While doing the brake switch job, and having the drivers seat out of the car, I decided to “build out” the footrest so I could actually use it as it was intended. Most of us can tap the foot rest with our toes to our favorite tunes but when it comes to using it as a leverage point, to jam us into our seat while we pull a few “G’s” through a fast and tight corner…well forget about it. To get that leverage, from that factory footrest, our heads will be below the dashboard.

You don’t need to take the seat out for this job and I would not have done so if that was my only task to complete. I did a very rough job but that was all that was needed. The object was function over form without it standing out as something very ugly or expensive. In that regard, I think I succeeded.

Materials: less than $5, a few scrap pieces of 2 x 4’s, a few deck screws, a drill, some black paint or vinyl fabric and a staple gun, a trip to home depot for 2 long skinny metric allen head fasteners (I think they were 8mm x 3.5”), a sharpie or magic marker to color over any exposed staples if using the vinyl and that’s about it.

This project has been tried by several others with good write ups on this forum. One of the better ones with good pictures is at the address below. I would advise you research all the other ideas out there before deciding what method you want to try. Do a search using “foot rest” and “dead pedal” to see the latest and greatest. https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...d-offer-89322/

See photos below for a semi, step by step tutorial. I made some rough measurements in the foot well after removing the (2) plastic footrest pieces. I did not take any pictures of the stock top plastic piece (stock foot rest extension) by itself. On the bottom of it are two male cylinders sticking out from the bottom, one near the top and one near the bottom as it stands in a vertical position. They fit into 2 female cylinders/recesses in the plastic base that is attached to the floor with bolts. The top piece with male cylinders is a press fit or snap fit. There are two points on each cylinder that need to be depressed to release them from the base, the points are at 12 and 6 o’clock on each cylinder. Depress and pull away from the pedal base at the same time. Do one cylinder at a time. See other post mentioned above for pictures of this top plastic piece and the cylinders that stick out from it.

I used a scrap piece of 2x4 to make the base. The top piece (smaller section of 2x4) was mounted to the bottom piece with sheet rock or deck screws. I trimmed the smaller piece down to a thickness of approximately 1-1/8” thick from it’s initial 1-1/2” thickness using a hand saw. I should have cut it down further, probably around 7/8” to 1” thickness. The goal is to have the base of the top plastic pedal rest on the top of the 2x4 and at the same time, to have good contact with bottom of the cylinders that extend out, on to the bottom 2x4 piece. Take your time and make a good measurement of this distance and then cut down your 2x4 or use 1” material or 7/8” material from the start depending on what is the best thickness. I ended up using some washers to shim out this gap so I had good contact.

The 2x4 base piece (larger one) has some angle cuts for fitment so they did not extend out to far, like ears, that would look weird or draw attention to the piece. I also cut the bottom inside edge off the 2x4 base piece so it did not interfere with snugging the piece up against the foot well wall. You can see this bevel cut in picture 3, just above the letter “n”, in the text below the picture, from the second word in the text, position.

Make your base using whatever dimensions you choose, and then see if it fits well on the carpet, snugged up to the wall of the foot-well. When you are comfortable with that, and have mounted the top piece of wood to the bottom piece and have drilled your holes for the fasteners to go through, paint it or wrap it in vinyl.

Finding 8mm fasteners this long is not easy. I checked my local hardware store with a good selection of metric fasteners and they did not have the length needed (I think it was 3.5” length but I’m not sure so please re-measure this yourself and then update the post with confirmation of length) I went to home depot next with little expectation of finding anything there but to my surprise, they had these long, black, allen head fasteners that looked like they might work. They were very narrow/skinny and I would have preferred something beefier but I did not see the length I needed. Next I went to a specialty fastener store, they had the same thing as home depot but they also had the longer length I needed and the price was half that of home depot…roughly $1 versus $2 per fastener. Note: on a subsequent visit to home depot, I pulled open that drawer of metric fasteners and there was another row of these skinny allen head bolts and the length I needed…I just missed seeing them the first time I was there, so for convenience you can get them at your Home Depot for sure. The heads on these fasteners were tiny, just slightly larger than the shaft of the fastener so a washer or two is a must. You will have to look around to find the combination that works. They don’t make a fender washer that fits the shaft size snugly and fits the diameter of the “plastic foot board recessed well“ that the fastener and washer will go into and be tightened down to. I think I found one “fender washer” that was snug on the shaft but the diameter to big to fit in the “well” and I did not want to spend time filing down the perimeter to reduce the diameter. (my bench grinder was broken at the time, otherwise this would have been an easy job to reduce the diameter). I ended up using two stacked washers which in the long run may be better than one fender washer. The first one on was not very wide (outside diameter) but it fit the shaft of the bolt nicely. The second one did not fit the shaft closely but was wider to help spread the clamping pressure applied to the plastic in the bottom of the foot rest well. This whole set up was a bit on the flimsy side but ok for this application where the pressure on the footrest is such that it is not stressing the setup laterally. When pressing down on the footrest with your foot, you are basically applying pressure in the same direction of the clamping force of the fasteners. If by accident you put a lot of pressure on it from the side, it will be stopped due to the side wall of the foot compartment, not allowing a lateral stress to the set up. And there really is no way to apply “side” pressure from any other angle due to the small space in that area (top-down, down-up, or side wall of foot compartment out toward brake/accelerator pedal). If this was some other application where force could be exerted on this built up platform from angles other than the clamping angle, I would be uncomfortable with the whole thing and probably figure out a better way to design and fabricate the base.

Once everything was in, I just tightened it down and took it for a test ride, it was great! Having that pedal to leverage against is a beautiful thing. Good luck with your project if you decide to do it.