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I may not have actually said, "Vroom, vroom."

But I've sat in the garage, one hand on the wheel and one on the shift knob, and seen that special stretch of county road, where it crosses the creek and goes sharp left right after, requiring a well-timed four-three downshift, with just some light toe on the brake, when the morning light was low and filtering through the trees, and the air just cool enough that the motor was nearly as happy as I was.

 

Clam pins made. These took me exactly two hours, including digging through the steel pile to find the former dishwasher valence I cut up and bent to fit. 

Also caught up on my blogging.

Those interested in the unabridged saga of how the seats got fit, the clutch and brake pedal fabrication, the steering shaft fitment and this project (up to yesterday's receivers) should fetch an appropriate beverage and click the link. Scintillating, I promise.

 

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Spent a couple hours today, ahem, adjusting my pins, and measuring the engine about 12 ways to see where the air cleaner tops and linkage ends are going to be, then socked in the pins with a couple screws...

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...and closed the lid, hoisted the car up and took a look at how the receivers might fit. 

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Yup. 

Now it's down to making the diagonal brace thingie that ties the lip of the tub to the firewall, trimming and attaching my receiver thingies, and riveting it all in.

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Had to re-do part of the near one (above). I'd made it just a skosh too narrow for the puck. Since I now have a pattern it only took an hour or so. 

Still a bit of smoothing to do on them. Maybe paint? And final line-up and rivets. But they're otherwise done.

Here's what I'm shooting for:

Here's what I got:

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Yeah, The Spyder Factory does 'em better but I don't know of anyone else.

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Hey Ed,

You're doing some pretty cool stuff. Adding those could make getting the engine in & out a greater challenge. Clearance is difficult as is the carbs, fan shroud and alternator have to come off and then you still only have a quarter inch or so of clearance if you're just pulling the engine.  Just saying 😀

Pete

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Tried to put the pedals in last night and it was not possible, so today I cut the floor section out of the footwell.

I can see now I'll be re-doing the MC holes so the pedals are even. You can see I cut out the "tunnel" plate to make room for the single gas pedal. What was there was perfect to just bolt in a Bug pedal set but why do anything simple when it's just a few 10s of hours to cut it all up and build it by hand from scratch?

Put the car on the lift and put the lift WAY up, and at the last notch I heard a "pop" and about a half pint of hydraulic fluid puked out of the cylinder. So that was cool.

I called Direct Lift thinking I'm needing a whole new cylinder and the dude there was like: How high was it?

All the way.

How often do you put it up there?

First time in many months. Maybe ever for that top notch.

Ah. So maybe some fluid got past the rear seal and has been in there a long time. Happens a lot. When the lift is up that high there's nowhere for it to go, so there's a bleed-off valve for this. 

He tells me to get the car off it and cycle it up and down a few times all the way. Call him if significant fluid comes out after the second full lift. On the first one I got another half pint. After that, nothing much. 

So I pushed the car back on the lift and continued hacking at it.

Such is today's shop drama.

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Yes. The underside of the car will be unpainted aluminum and rivets. Probably allen screws in the driver's floor section, if only to facilitate my own sorting it out, since the dang pedals are all being cobbled together from detritus by yrs truly. I will post photos of it (the belly pan) when I'm done, because it's going to look like $4 million and, realistically, almost no one will ever see it again.

Pedals, today at 1 pm: 

That's how they gotta be for the brake pedal to have 8 inches of throw, which is what's needed for the dual circuit master cylinder to function in the event of a bad circuit.

Here's a shot of the situation at 4:30, as I was getting ready to knock off: 

Basically made the whole front unit of the accelerator pedal system today, though almost none of the welding's done yet. Since I'm working from (a very few) photos and no technical drawings, I spent much of the day setting or holding parts near each other and guestimating sizes and distances. I think this is gonna work and look about right. I'll bench test it tomorrow, tack it together and test it in the car. 

Livin' the goddamn dream over here!

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Last edited by edsnova

Productive day in the shop, and inches from being done with the pedals.... Dang, ran out of wire.

Almost though. Just a few more tweaks to the actual gas pedal thing that your right foot goes on. 

Moving the pivot point down. The hexbar only needs about an inch, inch-and-a-half of travel to get from idle to WOT. I was getting nearly 4 inches of pull with it like this.

Everything else is roughed-in: welded, ground smoove, holes drilled for mounting, etc. Now just needs a few nylocks and washers and maybe a cotter pin up top in place of the nut so it won't bind up or fall apart.

Oh, and of course a few more lightening holes.

 

 

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Thanks, and yup: It's quite a bit more involved than I had reckoned, but mostly because I've never really even looked at a pedal set before, let alone built one.

I have about 35 hours in pedal fabrication so far, with a few—five, let's say—more to go. With material  expenses I'm way behind where I'd have been if I'd just sold off the stuff that came with my kit and bought the Fibersteel legit 550 pedal cluster for $900.

That said, if I ever have to make another set, it'll probably be a bit more than half the time. A third set would be quicker still and probably better. 

It's therapy.

And...thanks to everyone on this board for all the encouragement. Hugely inspiring as we pass this milestone of finally finishing one of the first things I asked about when I got the kit.

Decided my accelerator pedal, using the Empi pedal base, wasn't good enough. So I dug through the scrap pile, got out the sledge hammer and the cutoff wheel and the grinder and the welder, and five hours later I had

I'll save the boring details for a blog post, but suffice it to say I'm pretty chuffed about the way this came out, and basically dumbfounded that Porsche made these this way in the first place.

 

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