Making Parts

Early construction hot rods are cool stories, but often the work is a little suspect. Case in point, my Studebaker was an automatic car that the owner turned into a manual transmission car when he stuck the Corvette motor and 4 speed in it back in 1960. So that meant he had to put a clutch pedal in it.

Since the car was an automatic, it had a wide brake pedal in it, where a stick car would have two smaller pedals, one each for brake and clutch. For some reason, he decided to leave the full wide brake pedal in it which meant the clutch pedal had to be moved waaaaaay over next to the kick panel. He told me nobody liked to drive the car beacuse of the clutch pedal being way over there.

Here's how I fixed it.

Did you think I was kidding? Look at the stretch on that thing!

Here it is after a little surgery.

He told me later that the whole pedal assembly including master cylinder are mid 60's Ford. I think I have the receipt.

And just like that, all is well with the pedals. Those are early Ford pedal pads, like 1930's and they fit perfect.