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1989 Atari Racing Game – Broken Steering Wheel

Question from Oliver: I was playing it one day and the steering wheel just stopped working. There are two (since it is for two players), and the one that doesn’t work is the one on the left. Thank you so much in advance!

1 answer

Jonathan Leung Jonathan Leung Staff June 15, 2016
Public

Response from Jonathan: Oliver,

As for your question, I believe you said it was a Badlands on our Facebook page. Badlands uses an optical sensor board for each steering wheel in order to pick up which way the wheel is turning and send it to the main board (here’s a picture of one so you can see it). It could be that the optical sensor board on the steering wheel that’s not working has either been disconnected from the main board or is having some problems of it’s own. We recommend starting off this repair by checking the wires that run from the optical sensor board to the main board to make sure that they are making a good connection. If everything is connected properly, you might remove the board to see if there are any places that look damaged and test the parts on the board to make sure they are working properly. You can also try cleaning the optical sensor with a lint free cloth at this point to see if it makes a difference. If you can’t get the optical sensor board for that steering wheel working, you might be able to find a replacement on eBay or some of the different arcade forums. Please let us know if you can’t find one and we’ll try to assist you in your search.

Hope that helps. Thank you for your question and good luck with your repair.

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