Nobody would call a TR6 a roomy car, and when you're over 6 feet tall, it can be a rather snug fit. Add in large feet, and the driver's options for positions get even more limited. It's a good thing i like wearing converse all-star shoes, because i would be hard-pressed to work the foot pedals with shoes that are at all larger.
This is a problem no matter what your height or foot size, because in stock form, there's really nowhere to put your left foot while cruising on the highway, You don't want to rest it on the clutch pedal and risk burning out the disk, and with the early cars (like mine), you can easily hit the high beams switch on the floor.
Some sporty cars fix this with a dummy pedal, a place to put your foot to the left of the clutch, so i thought i'd make my own.
It seems to have been a somewhat common thing to try to squeeze large speakers in the car by cutting out the kick panels, one of the few larger expanses of space available. This was done on mine as well.
That's the passenger side showing how the hole was covered with thin galvanized sheet. Here's the hole on the driver side, in all it's hacked-up glory.
It's a mess. I think they drilled out a series of holes and then i dunno, cold chiseled them apart? I wanted to put the foot rest about in the middle of that hole, and the very thin galvanized cover was not going to hold up, and i don't want to tear down the fenders to replace those panels just yet. So i started by making a new cover out of 18 gauge steel.
This shot also shows the basic foot rest and the braces i'll add for strength. The foot rest pieces are 14ga steel i got a while back from the metal supplier scrap bin for practice.
The new steel panel will need some additional trimming, but it's using mostly the same mount points as the old version. There's a slight bend in the panel, so i put a slight bend in the foot rest part as well. I probably didn't need to do that, since there will also be a carpeted panel between this steel sheet and the final foot rest, but oh well.
Here's a view of the welded footrest fit to the panel. Ignore my 3/4 terrible welds.
I installed threaded inserts to mount the foot rest, both for better strength than sheet metal screws, and because it'll be easier to remove and replace in the future if needed.
This view shows the back of that plate - i doubled the 18 gauge across where the foot rest mounts by plug end edge welding it in place. Between that and the slight bend in that area, it should be plenty stiff for all but intentional destruction.
Test fit in place with final trim, and adding a couple more mounting screws to the plate.
Hard to see at this angle, but the foot rest sits just slightly above the plane of the clutch pedal. With size 13 shoes, the ball of my foot just hits the bottom of the rest, with plenty of room below to hit the light switch, and it doesn't interfere with the clutch pedal at all.
Here's the final installation, with the kick panel carpeted. Rather than carpet the foot rest, i finished it with 3 coats of rubberized undercoating, which doesn't give a ton of grip, but will hopefully hold up well over time.
I've been wanting to do this for a while, and installing new carpet was the excuse i needed to get it done. I like having a stable place to put my left foot, and it's going to make longer trips much nicer.