A pedal test without the wheel getting in the way
This page skips the steering step: the set-up asks for the throttle, the brake and then the clutch (skip it if you have two pedals), and the pedal bars and the linearity test come first. Everything works the same whether your pedals plug into a wheel base or into USB on their own, and several devices can be connected at once.
How the three checks work
- Rest check. Take your feet off and start it. Each pedal’s resting reading and its jitter are measured for two seconds. A pedal that rests at a few percent, or wanders, will make a car brake or accelerate slightly all the time.
- Full travel. The thin line on each bar marks the furthest the pedal has gone. A pedal that can’t reach 100% even when pressed hard needs recalibrating in the wheel software, or, on a Thrustmaster base, the right pedal mode (Thrustmaster support).
- Linearity and spikes. Press one pedal slowly over two or three seconds. The plot shows its output over time: a ringed spike, a jump, or a flat stretch while your foot kept moving are the faults to look for.
Potentiometer, Hall sensor or load cell?
Entry-level pedals from Logitech and Thrustmaster’s T3PA set measure travel with potentiometers, a wiper sliding on a resistive track. They are the ones that develop spikes as the track wears or gets dirty; contact cleaner or a replacement potentiometer fixes them (iFixit’s G29 pedal guide). Hall-effect pedals measure position with a magnet and don’t wear that way. Load-cell brakes, such as Fanatec’s ClubSport Pedals V3 with a 90 kg load cell (Fanatec) or Thrustmaster’s T-LCM, measure force; spikes on those point to a loose cable or connector rather than a worn track.