

 

I've had much of Fanatec hardware but never had issues with any other hardware than CSW wheelbase.

 

I heared a lot bout a problem with the css shifter not registering every gear
it's not all bad with fanatec
my former teammate f.e. swore by CSP's (and I do believe they are good certainly for that price)
he never had problems with them either
but in general I think quality control is Fanatec's weakest link in the chain by far
for the rest:
the gear looks good, I mean awesome
it must be driving really good, augmenting the immersion a lot
and the price is reasonable for such pieces of equipment

 

Can someone tell me, preferably from own experience, if the reliability of Thrustmaster T500RS is comparable to Logitech G27?
Because if it is I may be inclined to pay more and get the T500RS, because as far as I know and understand it's the middle ground between G27 and Fanatec 1.000 euro set, right? Middle ground in terms of performance and feeling, I mean.

 

Prob. better go asking in the "THRUSTMASTER Wheels official thread" instead.

 

Yeah, but they gonna say go ask in Logitech thread too, so it won't be biased and they will all say, but we already answered this and so I'll have to read about 30 pages from each topic to find those answers.... grrr.

Anyway I'm not in a hurry to get the info, so I'll have time to gather more before I decided what and when to buy, but I ain't gonna read 60 pages that's for sure.

 

Hehe mate, they all seem to have their lemons so get what you can afford with the features you want. The g27 is great but obviously the T500 is a much better experience, then the Fanatec is better again and then you can keep adding money and get better and better. It all comes down to what you can afford.

Asking how reliable they are doesn't get you imformation you can actually use, well it does a bit but it doesn't. For example the only information that would be really useable is what percentage of said unit fails and no company is going to give you that. As I said before I thought the G27 was bullet proof and could never go wrong so if you asked me I would have told you that but if you google it you will find plenty of people that would completly disagree with me.

Personally I would go a minimum of the t500. The reason behind that is while the g27 is a great wheel (imo) what it doesn't do is spin fast enough to catch slides, you have to spin it yourself and that did not match the realism I wanted. That's how I looked at it.

 

I thinks it leans more towards the csw than a logitech
the overall feel of the csw should be more refined
they are both beltdriven but the t500 has one giant powerful motor
while the csw has two smaller motors

the g27 has cogs in it
you can feel and hear them while driving
belt driven systems should be smoother

 

It's absolutely pointless asking 1 or 2 people about reliability. Every product ever made has had lemon's, and on the internet you tend to hear much more from people having problems than the silent majority with no problems. I agree there is a perception that fanatec gear has some reliability issues but I suspect for every failure you hear about there are 20 people with no issues. I've owned fanatec gear for 2 years with no issues at all, yes there is a risk that it may fault , that's what warranties are for, but I find the fanatec gear very good and worth the price. The thrustmaster T500 costs just as much here and although I've heard good things about IMHO it doesn't compare to the CSW, plastic vs metal etc. Their Ferrari F1 wheel looks particularly nasty with half the button and dials just for show and non functional- that equal toy not sim gear to me.

 

i got mine csw set complete now too, i was upgrading from a csr elite base, i can clearly say that it's different base in some ways, more rotation speed and higher ffb power, smoother too...i think the extra feeling is given from a bmw rim that is an higher diameter rim compared to csr elite, material are top notch as everybody knows..very very happy to decide to sell the csr elite...formula rim is a bit too tiny for my taste compared to bmw rim but it's heavy i like it anyway! btw fanaleds it's a superb addon, know i really need a motion simulator , oculus dk 2 it's coming on and can't wait to get my hand on it...

 

Hey guys, just an update on how this setup is going seeing as I have reached a 100 hours of use.

In a word, superb.

These are some of the problems I have heard of.

FFB fade:
None that I can detect whatsoever. I run gain in game at 65% to limit the clipping. The wheel is set to 100% power tho it can go to 400% (crazy). I have all effects on and have recently started running Kerb, Road and Slip at 150%. They were at 100% and very very nice but I read Pakfa's review on his wheel and he mention having his set high so I ramped mine all up to 150% to see what it is like. Loved it and it put a much larger grin on my face so I left it there. The longest single session I can think of is 3+ hours straight, probably more.

Overheating:
Doesn't seem to be a problem at all. The fans have never run for more then a few minutes on high speed once I stop using the wheel and they don't seem to be very loud, at least what I consider loud at any rate. One thing to note is that I never turn it off before the fans slow down as I figure this would not do it any favors. It's only a couple of minutes wait as I said but I think this is time well spent.

Lose screws and nuts:
The only thing I have had come undone was the bolt that you can put in to lock the wheel in place. This bolt defeats the purpose of the quick release hub but seeing as I don't have any other wheels yet I saw no reason not to have it in there. I suspect it came out because I didn't tighten it properly in the first place as it has not moved since then. If it did come loose again I think I wouldn't bother putting it back in anyway. There seems to be no quality issues with the setup so why bother?

General Poor Quality:
In my case I can see nothing but top notch gear. It looks like it should for the price and it has so far performed as it should.

The only single negative I can think of for Fanatec is that I have had the sequential shifter on back order for over a month and it just got back ordered again until September..!! They did give me the option of 20% discount if I keep my order or a full cash refund. Going by the quality and the smile factor I have had with the BMW M3 Wheel, Clubsport Base and the V2 Pedals I took the option of the discount and the wait.

So there you go, I don't know what else to say and I am happy as a pig in mud. Extremely glad I chose this system as it is everything I expected and an absolute pleasure to drive with, I can't ask more then that so 2 thumbs up

 

I think I have to disagree with some of the statements here. Better equipment I believe can make you faster, if you can use the input you are getting back by the better gear and make use of it. As far as reliability I think it depends on the user... maybe it is not as much how reliable Fanatec gear is as much as how much abuse it can take. There is a difference between a piece of sophisticated highly engineered equipment and a hammer. I know that after letting some friends try my rig out that I was not in a hurry to allow them back on again.

I have owned Fanatec gear and still use the CSP's in combination now with the Thrustmaster TX, and have never had a problem with them. And I have had this gear for over 5 years now. I think if you use them as designed there are no issues.