Truck Gear Knob Shifter Upgrade

The G29 shifter with original knob removed, the truck gear knob with switches, and my adapter plus bolt.

I opened the gear knob to expose the wiring.

I checked which wires I needed to use for each switch with a multimeter. The top push button has three wires; the black and yellow are permanantly on. The blue and yellow are on when the button is pressed so those are the two I need to wire. The black wire is not used.

I cut off the gear knob connector which would normally plug into a truck and strip the wires to expose them, except for the black which is unused in this project. I also used the highly technical item of a clothes peg to hold them in place.

I cut the terminals off three connectors and stripped the wires ready to connect them to the gear knob.

Next I soldered each pair of wires to the connectors ready to plug them into a joystick controller. Blue & Yellow for the push button, green & purple for one of the switches, red & white for the third button. I also upgraded my clothes peg to a clip used for securing open packets of food which was a much tighter grip.

Next I slid my pieces of heat shrink down to cover the soldered parts and applied heat via a mini blowtorch to secure them.

I used a larger piece of heat shrink to cover all of the smaller wires and hold them securely. I then plugged the connectors into a joystick control board, plugged a USB cable into the control board, and lastly plugged the USB cable into my PC.

I opened the game controller panel in windows to test it was working correctly. The bottom/front switch works.

The middle/side switch works.

The push button works.

I then connected my adapter to the G29 shifter and used the bolt to hold it in place. Finally I screwed the gear knob onto my adapter and everything works perfectly! I will need to design a box in Fusion 360 to 3D print which can house the control board and wires.