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    Results 1 to 17 of 17
    1. #1
      Join Date
      Aug 2004
      Location
      Jackson, MI
      Posts
      86
      Country Flag: United States

      Wilwood pedal assembly in first gen Camaro

      Alright boys and girls, after talking to Ron Sutton over the winter I decided I needed 3/4" master cylinders front and rear in my '67 Camaro.
      Since nobody seems to make a tandem 3/4" master cylinder, I decided to install the Wilwood dual pedal assembly (340-11295).
      I liked the idea of pitching the factory and adjustable proportioning valves and having a balance bar anyway.

      I came here to search for pictures of the install.
      I figured someone here had to have done it and posted pictures but I came up short.
      So, I decided to take pictures as I went and post what I did, warts and all.
      And there are warts.
      I'm a mechanical engineer by trade but I'm no master fabricator.
      My tools are limited and I don't weld often enough to be good at it so keep that in mind as you see what I've done.

      First, a little background.
      My system consisted of a six piston superlite kit (140-9803-D) front, 4 piston superlite kit (140-9219, my 12-bolt has Ford big ends) rear and 7/8" master cylinder (260-9439-BK) using the factory prop valve and some generic adjustable prop valve in front of the factor prop valve. The later was already on the car years ago when I bought it.
      I was unhappy with the braking performance.
      I also never felt like I was able to bleed the system very well and was experiencing quite a lot of pad knock back.
      I'll talk about those issues after the pedal install.
      Jason

      67' RS Camaro
      00' Z/28

    2. #2
      Join Date
      Aug 2004
      Location
      Jackson, MI
      Posts
      86
      Country Flag: United States
      I won't bore you with the tear down.
      The first step was to figure out where to drill the holes in the firewall.
      To do that, I used the factory pedal bracket to figure out how the master cylinder bolt holes relate to the centerline of the column.
      As you can see the upper passenger side bolt is very close to being centered on the column.
      The center stud of the Wilwood pedal bracket is about .650" off center of the pedals, toward the brake pedal side.
      I measured the distance between the pedals and the column and decided I could move the pedal assembly about .150" toward the drivers side to make as much clearance between the motor and the last master cylinder as possible.
      That put me about .500" toward the passenger side from the original upper passenger side master cylinder bolt hole.
      Did you follow that? If not ask away.
      For height I simply shoved the bracket up under the dash and estimated that the center stud needed to be about .500" below the same upper passenger side master cylinder bolt hole.
      I thought at the time, based on what I had read of a brake pedal only install, that I needed to have the pedals as high as possible.
      This turned out to be a problem that I'll talk about later.
      Attached Images Attached Images      
      Jason

      67' RS Camaro
      00' Z/28

    3. #3
      Join Date
      Aug 2004
      Location
      Jackson, MI
      Posts
      86
      Country Flag: United States
      Next I made a small template to mark all of my holes.
      Here I've drilled the holes for the studs.
      Ignore the marks for the center holes. I marked those before I realized that the center stud of the Wilwood bracket is not centered on the pedals.
      Attached Images Attached Images      
      Jason

      67' RS Camaro
      00' Z/28

    4. #4
      Join Date
      Aug 2004
      Location
      Jackson, MI
      Posts
      86
      Country Flag: United States
      The firewall alone isn't enough support so I needed to make an upper support bracket.
      The pedal assembly has 4 bosses to help but as you can see, you need 1" spacers to get up over the pedal pivots.
      With 4 1" spacers and a piece of 1/8" plate I thought I was good to go but the forward part hit the underside of the dash so I cut it back to use only the back 2 bosses.
      I forgot to take pictures of the next part but based on the location of the original upper passenger side master cylinder stud and the height of the upper bracket on the new pedal assembly, I trimmed the factory pedal bracket.
      Next I bolted the Wilwood bracket to the firewall and the original pedal bracket to the steering column and trimmed to fit.
      Once it fit ok, I tacked the upper bracket to the original pedal bracket.
      After that I pulled out the assembly and finish welded it.

