It really is a great wheel, i just don't like it enough the way it is out of the box. Mainly because everyone has the default G25 wheel and i absolutely hate to have some default peace of crap everyone can buy. So the first thing to do is to put your own 'real' racing wheel on it to make it unique. I put on a snap-off connector too so i can dismount the wheel. It's mostly important too since someone can't seat himself in my simulator with the wheel mounted. So snap-off is the way to go, and the extra fun part is that i'm able to place the wheel in my car
One main disadvantage is that the snap-off unit puts the wheel closer towards you and makes the gap between wheel and flipper-paddles larger, so i had to extend the flipper-paddles in able reach them without getting the cramps
All requered some decent time of work and fiddling to get it all right. Now when i see a default G25 i laugh my ass off, it suddenly looks like a silly thin and small wheel for the kids
Anyway, when i had to mount the wheel rock solid to the simulator housing (no motion sim, just a wooden construction with seat, monitor and surroundset all in one, its a work in progress) I figured the 6mm bolt-mounts were no good since they are placed at the back of the base. The clamps in the front did not extend enough to hold onto a 4" peace of wood which resulted in loose behaviour. I could tilt the wheel up and down far too easy. So I took the wheel apart and made some new 8mm holes located more towards the center of the base. In the end it all fitted like a glove. All happy etc. and put the stuff back together... but suddenly nothing worked anymore. I must have made some major mistake which shorted out the main circuit board of the G25. This silly actions never happen to me, it just had to happen with some quite expensive peace of equipment and now i have no wheel anymore
Well, silly me, now i have to buy a new one only for the damn circuit board. Guess i could use the spare parts in the future so no hard feelings though
This all happened two months ago so i'm not able to drive for quite some time now. The biggest problem is that i have no job at the moment, but it seems things are working out for me so it wont be long now till i get an income and everything goes back to the way it was... oh man i miss to drive that FOX around so badly. Well it's my own fault anyway... just wanted to share this little experience with y'all
G25's rock and make u a so much better driver, when i took my old wheel out i noticed why the G25 was so much better in terms of precision, the long stroke paddels and the optical wheel sensor (like the optical wheel with holes inside a bal-mouse) instead of a potentiometer are making things so much better to control and make it all last so much longer. I guess the G25 will last for ages, u really have to do something very bad to brake it. Also the shifter is quite sturdy, i opened it up about 10 times to make things stiffer but that also will last long based on the mechanical parts. The switches used to make it actually 'shift' will brake down sooner i guess. The shifter has some major flaws though and i don't like it very much, so i will make my own one from scratch.
Anyway, everyone who loves LFS and can't afford the REAL sim-wheels should buy a G25 and nothing less. A DFP is just crap in my point of view and should not be compared to G25's.
--EDIT--
About the force settings. U should put ingame force at 100% at all times. It has nothing to do with strength but with HOW the force is dispersed. When driving the force above 100% u get clipping, just like an Amplifier so u won't notice the slight differences at the top levels like comparing a sine wave to a square wave. Turning it below 100% gives u less information to play with, which results in less force precision. Like 8bit compared to 16bit.
I can't drive for 4 hours with the wheel at 100% in the Logitech control centre, so i put all levels at 60%. For FOX driving this is quite nice, but my wheel is also slightly larger than normal so it will take less energy to counter the force. My teammate uses force levels around 50% on the FOX, when drifting with XRT or LX6 we use much lower forces so we can really smash the wheel around without getting tired. Besides all that i always use the exact same wheel rotation as the ingame-car which states 450% on FOX and 720% on roadcars. Also set the Logitech control panel at the right value + ingame wheel rotation setting both at the same levels, and never use wheel-turn compensation on a wheel like this! This allows for the most linear and most realistic feel possible.