Rest Your Weary Feet - Quattro Rally Build Update
Posted on Aug 05, 2021
"Rest Your Weary Feet" - Rally navigators need somewhere to plant their feet and brace themselves. So, rally cars have sturdy footrests. We could easily have bought a generic one or made a simple one but we’d seen the ones employed on the factory cars, and of course thought “we could make that”.
As usual we started with a cardboard model to get the shape similar and then transferred that to some 1/8” thick aluminium plate and the floor bracket to some steel.
We then welded a bar of angle across the top and the plate to the floor at the angle we felt appropriate.
Then we started to work on the holes. We didn’t have dimple die punches even close to the size the works car used and they are not cheap. We scaled the original photos to see if we could measure them. They seemed to come out at 1-3/4”, which seemed huge so we went conservative and ordered a 1-1/4” punch.
Because we were using a smaller die, we altered the design a bit to include a few more holes which we made with a hole saw.
Then we dimpled them on the press.
We discovered that the process did distort the plate a bit but added a lot of strength. So much so that we couldn’t flatten it completely even using the press!
Not wanting to break it, we decided that it was flat enough and that the bracket would hold it at least a little flatter.
Finally, we trimmed off the excess and hit it with a wire wheel to remove some of the dimple die marks. We’re very pleased with the final result.
Next, we’ll attempt to reproduce the driver side foot rest.
As usual we started with a cardboard model to get the shape similar and then transferred that to some 1/8” thick aluminium plate and the floor bracket to some steel.
We then welded a bar of angle across the top and the plate to the floor at the angle we felt appropriate.
Then we started to work on the holes. We didn’t have dimple die punches even close to the size the works car used and they are not cheap. We scaled the original photos to see if we could measure them. They seemed to come out at 1-3/4”, which seemed huge so we went conservative and ordered a 1-1/4” punch.
Because we were using a smaller die, we altered the design a bit to include a few more holes which we made with a hole saw.
Then we dimpled them on the press.
We discovered that the process did distort the plate a bit but added a lot of strength. So much so that we couldn’t flatten it completely even using the press!
Not wanting to break it, we decided that it was flat enough and that the bracket would hold it at least a little flatter.
Finally, we trimmed off the excess and hit it with a wire wheel to remove some of the dimple die marks. We’re very pleased with the final result.
Next, we’ll attempt to reproduce the driver side foot rest.