      Here's where you can feel free to make fun of my welds.
      They're ugly but they'll hold.
      Attached Images Attached Images          
      Jason

      67' RS Camaro
      00' Z/28

    5. #5
      Join Date
      Aug 2004
      Location
      Jackson, MI
      Posts
      86
      Country Flag: United States
      I needed to make a bracket to hold the brake light switch.
      First I drilled out the 3 spot welds from the original bracket.
      With just a slight bit of bending it fit pretty well so I welded it up.
      The last thing I needed was a stop for the clutch master cylinder.
      The throw out bearing that I'm using doesn't have an internal stop so if you over stroke it, you blow it in 2 and dump all of the fluid into the bell housing.
      Ask me how I know.
      There are a couple of threaded holes on the under side of the Wilwood bracket so I decided to use those to hold my new bracket.
      This is what I came up with.
      Attached Images Attached Images      
      Jason

      67' RS Camaro
      00' Z/28

    6. #6
      Join Date
      Aug 2004
      Location
      Jackson, MI
      Posts
      86
      Country Flag: United States
      Here's a shot of the firewall with all of the holes drilled.
      I didn't get a picture but I also cut back the doubler on the engine side so that my 1/8" plate would sit flat.
      I also used the BFH a bit to help flatten the firewall a bit.
      It turns out that the studs in the pedal assembly are kind of short.
      I originally planned to have an 1/8" plate on the engine side to cover all of the odd holes, and to make something to pack out the firewall on the dash side to be even with the column support plate but the studs weren't long enough for that.
      I ended up trimming the column support plate to clear the pedal bracket.
      You can see the trim mark in the second picture.
      The last picture is the firewall plate before I rounded the corners and painted it.
      Attached Images Attached Images      
      Jason

      67' RS Camaro
      00' Z/28

    7. #7
      Join Date
      Aug 2004
      Location
      Jackson, MI
      Posts
      86
      Country Flag: United States
      Here's everything put together and painted.
      The last picture shows the clutch stop.
      The double nuts can be moved to adjust the stroke.
      Attached Images Attached Images      
      Jason

      67' RS Camaro
      00' Z/28

    8. #8
      Join Date
      Aug 2004
      Location
      Jackson, MI
      Posts
      86
      Country Flag: United States
      I bolted it all in and was pretty happy with it at first.
      The pedals actually seemed a bit high off the floor but not bad.
      Then I started looking at the master closest to the engine and there wasn't a lot of clearance.
      Unfortunately, while I was doing this, my transmission was out being rebuilt so I wasn't exactly sure where the tilt of the engine was going to be and it was about then that I realized I had it tipped up higher than it was going to be.
      I had to move the pedals down.
      Needless to say, I wasn't very happy and forgot to take any pictures.
      I ended up moving everything down 1 and 1/2".
      An inch and a half is about as far down as I could put it without the column starting to interfere with the balance bar.
      I extended the bosses on the upper bracket which was pretty easy.
      Again, feel free to laugh at the welds.
      The firewall looks like Swiss cheese now too.
      In this picture you can also see how I trimmed back the doubler.
      I had to trim down the column support plate even more and I needed to cut off and move the brake light switch.
      Last up was to redo the firewall plate.
      This time I made it out of an 1/8" piece of stainless that I had laying around.
      The stainless is stiffer to help make up for all of the holes I put in the firewall.
      Attached Images Attached Images          
      Jason

      67' RS Camaro
      00' Z/28

    9. #9
      Join Date
      Aug 2004
      Location
      Jackson, MI
      Posts
      86
      Country Flag: United States
      So here it is all put together.
      A tee, a couple of adapters and an 8" piece of 1/4" brake line is all it took to eliminate the prop valves and connect to the factory brake lines.
      It's kind of hard to tell from the picture but I now have plenty of clearance to the engine.
      Attached Images Attached Images      
      Jason

      67' RS Camaro
      00' Z/28

    10. #10
      Join Date
      Aug 2004
      Location
      Jackson, MI
      Posts
      86
      Country Flag: United States
      Here are the pedals.
      Notice that they are pushed to the left as far as the column will allow.
      In fact they rub just the slightest bit.
      Since the last picture was taken, I decided to move the gas pedal back an inch toward the firewall.
      It's spaced out a bit from the firewall and moving it back an inch made it about perfect for heal-toe down shifting.
      Attached Images Attached Images      
      Jason

