The steering wheel that we build is basically a joystick and hence it connects to the game port of your computer. The gameport has a 15 pin D connector and is located at the back side of your system (mostly near the audio jacks). The pin diagram of the gameport is shown in the figure. You need to buy a male gameport connector (DB15 male) to plug into the female connector present at the back of your cpu. It is always advised to purchase a gameport cable with the connector attached, if available at your local store. Otherwise you have to purchase a 15 wire sheathed cable and a DB15 male connector and then solder the wires to the DB15 male connector. I warn you that the latter approach can result in loose contacts and a whole lot of problems. Go for soldering only if you are unable to buy a gameport cable.
Female - At the computer
Male - At the Joystick cable

The schematic for the gaming / racing wheel interconnection is given above. Click on it to see an enlarged image. The different units are shown using block representation. The explanation of the schematic is as follows: The conn: circuit is a PCB on which you can perform the interconnection. You can either directly solder wires and insulate them, or use a PCB instead. The PCB or interconnections are better to be housed within the gear box.

The Steering wheel is shown towards the bottom. The green colored rectangle at the center of the gaming / racing wheel represents the horn-switch. The green wired cable coming to it is the ground. The horn is connected to the gameport switch S3 (pin 10) using the yellow colored cable. The grey colored rectangle at the end of the steering wheel's axis is the potentiometer. A +5V (pin 1) cable and the cable connecting to X1 (pin 3) runs into it. The steering unit's wires can be fed into the gear box and interconnected in the PCB housed there. It is always better to use connectors to connect wires between units of the gaming / racing wheel, since each unit could be individually disconnected and moved.

The Pedals are shown to the bottom right. +5V (pin 1) and +5V (pin 9) are fed into the three potentiometers of the gaming / racing wheel. The varied signals from the potentiometers gets returned to Y1 (pin 6) , X2 (pin 11) and Y2 (pin 13) as shown in the diagram.

The gear box of the gaming / racing wheel houses very simple connections. A ground signal is fed to the gear's metallic shaft. The metal contacts placed at the up and down positions are connected to the switches S1 (pin 2) and S2 (pin 7) respectively. If the gear knob you used was a joystick's handle and it houses a button, you can connect it to a Gnd and S4 (pin 14) as shown in the diagram, in order to use that button as hand-brake.

Note: Pins 8 and 15 of the game port are not relevant in our context and that is why it has been discarded in the schematic of the gaming / racing wheel

Please take extra care while doing all the interconnections, since a single loose contact can make the whole gaming / racing wheel non-functional. Always use soldering when connecting wires together. Use connectors (like Relim connector) to connect steering unit and pedals to the gear box unit. It is always better to house the interconnections within the gear box unit of the gaming / racing wheel. After performing all the required interconnections on the PCB, take the 15 wire cable with the DB15 male connector attached to one end, and solder it to the 15 connections on the PCB at appropriate positions. Provide facility on the Gear box of the gaming / racing wheel to take the 15 wire cable out, so that you can connect it to the gameport at the back of your computer.

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