Wood and talent are all you need to turn an Xbox controller into a steering wheel
I have neither
If you have an Xbox controller lying around, and a prodigious talent for woodworking and engineering, then congratulations! You too can build a steering wheel. That’s what Redditor “jaayaz” did. They encased their controller in a wooden frame and, via a series of levers, bolts, and designer sandals, turned it into a homemade “Logitech G39”.
He showed it off on the woodworking subreddit, where the appreciative woodworkers upvoted it onto my front page. It's great stuff. And it works surprisingly well for a wooden wheel. He even called it a “Logitech G39”, which I hope is a joke about it being wonderfully off-brand. There is only a Logitech G29, and its RRP is a whopping £300.
The whole set-up is amazing. I can just about imagine how the wheel works, so I can see how he came up with the idea in the first place. It makes sense. But the spring-loaded foot pedals are on a whole other level to me. Working out how to turn a foot stomp into a delicate and controlled joypad press is next-level contraption building to me. If I tried that, I’d almost certainly be at the hospital ten minutes later, explaining to a confused nurse why both my feet are tangled in a wooden cage and why my face has an Xbox imprint on it.
There are no instructions on how he did it, but if you’re inspired by it you could always turn a controller into a flight stick using a 3D printer.