Building a racing cockpit...have a question for any expert out there

[Knight165]

Guys....
I'm about to begin building a racing cockpit simulator.
I've been searching and researching the net for all sorts of ideas and have some great ones.
I've got the wheel and pedal unit(a beautiful ECCI set)
I've got the shifter...
I've worked out the plans for the actual cockpit(from others I've seen mostly on racingsimcentral.
There is one little sticking point though. I love Nascar Racing 2003 and you must use the keyboard for certain aspects of the game. I can't figure a way to remap any of the F keys and I hate the thought of mounting the keyboard into something I'm going to put so much work into.
I've seen guys made "button boxes" like this with handheld controllers(for games that use all the buttons for the controllers or let you remap)....which is great...but I need to use a keyboard.
Problem is, most USB keyboards use a plastic sheet for the circuit boards in place of the old green hard circuit board, which is what I would need to solder the buttons to ......to make one of these.
Anyone know of where I might get a green circuit board keyboard?
Or any other ideas(I'm thinking of using the keyboard back and circuit and just altering the face of the board to accept new buttons...but I would really like to alter the layout and that would be impossible)
Thanks in advance.

M.K.
Knight165

[Knight165]

Ha...well I'm going to answer my own question on this one.

Forget about a keyboard with a green circuit board....impossible to find.

SO...

I went and found this program called XPadder
LINK>>>>>>http://www.xpadder.com/forum/index.php that allows you to map keyboard strokes and macros to your gamepad.

So I'll be doing that.....and then using the gamepads circuit board to solder the buttons to and eventually into the simulator.

M.K.
Knight165