Shop stories · Al Quoz workshop
The racing wheel that lost its power on the starting grid
Dubai has real race tracks, real supercars and a lot of people who would rather do their laps from a chair at home. This week one of those chairs was missing its steering wheel, because the wheel was on our bench.
On 5 November a Logitech G923 arrived at our Al Quoz workshop. It’s one of the most popular sim racing wheels around: force feedback that pushes back through the rim, a progressive brake pedal, and enough on-wheel buttons to run a race without touching a controller.
It arrived half a step ahead of us
This one didn’t come in sealed and mysterious. It arrived already partly dismantled, with a broken power cord, and with a fault description that read more like a lab note than a complaint: the 24 V power supply drops to 0 V under load, an extension cable may have had its polarity reversed, and a small surface-mount component had come off the board.
That is a very believable chain of events. A racing rig often lives a metre or two further from the wall socket than the original cable reaches, so an extension gets added. If that extension swaps plus and minus, the electronics inside get power the wrong way round, and the small parts that protect and regulate the supply are usually the first to suffer.
What we did
The symptom said it all. A supply that looks fine with nothing connected but falls to zero the moment the motor asks for current points to damaged parts on the power side of the board. Our technician diagnosed it the same afternoon and replaced the damaged components on the PCB.
The wheel was ready the next day, 6 November, and went back to its owner that afternoon, in time for the weekend’s racing.
- Device: Logitech G923 sim racing wheel
- Problem: 24 V supply dropping to 0 V under load; suspected reversed-polarity extension cable; a small SMD component had come off the board
- Repair: damaged components replaced on the PCB
- Turnaround: received and diagnosed 5 Nov 2026, ready and collected 6 Nov 2026
Before you extend that cable
If your wheel, pedals or any other gadget needs a longer power lead, use the manufacturer’s cable or a proper extension made for that exact plug. Home-made extensions and mixed-up adapters are a common way to put polarity the wrong way round, and the device doesn’t always survive the first try.
If it’s already gone quiet, it can usually still be saved at board level. See our board-level and component repair service, browse all repair services, or get in touch for a free diagnosis at our Al Quoz workshop.