Pedal Box

Still saving for the engine so installed the pedal box last weekend which has been lying around for a while. Offered the pedal box up with the clutch pedal removed to make it a bit easier and marked all the holes. Then did a lot of drilling, pic below was taken from within the engine bay looking back at the front of the footwell and shows the cutout for brake servo with slotted holes (ahem - intended!) for adjustment.

The braket for the clutch master cylinder sits ontop of the footwell. Installed pedal box shown below. You can also see the U-bolts for the column on the scuttle hoop above, and the SLFL25 RHP bearing (from RS) fitted ready to take the steering column. This replaces the dax part and is much firmer and prevents the column wobble that some kits using the sierra column can suffer from. The guidance for fitting this is as high and as close to the centreline of the car as possible. It also says to beware that the column could foul on engine/exhaust parts so you need to be sure of where everything is before you fit it. Initially this worried me as it will be a while until we get the engine and exhaust during which time I wont be able to do any dashboard work without a steering column. I then remembered that we will take the car to Gary at Sidepipes who will be making us custom sidepipes and will bend the exhaust to fit around whatever is in the way so I could whack the steering column in and bo**ocks to whatever might clash with it.

The Dax manual says to mount the pedal box as high up as possible, you'll notice mines dropped 1cm or so. This is because the manual also says the lower part of the pedal box bolts through to plates on the chassis on the other side of the footwell. If the pedal box is at its highest then the bolts dont come through the plates, they are too high. Therefore I lowered the pedal box a bit so it all located properly. The only side effect this has is that the pushrod of the clutch master cylinder is at a slightly increased angle but it still operates smoothly. One thing to note is that the pedals are pretty high off the floor. We'll either have to put larger pedals on or raise the floor a bit so its comfortable for Naomi, mind you she is just sat on the floor with no seat.

As far as the steering goes, the column height is of most importance to me so I can get my legs under the steering wheel. The sierra wheel is 14" but I plan to use a 13" momo wheel eventually. I could have got the bearing a little further inboard but would have lost a bit of height on that mounting point which would make the steering wheel sit more at an angle and given a less comfortable driving position.

Clutch master cylinder can also be seen attached to the pedal, theres a slot in the top of the footwell to allow the pivot off the top of the clutch pedal to come through. Got a brake servo from a 1998 1.8 TD escort van off ebay for £18 as opposed to £150 from Dax. That just needs painting then it will go on with a new master cylinder (£15 ebay).