It’s a long one, sue me. 😉
Thought I’d post a follow up to my post at the beginning of lockdown in March, where I sort of kind of panic bought a playseat challenge. 😆
All told, it’s been a truly fantastic buy. It got me into the right position to be able to use a wheel well, and gave me the confidence and stability to feel like I can really man-handle the wheel and move it as fast as I need to, not as fast as the table or whatever can handle, like before. That’s more important with the WRC games than iRacing tbh, but still, sometimes I need to feel like I can really pull the wheel around quickly. It’s been great.
However, it always had one really annoying drawback. The little steel triangular brackets that hold the tension straps in place. The seat itself would be just wide enough without them, but with them, they dig right into the sides of my thighs, as do the straps themselves and make it uncomfortable to race for particularly long. It’s not an overweight bloke complaint here. My weight is all packed up top really and I’ve always had big chunky drumsticks even before parenthood weight kicked in =)
It drove me crazy after a while, especially as someone with chronic pain, it just made things worse; and having seen someone on Reddit post a solution, I “modified” mine. Basically I took bolt cutters to the brackets, and removed the straps. That leaves the seat with no tension to hold it together, so I used the straps and a couple of heavy duty ratchet straps on the base of the seat. This has given me flexibility to angle the seat as I please and has been almost as stable as the unmodified seat. So if you have a Challenge and the same problem, I’ll happily post some pics if you want to modify yours.
That said, it’s still not perfect. Each time I set up, I have to take extra care to make sure the straps are in the right position because even if they’re the same length as before; if they’re not parallel then that can change the seat angle too. Unrelated to the modification, the pedal base part doesn’t work wonderfully with the t3pa pro pedals either. The standard t3pa pedals might be fine though, it’s the upright at the rear that’s the issue I think. I would rather be able to angle the pedals a bit.
Which leads me to my latest sim racing cave. And a fairly spectacular cave it is too. 😆
https://nextlevelracing.com/products/f-gt-lite/
This got launched two months after I bought my seat and I really wish I’d waited tbh. Fully adjustable, with 4 different seating positions from f1 (arse on the floor), to GT, and a serious amount of tweaking in between. Those red adjusters are lockable and each one can handle 150kg of force. Another issue I had was when wearing VR; the headrest kept pushing my head too far forward. The headrest area seems to be adjustable here, which I hope will help with that.
There’s a cheaper GT option too which doesn’t do the f1 position, which I should arguably have gone for, but I wanted the flexibility for different tv positions later down the line. By all accounts it’s really well made, really stable and very quick to put up and fold away.
Should arrive in the first week of ‘21’. =)
If I ever have a 100% “fuck it, life is short” moment, this what I’m getting.
https://www.thefrenchie.co/products/speed-cockpit-desk-chair?variant=31813095784517
It looks good enough that Rachel might allow it in the living room. 😄 I did look at the more substantial Playseat options but even though they fold, they’re too bulky for my needs really.
