Footbox Aluminum - Driver Side

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Major System Category: Chassis
Task: Build the driver's foot box
Parts: All parts were attached to chassis on delivery
Prerequisite Tasks: Inner Wheel wells
Additional Costs: N/A
Time Requirement: 4 hours
Date Started: July 12, 2012
Date Completed: July 12, 2012
The driver side foot box sounds easy enough, but if you were like me you probably didn't quite grasp how all the pieces fit together. Now it is time to put them back together. You need to go one step at a time.

The front wall is straight forward. Orientation is left hand side  looking towards the  front of the car.  It is a good Idea to lay out all the pieces involved, so you see how everything fits together. If something is really springy, then it is not together correctly.

Consideration: The foot box consists of five parts and there are seams between these parts. The front wheels are going send road debris, water and who knows what else right at the box. There are two things I think that need to be addressed: body filler for gaps and undercoating to waterproof the footbox. 

This piece attaches to the right side of the front wall. The back side is common to the tunnel. The tab  painted black (on the lower left hand side) fits under the middle section of the front wall. It is a little tricky to get it to slide together. 

This tab on the front wall fits behind the piece above. This causes some tension between the two panels.

Consideration: The outer should be installed last. Otherwise it will get in the way of everything.

The lift definitely came in handy tonight. One the problems I ran into was the foot box tab for the lower front side wall did not want to match up nicely with the front wall piece. Eventually I placed a spreader so I could push the pieces into place and rivet them together. The perspective from the underside of the car points out many places were water can gain access under the carpeting. In one case, I drilled from the underside of the car due to space limitations inside the car.

The front panel and bottom tunnel panel installed. Orientation is left side of the car  looking  towards the tunnel side of the footbox.

The first two pieces were the hardest to install. It is an area where some gaps exist. I did not rivet the area where the clamps show in the above photo. This is because this a common area with the next part of the tunnel aluminum.

This is the funny piece I couldn't figure out for a while. This piece faces the front wall and is positioned right beneath the dash. Orientation is looking towards the driver's seat in the cockpit. 

I applied additional silicon front and back as well as between the panels. I also sprayed all contact areas with Plasti Dip. Since this area is enclosed, I did not think it necessary to spray the entire panel. The back sides of the panels are sprayed. This area will be waterproofed and sound proofed before any finishing pieces are applied.

The final piece is installed. Orientation is looking from the left hand side of the car towards the tunnel. The front of the car is to the left. I did all my orientation to the front fo the car when I removed the aluminum during kit disassembly.

I put the little triangle piece on third, because I determined I needed something to anchor the upper tunnel panel. You can see my impromptu work bench (AKA the cockpit floor). The lip of the piece above the triangle piece is Shane's stereo close out box. I am a long way from installing electronics, but the close out box is a handy place to stick the rivet bag. The one piece I did not install is the outer wall. I still need to prep that piece. Otherwise it is ready to go.