Adjustable Racing Wheel Stand and Seat

This Instructable is a quick overview of a wood racing stand design. Its intended to provide ideas about how you might design and build your own stand. Sorry, but this is not a full step-by-step guide and I haven't provided a detailed parts list.

The stand works great for my purposes. It easily adjusts to fit me (6' male) and my daughter (4' 8 year old). Its very stable and I think it will last. This stand was built for function -- as I'm sure you can see, I did not put any effort into form :)

I built this stand for a bit under $60, including the office chair, which I found at goodwill for $8... of course your mileage will vary there. The design changed in several major ways as I built it. I ended up with roughly $20 in unused materials, so you could probably build this for about $40 (depending on what you can find for a chair).

I initially intended to use a couch or a dining room chair for a seat, but quickly discovered that these were very uncomfortable options.

As noted in the images, I built the stand too long. The front overhang keeps the stand from fully folding. The rear overhang is unnecessarily long.

Of course, you'll need some woodworking tools and skills to do this.

Base Design

The side rails consist of a 2x2 on top of a 1x2 with a 1/4" shim between them. The 1/4" gap between the 2x2 and 1x2 is used as a "rail" for the pedal mechanism to slide on (see the next step for more on that).

The middle rail is a 1x2.

The ends are 1x4s. I think I had to trim them slightly to be the same height as the side rails.

All parts a glued and screwed together.

I made the stand a bit longer than it should be. After trimming it down, the dimensions of the base will be 26" long x 22" wide. The width is 22" because that is the width of the metal Simpson Ties I used for the sliding mechanism -- this way, I didn't need to cut the Ties shorter. I think the stand is slightly wider than needed, but I wouldn't go narrower than about 18".

Table Design

The table is built out of 1/2" plywood. The sides and top are 6" wide. I reinforced the top using an extra strip of plywood along the back. I should have used angle brackets instead, but didn't have any on had. I also should not have put any screws through the sides of the plywood (again, angle brackets would have solved that). Plywood does not hold screws/nails well when they are put in through the side.

The sides of the table should placed 5" from the front edge so that the stand can fold flat. This means that when looking at the 26" side rail, you would have 5" of exposed rail, 6" of rail covered by a plywood side, then 15" of exposed rail.

The pieces of plywood attached to the sides of the base are 10" tall (we'll call those the "fixed sides"). The pieces of plywood that are attached to the table top and bolt on to the fixed sides are 16" (we'll call those the "adjustable sides"). This gives plenty of height adjustment for my setup. The height you need for your table will depend on the height of your chair (and height of the users). I'd recommend starting with the adjustable sides too long, and then trim them down when you figure out the height range you want.

I started by cutting the plywood pedal base to size. I took a fence bracket and removed the unwanted metal tab at the end by bending it back and forth a few times with pliers. I attached that bracket in at the near edge of the piece of plywood. The fence bracket helps keep the sliding mechanism centered.

Next, I cut a very thin shim at a slight angle (since the base rises at an angle) and attached that to the plywood just behind the fence bracket This shim will attach to the first simpson tie. Next I cut a riser (at the same angle) and a thicker shim (no angle) and attached those to the other end of the plywood. This is for attaching the second simpson tie.

Finally, I placed the plywood pedal base in place on the frame. I slid the simpson ties in place, carefully centered them so that they were not exposed on either side of the frame, and screwed them into shims.

That completets the stand. As you can see, I use a spring clamp to hold the pedal base in place. It's simple and effective. I'm going to modify this to use a wingbolt to hold the base in place, but I haven't gotten there yet.

If you want to build a seat similar to this, you'll have to work with what you find. As you can see, the chair I found has a unique design, which I used to mount it to a base. In general, I found that a Seat height of roughly 12" was comfortable, along with a small tilt backward.