      67' RS Camaro
      00' Z/28

    11. #11
      Join Date
      Aug 2004
      Location
      Jackson, MI
      Posts
      86
      Country Flag: United States
      I decided to try the Phoenix Systems reverse bleeding system.
      Unfortunately I cheaped out and bought the plastic tool which broke the first time I squeezed the handle.
      It broke where the return spring is held to the handle so I was still able to use it, I just had to work the plunger by hand in both directions.
      Even though the tool broke, I have to say, that is the best way to bleed brakes I've ever seen.
      I didn't have to bench bleed the masters and since there was still fluid in the system other than the new masters, it only took 1 bottle of fluid to fill both brake reservoirs.
      I think eliminating the prop valves probably helped too.
      The pedal feels great but as of this writing I still don't have my transmission so I can't tell you how the brake upgrades actually work.
      To try and address pad knock back, I adjusted my front wheel bearings a bit tighter but I'm guessing the majority of the issue is in the back.
      Currie Enterprises makes an axle retainer plate (CE-9005TW ) for Wilwood brakes that is a lot more heavy duty than the stamped plate that comes in the Wilwood kit.
      The plates do not have a slot like the Wilwood plates so you have to remove the axle bearings to put them on.
      Instead of potentially ruining perfectly good axle bearings by pressing them off, I elected to cut slots in the Currie plates like the Wilwood plates (sorry no pictures but I used the wildwood plates to mark the Currie's).
      I know that kind of defeats the purpose but I figured the $35 dollar plates were cheaper than new bearings and even with the cutout they are still going to be stiffer than the Wilwood plates.
      I also took .030" worth of shims from a 12-bolt differential install kit, cut a slot in them with tin snips so that I could get them over the axles and put them in between the retainer and the bearing to try and get a little extra preload.
      The other reason I elected to cut the plates instead of pressing off the bearings is that I'm not holding out a lot of hope for this fix and plan to add the Strange floater kit next spring if it doesn't work.

      That's where I am today.
      My trans is supposed to be done by Wednesday or Thursday so I should be able to drive it this weekend.
      I'll update when I know more.

      If you have any questions, fire away.
      Jason

      67' RS Camaro
      00' Z/28

    12. #12
      Join Date
      Aug 2004
      Location
      Jackson, MI
      Posts
      86
      Country Flag: United States
      Almost forgot, I also switched over to Polymatrix-E pads front and rear.
      Jason

      67' RS Camaro
      00' Z/28

    13. #13
      Join Date
      Jun 2009
      Posts
      651
      Country Flag: United States
      May want to look into someone to clean up or re-weld some of that fixture. Not trying to be mean; and probably just erring on the side of caution, but I'd just hate to hear about it coming apart under hard braking conditions.
      Dan W
      1968 Plymouth Road Runner
      1962 Dodge Dart 440

    14. #14
      Join Date
      Aug 2004
      Location
      Jackson, MI
      Posts
      86
      Country Flag: United States
      Normally I would agree with you. In fact when I have a weld that needs to be done right, I take it to work and have it done by a certified welder. He did my rear end brackets for example. In this case most of the welds are only there to hold spacers in place, nuts from turning or a tail light switch in place. The spacers are clamped together once the bolts are tightened down and the nuts didn't turn when I tightened the bolts. The tail light switch isn't going to break a weld so all of that is good to go. The only really important welds are where my new bracket connects to the original pedal bracket. I know they look ugly but it's not because of lack of penetration. My problem is that I don't practice welding enough so I never feel like I can see what I'm doing and usually end up off of the joint. I had to make several passes to actually hit the whole joint. The welds are embarrassing but they're hidden under the dash and I'm confident enough that they will hold.
      Jason

      67' RS Camaro
      00' Z/28

    15. #15
      Join Date
      Jul 2006
      Location
      Chesapeake, VA
      Posts
      605
      I like what you've done there. It's of interest to me as I want to use this pedal assembly also.
      Cars are meant to be driven.

      John B

    16. #16
      Join Date
      Aug 2004
      Location
      Jackson, MI
      Posts
      86
      Country Flag: United States
      The trans is back in the car and I've been out driving it and I've got to say that the brakes are fantastic. In theory, since I went to smaller master cylinders, the stroke would be longer but I don't notice because with the old setup, I always had to double and triple pump the brakes to get the pedal up. Now the pedal is always solid and I haven't noticed a bit of knock back. I can't wait for the next track day to try them out. I'll actually be able to drive deep into corners with confidence that I'll have brakes when I need them.
      Jason

      67' RS Camaro
      00' Z/28

    17. #17
      Join Date
      Jan 2010
      Location
      Pine Plains, NY
      Posts
      57
      Country Flag: United States
      Thanks Jason ... This is exactly what I was looking for....







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