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I've tried doing some research on this and haven't found anything..
I've done a T5 swap on an 89 Formula. I have two sets of pedals, both have the same problem. The cross bolt that goes through the pedal box is sloppy in the steel bushings, the nylon bushings are fine. The bolt diameter measures out at .350 and the interior of the steel bushing is .418.
It doesn't look like anything is abnormally worn. Is this one of those deals where there's built in slop so the factory guy couldn't screw it up? Is the steel bushing just supposed to be crushed when you tighten the cross bolt and it pivots on the nylon? In which case, how do you know if its centered?
I'm thinking of either getting a smaller diameter steel or just drill out the box portion and use a thicker bolt.....
This is the first time assembly so I haven't had a problem. It's more just I want to make sure its in right so I don't have to pull it apart again in 100 miles....
Just seems like a sloppy way to do it... Like it could throw off the angle the clutch or brake master pushrods
I'm guessing you're kinda young and haven't had too many cars from the late 60s up through the 90s?
There is NO WORD I can think of that better describes GM (and Frod and Xler, and AMC up until they got absorbed) during that period of time, than "sloppy".
The combination of complacent self-absorbed myopic management, lazy "entitled" greedy unionized labor force, short-term-focused investors, the "silo" mentality (viz. 4 different 350s being put into THE SAME CAR just because this one had this kind of cupholder and that one had this extra wrinkle in the sheet metal and the other one had a sticker package), cost cutting no matter the consequences, overproduction, excessive reverence for "the storied history", not enough attention paid to CURRENT market conditions, brand management, COMPLETE absence of quality control, ... I could go on for quite a bit longer. The net value of all this was what we fondly call the "malaise" years, during which the American car companies repeatedly got blindsided by adversity they didn't know how to deal with, were totally unprepared for, and reacted completely wrongly to instead of examining their obsolete culture with honesty- the Arab oil embargo, stagflation, severe recession, recognition of the absolute necessity of some kind of emissions controls, competition from former industrial powers that had been levelled and wiped off the map in WW2 but now returned with all-new plants and a hungry and eager-to-work labor force and US-trained engineers and managers that actually put into effect what they learned in school instead of slipping into a comfortable "we've always done it that way that's just how we do it at GM" mentality, and again the list could go on. The product - THE CARS - turned from being the envy of the world, into COMPLETE GARBAGE that not even the people who built them, let alone the rest of the American public, would even consider buying.
The sloppy fit of that bolt in that tube is SO TYPICAL of everything Detroit did in those years, it's amusing you are concerned about that when there's SO MUCH of greater importance that's far sloppier than that about your car.
Gotcha but this is my 62nd car (1961-2011)... The last pedal box I rebuilt was out of a 64 Falcon and it was precision fit enough to go on the space shuttle compared to this, even my 77 Formula 4 spd was better than this.
04-15-2017, 09:58 PM
