You can see the area I needed to make
after cutting the original in two places. The "red" outline is
the shape of the new piece that would have to be made. Now this would acutely
change three things when finished... (a) This would hug the firewall
much closer to give me some much needed room for headers, (b) By making
the arm straight (no bend anymore), I would have the arm come out in a
better location inside the car. This would put 1 1/4" of added
distance between the gas pedal and brake pedal. I was going to relocate
the brake pedal mounting tab even if I didn't do any of this, (c) The
arm was sticking into the engine compartment so much that only a small
amount was inside the car so this way it would lengthen the arm in that
area too. I was going to add the needed length at the time I was redoing
the tab because it wouldn't work with that short of a throw, so this change
was a "win-win-win" situation.
|
|
|
Here is the arm all cut up. The piece
on the left that has an "S" shape to it has been eliminated completely.
The new piece taking it's place is in the middle of the other three.
Let's tack weld them together and see how things fit.
|
|
|
This part is critical because I need
the same distance between the center of the pivot point and the farthest
part of the arm so the pedal will come out in the same place in the
floor. This distance is 8 3/4". By laying the pieces over the paper
template, I was able to align the assembly for welding.
|
|
|
Here you can see the tack-welds only.
This is just in case things don't work right. It looks the same on both
sides. What you have to be careful of is only putting one tack on each
side. Then turn it over and put one on the other side or you run the
risk of the tack-welds pulling the one of the pieces to one side. What
you see here has been turned over many times to get to this point. I
checked the 8 3/4" dimension to make sure things didn't move and
they didn't so it's time to see how it fits before final welding. It's a
lot easier to break apart tack-welds compared to a fully welded part.
|
|
|
|
1
2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10
11 12 13
14 15
16 17
18 19
20 21
22 23 24
25 26
27 28 |
|
29 30
31 32
33 34
35 36
37
38
39
40 41 |
