Let's get some footroom in here!

I've gotten all of the holes drilled in the factory mounted aluminum and I only broke one drill bit and dulled two others. These were supposed to be GOOD bits too. Oh well...

Since finishing that, I started on modifications to the frame. The stock drivers side footbox has a curved tube at the bottom with another hoop that ties into it from the vertical support. Here's a picture of it.



That design seriously compromises foot room for the driver in the pedal box. If you look closely you can see the wasted space behind that curve. I cut out the curved parts and welded in some new pieces to square off the corner so now it looks like this.



The in-between is a bit scary looking - First I cut the curved tubes out.




Then I had to rotate the frame all around since I don't weld very well upside down - okay I'm not a great welder anyway but I'm really bad upside down.



But the finished product turned out okay. I added a gusset in the corner and also sleeved the inside of the tubes where I put them together. When I bought the tubing to change this, I got some extra tubing that would fit snugly inside. The outer structural tubing is 1.5" 0.120 so I got some 1.25" 0.090 tubing for the sleeves. It fits nice and snug - no play at all.

When I cut the outer pieces I drilled a hole about one inch from the end and then slid the inner tube in and rosette welded it in place. That made it easy to line up the new tubing and gave a backing to the welds.

Here's the finished product.



As for the final appearance, a friend of mine who is a professional welder once told me that there's no weld so ugly that a grinder can't fix it. I'm a firm believer in that.