Truck Gear Knob Shifter Upgrade

I wanted to upgrade my G29 Shifter with a real truck gear knob so I had access to the switches for changing the range and split of gears for when I play truck sim games

First I 3D designed an adapter to connect onto the shifter and then screw the truck gear knob onto it.

It was my first time using Fusion 360 but I watched tutorials on how to use the program and figured out the measurements to make the adapter and finally completed its design.

The G29 shifter with original knob removed, the truck gear knob with switches, and my adapter plus bolt.

I opened the gear knob to expose the wiring.

I checked which wires I needed to use for each switch with a multimeter. The top push button has three wires; the black and yellow are permanantly on. The blue and yellow are on when the button is pressed so those are the two I need to wire. The black wire is not used.

I cut off the gear knob connector which would normally plug into a truck and strip the wires to expose them, except for the black which is unused in this project. I also used the highly technical item of a clothes peg to hold them in place.

I cut the terminals off three connectors and stripped the wires ready to connect them to the gear knob.

Next I soldered each pair of wires to the connectors ready to plug them into a joystick controller. Blue & Yellow for the push button, green & purple for one of the switches, red & white for the third button. I also upgraded my clothes peg to a clip used for securing open packets of food which was a much tighter grip.

Next I slid my pieces of heat shrink down to cover the soldered parts and applied heat via a mini blowtorch to secure them.

I used a larger piece of heat shrink to cover all of the smaller wires and hold them securely. I then plugged the connectors into a joystick control board, plugged a USB cable into the control board, and lastly plugged the USB cable into my PC.

I opened the game controller panel in windows to test it was working correctly. The bottom/front switch works.

The middle/side switch works.

The push button works.

It's the gear knob

I then connected my adapter to the G29 shifter and used the bolt to hold it in place. Finally I screwed the gear knob onto my adapter and everything works perfectly! I will need to design a box in Fusion 360 to 3D print which can house the control board and wires.