Everyone sees it. Someone online asks about hydraulic pedals and generally the first thing you come across is how they leak. And the truth is most hydraulic pedals do leak. The good news is, we've engineered a cylinder in house 100% meant for sim racing that is Leak-Proof.

 

What was the problem...?

If you look up online you can come across threads of leaky hydraulic pedals and videos. The problem doesn't generally come from the quality of the pedals themselves. It's usually the "Hydraulic Slave Cylinders" they're using on the side that tend to leak. We tore one apart and we quickly found out why they were leaking...

The big problem comes from the way they're used in real life. In racing applications, it's not a product that is expected to last a long time. In fact, in many cases, they'll swap these cylinders out a few times over the course of a racing season. Because of this, for their main audience it isn't a huge problem but for us, obviously it is. 

On the main shaft of the typical off the shelf automotive cylinders, their shaft only has 1 o-ring on it.

What happens is the cylinder slowly drips fluid one drop at a time. At first, it's very unlikely that you'll notice it much at all. But as time goes on, you'll likely start to see a small pool of fluid and then a lot of fluid. If you're using one of these pedals, or Speedway pedals, the best thing you can do is put a rag or towel under them to catch any potential fluid. 

 

How This Affected Users Going Forward

In the beginning of constructing our hydraulics, we leaned heavily on high quality automotive manufactures that would be able to supply us with the best products that would give drivers the most realistic feedback possible. Through our search, we landed on using Wilwood as the hydraulics on our pedals. Early edition pedals and hand brakes were equipped with these cylinders. 

Many viewers saw Boosted Media's video review of our pedals where he called our throttle the "best he's ever felt." A few day's following that video, he made a follow up showing his brake pedal leaking. This moment instantly made users have no trust in our product and we were forced to do something about it. 

 

How We Solved Hydraulic Pedal's Largest Problem To Date...

What seems like a simple product isn't so simple. There's a lot that goes into creating cylinders that are driven off such high hydraulic pressure. If you're off by even just a little, the shaft tweaks and will seize up. So what did it take to make the first sim racing specific hydraulic cylinder?

• We went straight to the drawing board and began drawing from scratch, a brand new cylinder. Using solidworks, we design and test it's quality. 
• Solidworks gives us the ability to put them through various test that would instantly tell us if something was off. 
• It took over 23 different designs before we had one that was more than capable of what we were putting it through. 
• We added a second o-ring to the main shaft with a swipe seal right at the end. 
• In the mid body, we also added two new o-rings that seal the bodies together. 
• This keeps the cylinders pressure sealed and give them the ability to withstand high pressures over long periods of time.

 

What Can You Do?

Chances are, if you're reading this you either are looking into a set of hydraulic pedals, want to make your own, or have some and want to change the cylinders. Whatever your reason, you've found the best page you could have possibly found about sim racing pedals cylinders.

This is the only cylinder on the market guaranteed not to leak. If you are building your own pedals, we sell these as part of DIY kits. If you're looking to purchase hydraulic pedals, we use these on all of our hydraulic kits. If you have hydraulic pedals that are currently leaking, these are direct swap outs for Wilwood and Speedway cylinders.

We have the spring kits and mounting kit that you may need also on our store. Let us know if there is anything you need that we can help you with.