I disassembled the Smart Wheel assembly to clean up the switches. Anyhow, I dropped the plastic cover (hey, it happens!) and all the buttons went hither and yon. Anyhow, for future reference, the buttons are not identical and they have to be placed properly or the thing presumably won't work. Anyhow, turns out that each button has a kind of hard to see identifier (A, B, C, D, E) stamped on its backside which matches to those stamped on the assembly. The third photo illustrates where it is.
jor
The 99 VIP wheels buttons were better grouped and the spoke arms leather padded and at a better angle in my use.
The later wheel is a bolt on and in the lower $200 range.
Works with your existing controller
Very timely for us...please let me know how much difference it made. We sent the King in for rebuild. I wanted to do this before it comes back. (We put it on the slow boat as the quote was $131 one way three day from Hampton Roads). It appears all I have to do is remove the outside cover and there they are ready to be cleaned. They have apparently lost some of their "click".
Yea, you just unscrew the four torx screws from the back and lift the unit off of the wheel. Then turn it over and remove the four torx screws that attach the circuit board. Then I just sprayed with DeoxIT D5 (recommended by the estimable ChuckP), clicked the little switches a couple of times, sprayed again and finished off with some air. If you don't dump all the buttons on the floor it's a quick little job. I'll post after we try it out which should be in the next couple of weeks.
jor
The Deoxit came in today...read Chucks post. Going to give it a go and see what happens. The pictures were much appreciated.
Thanks for the photos and information!
Deoxit is good stuff. It also works well on audio equipment where potentiometers (volume knobs if anybody remembers those) and selector switches have some oxidation and are causing issues including noise.
Chris