Left-Handed G13 Project

Lefty? Ever wanted a Left-Handed game pad? For one of my "symmetrically-challenged" friends I performed major surgery on this Logitech G13, moving the joystick to the left side and re-wiring the internals to make it usable for lefties. He reports excellent performance. Here's a pic of the inside of the G13, to open this clam, you'll have to remove the rubber feet pads and remove ALL the screws you can find on the bottom. You will also need to have a knife to pretty aggressively pry the two halves apart.

The second step will be to detach the joystick pod from the right side of the G13. I used a Dremel cutting wheel for the job. It's pretty straightforward to cut along the angles of the G13, but beware because one mistake could damage irreplaceable parts. Here's a pic of the bottom part of the detached joystick pod after all my cutting was done.

Refer to the finished pic above to get a idea of where I cut for the top half. Now you will need to mechanically re-attach the joystick pod to the LEFT side of the G13. After much measuring and ergonomic testing, I can tell you the positioning you see above is ideal for most large hand types. However, you will see as you hold it up to the G13, it is not shaped properly to have a stable base on the table/desk or to attach securely to the G13. This is very important since it may get some rough treatment and you don't want you joystick wobbling or coming off during a marathon gaming session! For this reason I put in place some wooden spacers, rough cut with a mider saw and fine shaped with a belt sander and the fore mentioned Dremel with cutting wheel. I put three wooden wedge-shaped spacers under the pod, securing each one with a single very small sheet metal screw screwed in from the interior of the pod, into the wood. I felt is was important to have at least one screw in each piece to avoid breakage. My friend is very rough with his equipment! ;-) Once screwed in, disassemble the whole thing and apply JD weld or some other epoxy to every piece for that final insurance. Here's a pic of the bottom piece with screws installed:

And here's the bottom view:

Now additional spacers are necessary for the pod to attach securely to the G13, given all it's contours on the right side. Using the same techniques, I fabricated a couple of wood spacers for this side and used very small sheet metal screws to screw into the wood form both the G13 and the pod side. Again, once complete, I disassembled everything and applied epoxy. Here's some pics of that part of the project:

Note the small sheet metal screws coming form the G13 AND the pod and sinking into the wood in this pic:

Now that you hopefully have a secure mechanical mount, it's on the electronics phase of the project. You will quickly note the wiring harness going to the pod will not reach the new pod location! Damn you Logitech for your infernal efficiency! ;-)

The first step is to get yourself a piece of CAT 5 or CAT 6 network cable, here's what I used (sorry for the blurry pic):

You'll then have to route the original Logitech cable around UNDER the LCD screen like in this pic:

A Cat 6 or Cat 5 cable will not fit into the tight housing of the G13 where it is not supposed to! ;-) So you can cut open the CAT 5 or 6 cable and strip out the small wires you will need to extend the original Logitech wiring harness. Now, I cut the original Logitech harness roughly starting 2 inches from the connector and cutting each small wire about 1/4" from the last one cut until I wound up right near the connector with the last wire, then a spliced the wires stripped out of the cat 6 cable. It's really important to cut the wires different lengths so you don't wind up with one giant bundle of splices, if you just cut the whole harness at once, the splice section will not fit into the G13 housing! Be sure to insulate each spliced wire with a piece of small heat shrink. The final steps in the wire harness were to put a piece of heat shrink over the harness where it crosses the gap between the G13 and the joystick pod. Of course, you will need to notch the bottom half of the G13 and joystick pod to allow the wires to pass through. Please post if you do something like this with your G13, another gamepad, or if you improve on my design!