Safety first! How many times have we all heard that? Even though it sounds like a nag, it's a good idea to practice it when it comes down to it. I know I have plenty of things I want to do in life, so the longer I keep all my fingers, the better! But safety first goes further than work habits and into what we're all working on-our trucks. It's great to have a real cool ride and all that, but nothing's better than a well-built ride, since other things will fall into place after we cross our T's and dot our I's.
A small part that's needed in almost every car and truck is the throttle linkage. It's a minute detail, but one that can be overlooked in an instant. Rod-type throttle linkages were used for decades without much thought, but automakers slowly switched to a throttle cable. Why? For one, it's easier to engineer, and the other reason is its safety factor. Let's say something happens to a motor mount and the motor falls a couple of inches in the frame-what does that do to a rod-type linkage? Right, it pulls on it. So not only did you just lose a motor mount, but now you might also be at wide-open throttle. Scary, huh?
With a throttle cable, there is slack for side-to-side and front-to-back movement when set up right, and this goes for kickdown cables, too. Plus, if you are swapping motors, trying to re-engineer a rod-type linkage can be frustrating. Luckily, there's a one-word solution for all this-Lokar. Lokar Performance Products makes parts to control almost anything from shifters, emergency brakes, dipsticks, pedals, and, of course, linkages. For the last 18 years they have been solving problems like these and making it easy to update older cars, trucks, and street rods.
We're getting down to the nitty gritty on the '60 Ford F-100 that's graced more than a few pages in CLASSIC TRUCKS over the last year, and we need some way to connect the soon-to-be driver to the rest of the beast by way of new throttle and brake pedals. It just so happened Lokar now offers their pedals in a new Midnight Series black-anodized finish that's just right for this Ford's more subtle appearance. Aside from the throttle and brake pedals, we got everything else from Lokar, including the throttle cable and throttle cable bracket. We did have to do a little bit of engineering to mount the brake pedal pad to the stock brake pedal arm, but it wasn't too bad. Read on for the details, and hook up with the folks at Lokar today!
To get a grip on the mechanical controls, Lokar has what you need from the pedals, linkage, cables, and everything in between.
Now that the new motor and brakes are in place, there needs to be some means of controlling the two. The stock brake pedal would work, but it might look funny once the Lokar throttle pedal is in place. We chose the Lokar throttle pedal so the truck would use a throttle cable, which is safer than a rod-type linkage setup.
If you've ever fiddled around with a gas pedal, you know that most are connected to the linkage via a ball that pivots somewhere in the rubber pedal cover. Pull these apart.