Monday, January 31, 2011

The original gas pedal is held together by a ball and socket type set up.  The rod that comes through the floorboard had the "ball" on the end.  The back side of the pedal has a rubber socket that the ball pops into.  Anyway, it eroded and is now broken.  I found an old Speed King bass drum pedal and decided to make a pedal out of it.



If you have never seen one of these, it looks to be an easy convert.  There is a good base with a solid hinge.  The top of the pedal connects to the a swing arm that moves the drum stick so that it strikes the bass drum.  While all of that extra metal is, I am sure, functional and necessary to play the bass drum, it is top heavy in appearance and just all around ugly.

So I got out the cutting wheel, and took the end off.  Unfortunately, I don't own a die grinder, yet, so I used the side of the cutting wheel to smooth out my cuts.  'Came out pretty good.  And I polished it up a little too.

My cousin is going to help me rivet some narrow side panels in the rear and then I will run a hole through the rod and either use a cotter pin or thin rod to secure it.  At least that is what I have in my head.  I will keep you posted.

Additionally, we want to french the headlights.  So there is no better way to accomplish that, in my opinion, than through the use of a pair of 1953 Ford headlight rings.  The outer rings were separate from the inner rings.  Not knowing anything about Fords, I had to do some homework and I found that there were some clips that held the two together.  I was able to find those clips at Mac's Antique Auto Parts.