At Fernley Sarah and I noticed that the foot controls are low enough that your toes scrape the track at times under full suspension load over bumps, or if you’re a bit sloppy with your footwork. I’ve noticed that most rigs have skidplates that keep the drivers feet off the asphalt. And something Jean-Guy said stuck in my head. “If you go off the track, lift your feet up.” In my head the only thing I could see is Sarah’s foot getting sucked under the brake pedal and every bone in her foot and ankle getting broken, if not worse.
So I fabricated a skidplate out of a spare bit of sheetmetal I had from a UPS case. It is riveted and glued to the bottom of the oil catch pan, and secured at the front by three hose clamps at two points on the headers and one point on the frame. I clearanced it nicely around the low points on the header downtubes to keep the sheetmetal flat. The sheetmetal has a nice rounded edge along the front and back so there’s not much chance it will snag on anything. We dropped the body on the chassis and had Sarah jump in to check the fit. Everything looks good.
Hopefully this will allow her to worry less about keeping her toes up and focus more on her driving. Once the glue is all set up I’ll sand the skidplate and catch pan, and hit the whole assembly with a few coats of flat high-temp black enamel.
