I had a wobbly gas (in English we say accelerator) pedal for years and looking at the rust below it I'm surprised it survived this long, and didn't end up getting pushed through the cab floor when trying to get climb up all those hills on the way to Devon.To remove the pedal I had to bend it away from the hinge as the wasted/rusted pin you see below that should slide out of the hinge but it was not going anywhere maybe due to years of me standing up bodily on the pedal to squeeze a few more precious horses from the engine.
I ground away the hinge and then wire wheeled the paint and rust to get a true picture of the total corrosion. It came down to the same dilemma I've been having with most of the small repairs, do I spend the time fabricating the panels or just buy them? This time I decided to fab)ricate) this one myself, although there were other repairs in the floor I didn't fancy replacing like a half or a full cab floor.
The tough part was making the channeled section and matching the curve of the floor. The channel was joggled in a vice with two blocks with a small radius on their edge, positioned the correct width apart and placed on the opposite side of the repair panel to a plastic spacer that I had shaped using the old metal as a guide.
As this was squeezed between the vice jaws the channel was formed and surprisingly the shallow radius I cut on the plastic spacer shaped the repair (nearly perfectly) to the correct curve I needed to fit the hole I cut out. Success.
I bent the repair patch a little more then tack welded the edges, persuading the repair to sit flush as I went round.
With the patch seam welded all the way around I ground down the welds flush and cut the hole out using the markings I had previously marked onto the floor. The hole came out a little bigger than I expected using a hole saw I couldn't keep square, and I should have spot welded the new hinge on the patch before I welded it in place. but will have to do that later.
