Optimizing Your Logitech G27

Even though I am racing on Fanatec Steering Wheel and ClubSport Pedals, I still adhere to Logitech’s lineup. Having raced the Logitech G27 for several years, I know some of its weak points and how to solve for them.

Do you still employ a G27? Here are some optimization and modding hacks!

WARNING: Most of what follows will terminate warranty. You are solely responsible for opening your hardware.

SAFETY WARNING: Always completely unplug the wheel before opening it.

Progressive Brake Mod

Unlike its successor G29/G920 or its competition Thrustmaster T500RS, the G27 did not include a progressive brake mod.

Progressive brakes are, simply put, more realistic. Real cars (and ClubSport pedals) do have hydraulic brakes. In turn, in a real car, the amount of braking depends on the strength you apply. Whereas in a stock G27 braking pedal, the amount of braking depends on the travel distance you apply.

The human body, i.e. your muscle memory, is made to learn strength application, and not so much about travel distance. So, if you use a progressive brake, you effectively give your mind an easier time learning braking distances on track; it’s a real performance upgrade. Either you become better in general, or you reduce the required track learning time (which of course will make you better in general).

Within the simracing community, there are two famous mods:

• Nixim Mod
• GT Eye

You can get the GTEYE mod at http://www.gteye.com.au/. To the best of my knowledge, GTEYE does not include a rubber insert.

Unlike GTEYE, Nixim Mod includes a rubber insert to further support the progressiveness and realism of the brake. You can find it at http://www.nixim.com/ and is my personal favourite, as you have more customization options with it.

Increasing Precision

The stock Logitech G27’s pedals have a precision of 8 bits, which means there are 256 steps between full throttle and no throttle at all. The Bodnar Cable increases this to 10 bits, or 1024 steps.

I did not recognize this as big of a change as the progressive brakes when it comes to driving. However, the potentiometer based stock pedals are prone to the one or another precision problem after some hundred races, meaning that dead- or nervours-zones may appear at full and zero throttle. You come over that by increasing the dead zone from within your simracing software; but with only 256 bits of stock precision to play with, this may result in too much loss of precision. Now, if you have 1024 bits to play with, this changes the situation altogether.

Thus, I found the Bodnar Cable most useful with regards to configuration: It gives you more freedom to configure your min/max settings for each pedal, without sacrificing too much precision.

And the latter is doubly relevant if you already use a progressive brake mod: You typically no longer use the full brake travel distance with a mod installed. The Bodnar Cable gives you back your braking precision.

Better Passive Cooling

Depending on your rooms climate conditions, on the length of your racing sessions, and depending on the age of your Logitech G27, the passive cooling might not be cooling the force feedback (FFB) of your wheel good enough.

This results in fading force feedback, up to a complete loss thereof. I never had a dysfunctioning wheel though, only the FFB got lost.

There are two ways to improve passive cooling.

Cool Packs

Carefully pack some ice or cool packs into a plastic bag and put it on top of your wheel base.WARNING: Condensed water may build up and water may drip into your wheel base. I don’t really advise on that.

More/Bigger Ventilation Slots

If you open up your wheel base, you can see that most ventilation slots in the Logitech G27 are just a visual fake. Well, unfake them.

A trick to cut into plastic: Light up a candle. Take a knife you no longer need, and heat up the knife over the candle light. Now romantically unfake the ventilation slots. WARNING: The knife may be unusable after such misuse.

Uncover the Grill

The grill at the front is mostly fake, too. You can easily remove it after opening up your wheel base.WARNING: Don’t let anyone insert their fingers or tongue through the grill into the wheel while racing!

Active Cooling

If improved passive cooling does not suffice, you can go active cooling. This is something I don’t have experience in, but basically you do some knife cutting as with passive cooling as a preparatory step to install a simple and cheap PC box cooler. You can find a number of tutorials online.

Cleaning

Over the years, some clutter may build up within the potentiometers of your pedals. A symptom thereof is when your wheel input becomes nervous and/or stuttering.

Here’s a YouTube video by Adam Maciejewski that shows you how to get rid of spiky pedals:

Do you have more advices on how to increase the life of the Logitech G 27? Please post them as a comment!

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Article History:

• Aug 9, 2017: Add missing attribution to Adam Maciejewski
• Apr 17, 2019: Fix formatting