All I wanted to do tonight is drop the pedal box, peel back the aluminium protect plastic, and put the pedal limiters on. Someone up there had other plans.
The main issue is the fixings, in my case three of them. The smart person in me thought 'I know, I'll use a nut and bolt combination to make it strong, and three of them to make it three times as strong'. Problem is I put the nut and bolt in place when I could get to both sides at the same time...
Cue many minutes of locking pliers and bruised knuckles, and I've finally got them removed. So now I need to come up with a better solution that is nowhere near as much grief.
This is the hole in the chassis, and the pedal box as it goes in place. I need a better solution for those three bolt holes. To be honest, this really isn't a bad thing. I was never very happy with the three bolts, even with high tensile bolts and washers there is a danger that with overenthusiastic braking it would just push through. The bottom of the pedal box hooks on to the chassis so that isn't going anywhere.
What I'm thinking about is a plate on the inside with nuts welded one, that would take care of having to hold the nuts still when I tighten things up. But I can do the same on the pedal box, and make a 'sandwich' that will lock the box in place. I can also make the bolts one size larger at the same time.
So I need two plates of steel, as wide as the footwell and maybe a couple of inches tall from and back. One will get the nuts welded on, the other will probably at least get tacked to the pedal box.
Oh, and in the fun and games of getting the pedals off, I managed to catch my jeans repeatedly on the 'protective' corner trim that I fitted yesterday!! It would have been ok if it had been tight against the side, but it's not because fool as I am I did do the rivets first. So I think the corners need to be rounded off like I had done with the outside ones. It's only a pair each side where the rear panel meets the centre panel. At the rear it meets a right angle so cannot be caught, and I need to decide whether to do the front or not.
Of course I won't do any more tonight, apart from the noise of cutting metal it was quite hard work folding double to get under the steering wheel!
Oh, one bit of good news... I did check the pedal limiters, and there's nothing to do! The brake pedal is limited by the brake switch in one direction, and the piston itself in the other. The clutch pedal has a bracket to stop it coming too far out (it comes out roughly as far as the brake pedal), and once I find the pin that'll be limited by the master cylinder. I'll have to check the gas pedal though, it needs to hit the firewall before the cable is pulled tight. I do have some adjustment on the throttle though which helps.
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