Fitting tall guys in Cab 11/12's

[Tony Wheeler]

Originally Posted by Tony Wheeler

However there may be an easier solution we haven't considered - swing the steering column to the right.

Gents, I trialled this mod today on my Cab 12 Ford, and although it's an improvement it's not enough to allow my left leg to escape out from under the steering wheel. Photos below are taken with both feet on the pedals and the steering column bracket moved 25mm to the right. That's about the limit for this mod because the steering wheel is starting to get too close to the door. As you can see my right leg can still fit between the steering wheel and the door when operating the brake, but my left leg is still trapped under the steering wheel by the handbrake when operating the clutch.

What this experiment proves is that I will never be able to extract my left leg out from under the steering wheel when operating the clutch, unless I'm prepared to modify the handbrake and probably the engine cover and dashboard as well. This is entirely pointless when the problem can be solved by simply increasing dX (the distance between the clutch pedal pad and the bottom of the steering wheel) so that my lower leg can fit comfortably between them when operating the clutch. The simplest way to increase dX is to lengthen the steering column, and you can see in pic 5 that it would not require much, perhaps 40mm at the most. Alternatively you could increase dX by setting the clutch pedal 40mm depressed, however you'd need to move the toeplate 40mm forward in order to maintain full pedal travel. This is quite feasible with a bit of sheetmetal work, but my own preference at this stage is to lengthen the steering column. In due course I shall trial this mod and report my findings here.

Cheers,
Tony