The Truebrake by AXC-Sim is a huge upgrade to your Logitech Pedals that makes them legitimately fit for proper high-performance sim racing - I know this because that’s what I’m using them for as I write this review, and will be doing so for some time to put them to an extended test.
The mod fits all Logitech pedal sets of this particular style from the G25 right through to the G923, whilst completely preserving your Logitech hardware’s compatibility with consoles and PC, just fit it and drive, nothing else involved.
After upgrading standard G923 pedals with a Truebrake, the confidence and accuracy I can achieve under braking with them is in another world. Over a 30 lap testing stint in an LMP3 car in iRacing for example (with no ABS to help), the Truebrake made me 4 tenths faster on average per lap, giving me a 15 second gain over the whole 30 lap stint compared to what I could manage on the stock pedals.
For £54.99 plus tax and with global shipping, this upgrade gives you a big chunk of potential performance for not a lot of money. Let’s take a look at it.
Sponsorship Notice
Thanks to AXC-Sim for providing the Truebrake used for this review and sponsoring my content, but make no mistake: I’ve long considered the Truebrake to be amazingly effective and my positive view on it has been earned, not bought.
Kit Contents
The Truebrake V2.2 GT Edition costs £54.99 before tax and shipping at time of recording, and is manufactured in England, would you believe.
In the kit, you get a CNC machined billet aluminium piston, along with a preload assembly which comes with a choice of 3 different spacers, which modifies how much initial cushion there is in your brake pedal. You also get a choice of 4 different mainsprings ranging from a 15kg pedal load all the way up to 38kg, they used to have to be bought separately but they’re now all included with the kit.
All of this combines to give you a spread of customisation options, so if you want to copy my setup then use the 38kg Red tipped Hard Spring but with the smallest spacer, giving me a pedal feel that reminds me very much of how my Fanatec V3s and Heusinkveld Sprints were set up.
You do need circlip pliers to change the mainspring, however, and they’re not an everyday household item so you might need to buy a set - just beware of that.
Fitting the Truebrake to your pedals takes about 30 minutes and the instructions provided by AXC-Sim are terrific, very clear and easy to follow in plain understandable language. Even if you’re not a technical person you can still follow the instructions word for word and make it out safely to the other side. Truebrake takes over the job of sending the brake signal instead of the standard potentiometers. This is how it preserves the compatibility of your Logitech equipment, it’s not changing or modifying the electronics anywhere else in the system, it’s just changing how the brake pedal physically determines what signal to send back down the wire. This means it's not just an upgrade for the PC based tinkerers, it’s 100% compatible if you’re on Playstation or Xbox aswell.
Whilst you’ve got your pedals open to the elements, I highly recommend that you take the now redundant brake spring and install it into your clutch pedal, and then take the now redundant clutch spring and install it into your throttle pedal, leaving the throttle spring now completely spare (set to one side for safekeeping). The end result is a throttle pedal that is firmer and easier to modulate smoothly, and a clutch pedal that is much stiffer and is much more alike a real clutch pedal than the standard spring (still far off, but much better than it was!).
The Truebrake's Purpose
The purpose of the Truebrake mod is to do one thing. The Truebrake changes the relationship between you and your brake pedal from a positional-based movement to a much more natural pressure-based movement. Your brake pedal will mimics a load cell pedal very, very well. This results in you being able to train and dial in your braking to a much more accurate and consistent level, by changing what muscles you use to brake with and the way you do it. You will feel far more connected to the brakes and far more confident in your own ability to judge them. The end result is faster laptimes done more consistently, leading to better racing and more enjoyment.
If you’re using standard Logitech pedals right now then you’ll be used to braking largely by changing the position or angle of your foot - there might be a spring or a buffer that resists it a little, but mostly you’re having to judge it by position. It’s pretty tricky to be accurate and consistent this way, and sim racing demands accuracy and consistency to do well so this quickly becomes a problem once you improve beyond entry level, your skills will outgrow your equipment.
With a Truebrake installed, your brake pedal becomes much more closely linked with pressure instead of position, and your body is much better at memorising pressure or force based movements. Just think about the hundreds of ways your body has effortlessly catalogued how much force your everyday actions require. You just know how much force it takes to butter a crumpet. You just know how much force it takes to pick up a cup of tea/coffee. If your body wasn't excellent at memorising pressure based muscle movements, there'd be crumpets and coffee flying everywhere. It knows what it's doing and it uses muscle force to do it, not position.
Soon after improving your brake pedal, you will instinctively know how much force it takes to brake for La Source, Pouhon, Noname and the Bus Stop Chicane at Spa, and so on. That’s why pressure is far better than position when it comes to your brake pedal.
It's Not a Load Cell...
Amazingly, the Truebrake is not actually a load cell. Load cell is the technical term for the pressure-based sensors that you’ll find on the majority of higher end sim racing pedal sets. Instead it actually uses a linear potentiometer housed deep within the piston, which is not as pure as a load cell, but believe me when I say I would never guess that by performance alone. It behaves and drives just as well as most other load cell pedals I’ve used before - the end result is strikingly similar.
This is the most important thing of all to highlight. With the Truebrake fitted, your Logitech pedals are genuinely sim racing ready, how it does that is almost irrelevant as soon as you start using it. At the start of my testing campaign I used the Logitech G923 pedals in stock form for a couple of months, and to no surprise I simply couldn’t perform at the same level I have been accustomed to on my previous pedal set, the Heusinkveld Sprints. The Heusinkveld Sprints are a high-end £600+ pedal set, and the G923 pedals at the centre of this test would likely retail for about £50 if they were available separately, so of course I could only expect a major step-down. I was heavily limited by the stock brake pedal and the hardware at my feet was now a big weak point in comparison to the rest of my setup, I also felt much less keen on entering official races and leagues because I didn’t enjoy sim racing as much whilst I was using them, and those that I did enter were usually in cars with ABS which could gloss over any errors I might make.
Then I fitted the Truebrake to them and everything changed, I felt like I was back to full working order and had confidence in my brake pedal restored again.
Time Trial Test
So let’s talk results and proof - how can I show the calibre of the upgrade?
Well, my first test was an extended time trial with iRacing’s LMP3 car at Oulton Park. This is a fast, high downforce car with no ABS, on a narrow technical track with the full range of braking zones, from hard and heavy, to light trailbrakes, and everything in between. Mistakes and inconsistency will make you suffer here.
With the stock Logitech pedals I completed 30 laps with a time of 42 minutes and 27 seconds. My best lap was a 1:23.8 but I only broke into the 1:23’s once. I would rate my confidence under braking at around a 4 out of 10, the G923 pedals are not too bad but when it comes to high performance cars with no anti-lock brakes, not too bad is not really good enough.
Directly afterwards, with the Truebrake fitted, I completed the same 30 lap challenge under identical, static conditions, with a time of 42 minutes and 11 seconds, a full 15 seconds quicker than the standard stint. My best lap was a 1:23.2 but I broke into the 1.23’s 9 times over the stint. That’s a huge improvement in not only the fastest lap, but the overall consistency and pace. My confidence under braking increased to around 9 out of 10 and I felt like I could attack the track with much more certainty. If this was a full 30 lap race, finishing 15 seconds ahead of someone would be considered as being in another skill class entirely.
I am well acclimatised to load cell pedals, I’ve had Fanatec V3 pedals, Moza SRP Pedals and Heusinkveld Sprint pedals. When I use these logitech pedals with a truebrake under the hood, it feels completely familiar and I had little trouble adjusting to it. It may not be a load cell but it sure as hell does a good job of acting like one.
Races
Second test was to just plain put my stats on the line. If you are on iRacing then you’ll know that your iRating goes up or down depending on how you perform and at the moment I’m rocking 4000 iRating. After swapping out my pricey Heusinkveld Sprints for these basic Logitech G923 pedals fitted with a £65 quid upgrade, what do you think happened to my iRating? Did it go up, did it start to plummet? Well, it basically stayed the same.
Furthermore, the races I’ve been doing are not GT3 or GT4 where the cars ABS systems can smooth over my errors, I have in fact been exclusively focusing on the Porsche Cup series and all of the races I’ve had have been top split, which means I have to drive as well as I’m expected to drive or my rating will fall. The iRacing Porsche Cup car has no ABS and is notoriously tricky under braking and throttle. To merely maintain my iRating on Logitech pedals and avoiding taking a tumble down a peg or two, is testament to the fact that the Truebrake is not a gimmick, it works.
