Accelerator hinge fitting and link modifcation

This was the rusted cab floor

I repaired it earlier but now needed to fit the hinge and pedal back in position.

I brought a pedal hinge from custom and commercial.

 Using the pen lines I had drawn when cutting the old hinge out  this with a drill bit through the holes helped keep it square and lined up.

I counter sinked the two holes to help get a penetrating weld, you can see from the pen lines that I nearly fitted it the wrong way around.

I then moved onto repairing the hinge on the accelerator pedal 

 I whittled this little piece from a lump of square mild steel bar and drilled the holes to suit the hinge pin I brought

I then had the idea of fitting 6 mm track rod ends to a lump of steel that I'd weld to the pedal. But they looked to big the weld would have looked ugly and a bit of over kill. 

So i decided to open up the oval hole in the pedal and make a bush to fit a 5 mm ball joint

The bush was turned with an interference fit and squeezes into place with a bench vise.

with the hindge in its position I needed to fix it in place.

 I was going to mig weld it but thought Brazing would look neater I've never braised before so this should be good.

The only thing I had to get a hot enough flame was an Arc welder and some carbon rods. 

These rods once slid together ignite from the current from the welder, as they burn shorter you slide them slowly together, until pulled apart to stop them so the current can't bridge the gap.

 I probably over did it with the heat and the ammount of braising rod I added between the gaps but the lower hindge is going nowhere, Just have to clean of the slag.

 Under the cab floor the two angle's that hold the drilled out nuts where the rod goes through to link the pedal to the cable were also oval from ware. I opened these up, but had to cut a drill bit down to fit under the floor.

I then made a couple of brass bushes to squeeze into the holes that would fit an 8 mm round steel bar.

I then cut, radiuses and bent a piece of flat steel bar and turned a tube with a shoulder to fit in the lower end braised it in place and drilled a 5 mm hole for the ball joint at the other end and taped a hole fro a 4 mm grub screw.

These are the parts laid out ready for mockup.

Then put together on the bench.

I then painted them up pushed the bushes on the rod, that scrape the paint off. assembled all the parts and then drilled through the grub screw hole to make a dimple to locate the grub screw once the angle a position was correct.

There was a little friction in the mechanism I probable put this down to not drilling the brass bush holes parallel to each other.

Cab floor Accelerator Pedal Hinge Repair

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.