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by Brian_K_White 974 days ago
All that design and fabrication work, and the pedals swing the wrong way? And has no rigid frame connection to a seat?

If you're going to bother, then one of the biggest things is to rigidly attach the pedals to the seat so that they cannot move in relation to the seat even against the full power of legs.

And of course car pedals swing on a pivot that is above the pedals not below, although the gas pedal has an extra linkage so that IT does pivot on the bottom.

Clutch and brake (not break) require full leg power and knee bend, only gas is purely ankle bend, calf power.

And if such details don't matter, then you're right back to the off the shelf one.

3 comments

You're dead on about rigid mounts for the pedals. One of the first issues many sim racers run into with regular cheap pedals and a desk mounted wheel is that they pedals slide once you start braking hard. And with load cell pedals the expectation is that you'll be using even more force, so that problem will just get worse.

As for pedal mounting location, many pedals can be top or bottom mounted if your racing chassis allows for it. However, floor mounted pedals offer the same performance as top mounted, match the majority of purpose built racing cars, and are simpler to mount in a sim racing chassis.

Is it really universally true that clutch and brake pedals have the pivot above?

It is indeed what I’ve always seen on production road cars, but I don’t see why it’s necessarily true for all cars.

I believe some Honda clutch pedals are floor mounted, at least on the TSX I drove. I really didn’t like the feel.
Ever heard of a Volkswagen Beetle, or a Porsche 911?
Why not include a third pedal type, then have all three at once? In a Citroen DS, the clutch pivots above, the accelerator pivots below, and the brake is a button that engages the hydraulic system.

Granted, the DS is perhaps the weirdest production car ever made in large numbers.

https://citroenvie.com/ds-brake-button-advantages/