Footboxes

(7 hours since last post, 54 hours total)

Completed the footboxes today. Actually, the driver's side is not installed, but all the panels are drilled and ready to go in, and that is by far the hard part.

But first, to catch up on photos:

The pedals as they'll look inside the car, more or less. The accelerator is the very nice Russ Thompson version. I discovered that the placement of this pedal is incompatible with the cruise control switches on the Mustang pedal box. Fortunately, I wasn't planning to use the cruise control anyway.

Passenger side footbox, as completed with Clecos. Took almost all of my 50 Clecos to hold it together like this.


Passenger footbox from the inside. Note all the aluminum debris from drilling the panels. This is when it is really good to have a helper.



Here's Emmett cleaning up all the drill debris. He's very enthusiastic about this task. I have to make sure to pick up anything that I don't want to fish out of the vacuum later.


The passenger footbox is complete. Drilled, bonded, and riveted. It's surprisingly solid. When the panels are anchored by a few screws at the corners, they're disturbingly flexible. When they're finished with rivets along each edge, they form a very rigid box.

The Drill Doctor that my Dad got me for Christmas last year has been extremely important. After drilling enough holes, I'll find the bit working very slowly even on the aluminum. A quick trip through the sharpener yields one of two results. Either the bit becomes completely useless, or it becomes fantastically sharp. I haven't figured out what creates the inconsistency, so I just sharpen again if necessary.

I'm taking 5 days off work, plus the Thanksgiving holidays, so I hope to get a lot done on the car. Ideally, I'd like to finish the aluminum and install the motor and transmission.