I picked the Whitby Power Brake option for the Cobra somewhat as an afterthought. Originally I was going to use electric power steering with a manual rack, but after realizing that the Coyote was much too wide for the ePowersteering option I had to make some changes. This choice also influenced the power brake option. Should I go hydraulic with powerboost? or Vacuum assist? I opted for the vacuum assist through Whitby. So you’re wondering, why is the the title of this blog about brake pedal modification?
The Whitby Power Brake setup comes with everything to mate up to the Wilwood pedal box, even a new brake pedal arm. It’s about 90% complete, I did modify with Mike Everson’s spacers and Lodestone Billetworks Billet Aluminum Master Cylinder Nipples. The one item that needs work in their setup is a different angle for the brake pedal. I contacted them several times and in the case of a Coyote setup, the brake pedal is substantially lower in the footbox than the clutch and accelerator pedals – which is just dangerous! Imagine going for the brake but hitting the gas! Here’s a pic of the setup. As you can see, the pedal is about 3″ deeper than the two other pedals, and is angled downward about 20 degrees. Extremely unsafe!
Thankfully, there are some remedies! Some chose to heat the brake pedal and bend to an appropriate angle. Obviously if you have the pedal box nearly finished, it’s VERY hard to do this. Another option would be to clock the angle at the hinge, and reset with a different pin. Again, not something you can really do when the pedalbox is mounted and nearly finished. So we opted to modify at the bottom end by building up at the lower section where the pedal mounts.
Fortunately my son is heavily into 3D printing, and a whiz at setup/testing. We also employed our friend BradC who has a CNC machine and also a 3D whiz. There were several mockups, and the eventual spacer was built with CNC aluminum and carbon impregnated PETG. Here are some pics!
It ended up being a 2-3 day process of measure, print, test, re-measure, print, test, etc. The results ended up that the 3 pedals are equally spaced both side to side, as well as all the same depth. I got the new pedal spacers and covers from Mike Forte.
