Need more foot room around the pedals?
Does your firewall and floor flex when you press the brake?
Last update: 10/5/12 Return to home page links
Foot room idea Like
most Locosts, mine didn't originally provide much foot room for
operating
the pedals and of course no foot rest. On a BEC there
is a lot of wasted space in the transmission tunnel.
If I had used the normal flat sheet metal mounted on the
tunnel near the pedals I
would have barely been able to use the gas pedal without also
hitting the brake pedal.
On one of my trips to the junk yard I found an aluminum cooking pan that measured approximately 13" x 15" x 2" deep. After eyeballing it for awhile I realized that if I could modify the sides of the pan I could get it to fit inside the tunnel and mount it against the tunnel side edges of tubes N, G and I. These tubes make up the forward left side of the transmission tunnel. By doing this I picked up a total of THREE inches to the right of the gas pedal. That made all the difference to having lots of foot room. Floor flex solution The
next
problem to be solved was that when I pressed on the brake pedal and to
a lesser extent, the clutch pedal, I noticed that the steel floor near
the
pedal brackets was flexing downward and the steel firewall where the
master
cylinders are mounted was flexing towards the front of the car. After
watching all this movement I realized that the panels were actually
moving in opposite directions. I formed a piece of stainless steel
strip I had into an "L" shape, drilled mounting holes and mounted it as
shown in the pictures below. The metal is located on the left
side of the
brake pedal bracket and extends to the left bolt that mounts the brake
master cylinder. This ties the floor to the firewall and stops the
movement of both panels. I used stainless steel because it is very
stiff and the angle won't get pulled out of shape. It also won't rust.
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 The pan is located
to the right
of the the frame tube near the gas pedal. The vertical stripped rubber
mat is RTVd to
the "bottom" of the pan and extends down across the 1" square tube and
lays on the floor. The small blue triangle is my gas pedal foot rest.
The gas pedal assembly is from a 1990s Mazda car.
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 To further
strengthen the floor
and the clutch pedal I drilled and
tapped an aluminum rod for the 3/8" diameter bolts that are used as
pedal pivots. The clutch bolt is inserted from the left side and screws
into the rod. The brake bolt is inserted from the right and also screws
into the rod. This ties the whole assembly together. The stainless
steel strip can be seen on the right side of the rod.
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 Notice the foot rest for my clutch foot. It is an old style dimmer switch gizmo from my spare parts bucket. It is mounted on a short 3/4" diameter alum. rod which is in turn bolted to a short piece of 1" angle alum. which is then mounted to the frame rail with two self tapping screws. The surface of the clutch foot rest is located about 1/2" to the rear of the surface of the clutch pedal. That keeps my foot off the clutch when I'm resting my foot. The throttle foot rest is even with the surface of the gas pedal so I can just pivot my foot to give the car a little gas. I can go about 50 MPH without moving my foot off the throttle foot rest. If the pedal brackets weren't originally welded to the floor I would have used overhead pedals. But overall, the floor mounted ones aren't that bad. |
Another
thing I would like to point out is how I made pedal stops to
position the pedals when they are not in use. My Wilwood pedals would
lean towards the rear of the car and be at different angles if there
wasn't some method to hold them upright. If you examine the pictures you will see 1" diameter rubber tubes located partially under the sloped bottom end of the pedals. There are two thin pieces of aluminum sheet metal on either side of each rubber tube that are used to hold the rubber in place. One end of each piece of sheet metal pivots on the pedal pivot bolt and the other end is attached to an aluminum rod through the rubber tubes. By changing the center to center distance on the sheet metal strips between the 3/8" hole for the pedal pivot bolt and the 3/8" diameter hole for the pin I was able to position the rubber rods so that the pedals are at the angles I wanted. The rubber rods came out of a junk computer monitor. Now you know why my garage has so much valuable "stuff" in it. By using rubber stops, the pedals don't make any noise when you suddenly release them. The pedals are pushed upright by springs that are slipped over the push rods that operate the master cylinders. The clutch pedal movement has to be limited so the motorcycle clutch release system doesn't move too far. The total movement of the clutch push rod at the transmission is something on the order of .040". With the ratios I have built into the clutch system the pedal can only move ~1-1/4" total. And approximately 1/4" of that is the IN/OUT action of the clutch. There is a 1" x 1" piece of wood mounted between the firewall and the middle of the pedal to act as a stop for the clutch pedal. The pedal end of the wood has a rubber bumper mounted on it. I can adjust the pedal total movement by changing the size of the rubber bumper. |