Now, I'm not suggesting for a second that a simple Logitech pedal set is truly comparable to Heusinkveld Sprints, of course not. However, the Truebrake sincerely converts humble entry level pedals to at least the mid level, and that means they can travel with you as you yourself grow and improve your skills.
Buy a Truebrake or Better Pedals?
So let’s ask the obvious question, when is a Truebrake upgrade worth it instead of just buying a better pedal set.
On console, that’s an easy question to answer because you can’t just buy some new Fanatec pedals and stick them onto your setup, you have to buy a complete set because you can’t mix and match manufacturers like you can on PC, so for Logitech console racers the Truebrake is an attractively cheap way to boost your sim racing performance without having to buy a whole new setup. It’s basically either that or spend hundreds of pounds switching setups entirely.
On PC it’s a bit more complex because you have more choice, you can near enough use any pedals you like. I’ve used quite a few pedal sets by this point, and this is how I rank them in terms of which I’d prefer to use in important races.
1st Place: Heusinkveld Sprint Pedals
2nd Place: Fanatec Clubsport V3 Pedals
Joint 3rd Place: Truebrake-equipped G923 Pedals
Joint 3rd Place: Moza SR-P Pedals
4th Place: Fanatec CSL Pedals with Load Cell Kit
Last Place: Fanatec CSL Pedals
When you attach the costs to each of the devices in my ranking, it frames my point well - the Truebrake turns Logitech Pedals into perhaps the cheapest mid-level pedals available!
Things To Know
Whilst it’s very good value and very effective overall, you need to know a couple of things before you buy.
First and foremost, you will need a cockpit of some kind, the force you’re going to be putting through your pedals will be too high to realistically use it standalone on a carpet or floor. Obviously if you have a lightweight cockpit like a Playseat Challenge then you might just want to use the soft or medium spring, but if you have something more substantial like a GT Omega Prime then you’re fine to go all in with the hard spring - it'll take it.
Changing the spring does mean dismantling the pedal unit almost to the same point as you did during installation, so it’s not a 5 minute job to swap them over, it’ll take you 30 minutes each time. I took mine apart twice, first to change the spring from the medium hard to the hard, and then again to change the spacer from medium to small, but it was worth it, each tweak brought me closer to a pedal feel that I now really gel with and feel no need to change again.
If you use the hard 38kg spring like I do, then you might find your braking foot getting a bit sore after a while and you might have to start using shoes. I’ve started using my race shoes again on these G923 pedals because of it, I don’t mind it, but it does make jumping on and off the rig a little less convenient.
Don’t expect any pedal bling, the Truebrake is sadly covered by the top half of the Logitech’s piston housing so you will have to appreciate the shiny machined piston housing before it goes into the pedals because you might not be seeing it again for a while.
If you currently find your Logitech pedals too hard to push down, then think twice before getting this mod because it will only get firmer. I only raise this point because in an earlier video about making logitech pedals stiffer, I saw a fair few comments saying that they found the stock pedals too stiff as it is.
Lastly, whilst the Truebrake will do wonders for the stuff by your feet, you’ll still be held back by the Logitech wheelbase you’re using and that will then become your biggest bottleneck. However, if you’re on PC you might find that you just buy a new wheelbase, you’ve already got decent pedals now, you just need to sort the top half out. You can use the Logitech G adaptor to connect your pedals directly to your PC, or a Leo Bodnar cable.
Conclusion
My conclusion is simple - I really like the truebrake and I think it does an amazing job at converting entry level logitechs into real mid-level pedals that can legitimately be used for sim racing, and that’s of huge interest to you if you’re in the earlier stages and using a Logitech. If you are serious about sim racing but you can’t spend hundreds to replace your Logitech hardware yet, I’d say the Truebrake is the absolute best value thing you can buy to improve your equipment and extend its useful life until the day comes when you outgrow it entirely.
If you’ve had experience with a Truebrake, share your thoughts in the comments below so that others can hear from more genuine voices. Remember to use the link in the description and like this video if you found it helpful or entertaining, subscribe for more in future. Thanks again for reading and remember to watch the Youtube Video for the full review!