Custom Dead Pedal, Thoughts? Interest?
 

So while I'm drowning in my never ending sea of wires from my wire tuck I've been working on a custom dead pedal for my car since my plastic stocker broke when removing it. I am an engineer at a sheet metal shop so I have access to cnc punch presses and press brakes so naturally the piece would be made of sheetmetal.

I started with a paper template to prove all my bends would work out. I then moved to a cardboard template to give the piece rigidity and the ability to be roughly test fit. Then came a final prototype out of 18 ga 304 stainless. The two pieces were punched to shape, press brake formed, and riveted to join the two pieces.

The first prototype fit very well but will need spacers made for the mounting points. This will also need bracing made for the top left corner to brace it against the firewall.

I would like to see what other members think about this part, critiques and ideas to improve it. I would also like to find out if there would be significant interest to make a production run of the finished product. The hole pattern can be tweaked and even custom to each pedal if wanted.

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Thanks for looking,
Ryan

Nice work.

I have the aluminum cast gas pedal and dead pedal, but haven't found a good way to make the dead pedal not look silly as it would simply be placed on top of the original plastic structure.

This might be a decent way to make it look correct.

I should think people would be interested in this, particularly if you are able to closely match the look of the stock hardware.

it was originally intended to be made of aluminum but the stainless was a piece of scrap from another part so that was the winner. A production run could be made in whatever material wanted. I would like to get the look of the stock holes in the part but that would require some custom tooling and would more than likely look odd in sheet metal (I have laid out around 12 different layouts and this looked best).

One adjustment I will be making is that the slots will be changed to oversize round holes, This will lessen the size of the tabs and still allow plenty of room to tweak the fitment.

Thanks for the feedback,
Ryan

nice work! I personally would really like an extension on the left hand side of the accelerator pedal to make heal & toe easier. crooked willow composites years ago made a very nice piece that clamped around the back of the pedal so no drilling was required.

A company made those I'm not sure if they still do but here's a link to a thread about them. https://www.rx7club.com/3rd-generati...tender-832697/

The dead pedal looks great! Keep it up, I'm sure several people would be interested.

I haven't been able to get in contact with Widefoot in years. I'm sure you would have a market if you wanted to make them.

I thought there was a cast AL dead pedal that was made to match the "live" pedals, but it was RHD only.

Bling only for bling's sake!

Now if you do not also make a new gas pedal, it will really look worse than before due to the unbalanced look. It was balanced before and now it isn't.

What would the cost be on this? Also do you think you could fab up a gas pedal cover?

Nice work....

IMHO, I think there are to many holes. Maybe scale back the amount a bit

L8R

To answer both of these. I see your point with it being unbalanced and thought of the gas pedal cover myself. I can pull my pedal off tomorrow and see if I can make one. The tricky thing would be mounting it to the original pedal without drilling and riveting and at the same time making sure it was safe and would not inhibit the pedal movement.

I can get some pricing done for next week once I figure out all the spacers, rivets and bolts needed. Obviously the higher the quantity the lower the price so the more people interested in this the better it is for everyone.

Thanks for everyone's interest and feedback,
Ryan

I am actually working on doing this right now along with making some other little tweaks to the main design

Would 3M VHB tape work better then rivets? Allow users to "stick" it together, would help reduce packing size.

I know this a test, but it would be nicer to have the dead pedal cover all of the cut out for the stock carpet.

I'm not sure I would trust tape to hold the two pieces together because that joint is almost like a pivot when pressure is applied. I will give this a try with the second prototype I haven't riveted together yet though.

By covering the carpet cutout do you mean the section in the lower left that you can see the body color and the other mounting point where you can see the sound insulation? Those can be easily covered with some slight mods to my layouts, I was just trying to minimize size on my first proto to make sure there was no fitment issues with the first run.

Gas pedal cover is in the works.

Nice work :icon_tup:

I'm considering modifying an oem ally pedal cover to be more solid using ally. Not a fan of the stock plastic one.

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Excellent!

Yeah I wouldnt mind having to drill a hole or two in the gas pedal to hold the cover on...

Sarcasm?

Paper template of the gas pedal cover. I laid the pattern out to match the pattern on my dead pedal prototype so the two will match and be usable prototypes. The small holes are rivet holes and all seem to be ok for drilling through except the top left which might have to be shifted to the right a little.

Nope not at all, I am not a fan of pedal covers that don't hard mount. I love the design and as soon as you are ready I am ready to buy a set.

Question - Could a thicker piece of aluminum be used to then CNC out a ring around the holes like on the factory pedals to give the same appearance? If not I understand, I am too experienced with the CNC and that stuff.

Sorry "not too experienced" not "too experienced"

A thick piece of aluminum could be used to do this but this would raise the cost of the part significantly as material cost would increase as well as machine time. To machine that ring around every hole would take a large amount of time. Believe me, I thought about this. A piece like the one you speak of on a cnc mill would take 10x the amount of time it took to run the dead pedal I mad on a cnc press.

I am working on finding a hole layout that is similar to the OEM pedals that looks good on both the dead pedal and gas pedal. The dead pedal may have raises dimples in its final product depending on cost of tooling for that.

Thanks for the interest,
Ryan

Would there be more interest in a full dead pedal replacement or a dead pedal cover?

A cover would cost less and would retain all the OEM fitment and hardware and I would be more comfortable making this from aluminum rather than stainless. The reason I was going for a full replacement is that my pedal had to be broken for it to be removed. I could pursue both options if the interest is there.

Thanks,
Ryan

I would prefer just the cover.

I'd be interested in a stainless steel dead pedal..... when tracking with OEM seats (and Spirit R seats) I used to brace so hard against the OEM dead pedal I cracked the damn thing :lol: