Daytona USA Steering problem

thelastpolarbear

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Mar 30, 2012
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Canton, Michigan
Ok, I'm new to all this arcade stuff, so go easy on me guys.

Was working on my daytona USA's all night tonight. They are stand alone sit down limited edition units. Got them linked up, fixed a no response break pedal on the master unit, re-wired the shifter on the slave unit, went through and adjusted settings on both machines and fabricated a new keyway for the slave machine steering wheel.

Here's my problem...

On the slave unit, the steering motor is really loud and when the gameplay is starting (rolling start screen), the steering wheel jerks from left to right constantly until the actual gameplay starts. It then levels out and suddenly the car on screen goes erratically bezerk pulling to the left really jerky looking. The force feedback is going crazy shoving the steering wheel all the ways to the left when the game play starts as well. Lots of tension on the wheel if I try and turn right. Its just fighting me. Mostly tries to pull left, but inconsistently jerks right sometimes for a quick second.

I've been in settings and the game registers fluid motion from lock to lock on the wheel.

I also pulled the dash apart and visually inspected everything. It all looks good. The belts seem to be in good shape and tension, also the wires are all in place and there appears to be no stripped gears on anything. Of course, being a noob, I don't really know what I'm looking at anyways. Any advice? I'm wondering if anyone has a easy fix, but I'm assuming that I may need to buy new parts.

Thanks in advance and go easy on me. LOL.
 
Ok...I've been doing some reading online and I think I'm going to try and align the steering pots. Maybe i'm lucky and my pots are just out of whack. I'll be doing this tonight after my kids go to bed. If anyone thinks I'm barking up the wrong tree, please feel free to jump in and tell me I'm wasting my time and should do *insert troubleshooting method here*.
 
Definitely sounds like a steering pot issue. Probably need to replace the pot, but you may be able to clean it and make it last a bit longer. If the pot is bad, it will cuase the game to loose track of where center is and it will constantly try to adjust to compensate.
 
I've confirmed that it is the steering pot...and how I did it is super hillbilly style.

I pulled the dash out, looked at the steering and force feedback sensors. I pulled the gears off of them and re aligned them by eye. (I know, I know thats not how you do it). put the game back together and turned it on. The steering was now corrected, however the force feedback was still erratic and crazy.

I took the dash back off, took a wrench and carefully................Beat the shit out of both metal sensors behind the gears.

Put it back together and it works a hell of a lot better now. I can actually play the game pretty accurately. The force feedback is still really strong, however its not nearly as erratic as it was.

The reason I beat them (not because I was mad or anything) is because someone said that carbon buildup is sometimes the cause of the sensors going bad. I used to work on cars for a living and believe it or not, when stuff is frozen up (fuel pumps, starters, blower motors, etc) usually you can whack the crap out of it and it'll come to life. So I figured, I'd try it.
 
i thought that it was acting so erratically because it's in michigan...it's just driving the way most other michiganders drive!!!

welcome to arcade collecting :)
 
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