Alright, before you even think it, I KNOW this isn’t the prettiest foot box in the world! ;-> I’ve deemed it the patchwork-quilt foot box mod. However, I did this knowingly and more or less on purpose.
Why aesthetics don’t matter in this case: I’m going to be adding heat-insulating material over both foot boxes and the firewall, so when it’s all buttoned up, you’ll never see the patches. With that in mind, it didn’t make sense to spend the extra money on aluminum making 4 new panels. My 2 main concerns were that it was bigger, and that it was structurally sound. Mission accomplished on both areas.
All in all, I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out, especially considering I’ve never fabricated with aluminum before and I had to use a DIY bending brake setup to make a 4-bend box for the end piece.
Cost – about $20 worth of aluminum panels, same grade as FFR kit.
Thanks – to Ray for the initial pics of 4 into 4 headers so I could gauge if everything would clear. I feel pretty good that I’m good to go there.
Procedure:
Background/Step 1 – My situation was a little different because the kit I bought was already started, and the foot box was already assembled. That required me to drill out all of the rivets and cut through and wire wheel the black sealant off of the box. Not a big deal, the wire wheel in a drill does pretty quick work of that stuff, although it makes a huge mess.
Step 2 – After everything was cleaned up, I took my tin snips and cut the fold on the inner wall of the foot box so I could create an angled bend. I did so in a place that would ensure the largest header bend would still clear. I also bent out the original panel ends to make straight pieces out of them.
Step 3 – After measuring everything, I made a new bottom panel by using the original as a template and adding the new lengths that I needed. I originally used snips to cut the aluminum, but it makes a jagged mess of the panels, so I switched over to the jigsaw with a metal blade. It’s kind of difficult to get a true straight cut with a jigsaw, but it did the job well, and cut quickly.
Step 4 – I put the top panel back in place and made a “patch” to fill the gap created by the new inner panel bend. I was worried it wouldn’t be strong, but it actually turned out great.
Step 5 – The fun part…I wanted to basically make a “cap” that would fit over the other 4 panels on the end, so I had to create a sort of box as the end panel. The top 3 panel bends fit inside the others, and the bottom is under the bottom panel. This was pretty challenging, especially bending since my bending brake was basically a piece of angle aluminum and a board and rubber mallet. The most challenging part was getting the piece in place though with the 3/4″ down sloping tube and the large round 2″ tube in the foot box. Took some moving around, but it went in. I did scratch up the powder coat, so a little touch up was needed.
Step 6 – The end panel left a gap of about 3″ from just under the 3/4″ down sloping tube all the way around and down. I cut 2 separate pieces to fill this gap and it all worked pretty well.
Step 7 – Rivet everything in place – this hasn’t been done yet, but will be soon. It’s just screwed together right now, and it’s pretty darn tight.
I had my wife test it and I took a pic of my legs in there. I’m 6′ and size 11 shoes.
I took some pictures of the measurements, however, since every installation is likely to be different, your mileage may vary. If needed, I can take some better measurements of what I did.
Pics:
