Sunday 20 December 2009

DHC report nr. 63; Pedal woes

As it is rather wintery over here at the moment, with night time temperatures dropping below -10°C and light frost during the day I won’t be working much on the car itself. Luckily I do have a few parts lying ready to be assembled, which I can do at home or in the heated workshop.

As I received the pedal extensions a few days ago I thought it a good idea to start assembling the accelerator pedal and the pedal box. All the parts of which had been coated or cleaned, ready for assembly. First thing to do was fit the alloy extensions to the pedals;


And the footrest. I had ordered an alloy competition footrest, but that turned out a bit too large for my liking, so that will be used in ‘t Kreng. Which means I nicked the alloy extension plate from that car to use in the DHC;


As the extension I fitted to the accelerator pedal some 15 years ago was quite worn and damaged over the years, I fitted a new one. With the extensions fitted I started on the re-assembly. First one was the accelerator pedal;


After which I switched my attention to the next and last job for the day, the pedal box. Trial fitting the pedal shaft to the box and the clutch pedal didn’t reveal any problems. Only that the front of the shaft was very tight inside the pedal bush. Didn’t think much about it until I tried the brake pedal. After a few taps with the hammer I felt something was not as it should be, which was correct! One of the pedal’s bearing bushes had been damaged;


First I thought this was caused by some of the powder coating that I might have overlooked on the bushes’ surface. But after a closer inspection of all the parts I found out that the ends of the pedals' shaft (on the outside of the circlip groove) have a 0,4mm larger diameter then the rest of the shaft.


Haven’t got a clue as to why Leyland/Triumph machined them this way. So I’ll have to order some new bushes and wait for them to arrive before I can finish the pedal box. Gives me the chance to machine one end of the shaft to the same diameter as the rest of it. Should make assembly a bit easier!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Perhaps that is to force a clearance after assembly. If the end fits then shaft will have adequate play.

Could just as easily be a manufacturing convenience or oversight. grinding to size may not have reached the ends or machining the groves may have swollen the ends or dropping them on the head when they were still infants may have caused it to bell out.

Unknown said...

Possible double posting (thanks Google+)

Perhaps to force clearance compliance after assembly.

Otherwise perhaps a manufacturing convenience or oversight.

Grinding did not reach ends, groove manufacturing caused the ent to deform, dropping during packing caused ends to bell out etc..

Beans said...

Hi Kalle, this one is still a mystery till date. But as I am in the process off collecting parts from my spare parts collection for the restoration of my '76 FHC, I'll check the shafts I have in stock to see if the others have the same deviation.