If you are one of those people spending fair amount of time in their older/cheaper cars, maybe after a long ride you realized that your right feet hurts due to wrong gas pedal geometry (and inabillity to modify it), too light pedal coil spring, etc. There's a way to easily fix the things in 10 minutes work.

Although this modification was done on a Mitsubishi Lancer '91, there's quite enough probability that you'll have similar setup on your (different) car.

Note: Everything you do to your vehicle is your own responsibility. I can not guarantee that procedure given here will be applicable to your own vehicle.

Introduction

Open your engine hood and locate the cable going from a gas pedal onto the engine. When the pedal is pressed, cable pulls the thingy which rotates around an axis. Amount of rotation is converted to car acceleration. No rotation (pedal released) means no acceleration, and full rotation (pedal fully pressed) means full acceleration. Our aim is to shorten the pedal travel (thus shortening cable travel), but still retain roughly the same amout of acceleration from fully pressed pedal.

Step #1 - bending the gas pedal into position

If we want to prevent the RSI in our feet, we must shorten the travel of our gas pedal, making it closer to the floor, and thus closer to the natural position of our feet during a ride.

The easiest method to get this done is to simply bend the pedal into the position, as on a picture. Put a round (or pointy) rigid body under the pedal on a place marked with arrow #1 on a picture. A rock of appropriate size will do the trick. Then push the pedal with your foot to bend it towards the floor (arrow #2 on a picture). Be sure not to bend the pedal too much, otherwise it won't have any travel left.

Yellow was the pedal position before the bending, and green is after the bending.

Note: If you have never pressed your gas pedal more than half way down, maybe you'll be satisfied with the work already done. Give it a spin, and check with your needs. Don't forget the car must also be able to start on a uphill. If you don't need more acceleration than what you have now, you can omit the next step, and consider the work done. Otherwise, if you want the same amount of acceleration with gas pedal fully pressed as before, continue with...

Step #2 - adjusting the cable carriers

Go to your engine and locate the cable going from the gas pedal onto the engine. Grab a medium-sized hammer (that's right, a hammer), and pound on a place marked with arrow #1 on a picture. Your goal is to bend that thingy so it gets as close to it's axis of rotation (axle on which it is screwed on) as it can. Try to maintain it's upright position.

Then, pound your hammer on a cable carrier marked with arrow #2 on a picture. Your goal is to bend the cable carrier in such a manner that the gas cable stays stretched and that the cable carrier maintain the same relative position with the thingy you have bent on arrow #1.

Be sure the cable goes STRAIGHT from the carrier (zero angle), otherwise the cable could get damaged by friction with the carrier.

Note: Alternative to the hammer is a pair of jaws, but it seemes easier to do the work with the hammer.

Done!!
Explanation...

What we have done here is basically shortening the cable's torque (on a picture: yellow-before, green-after) around the axis. We see that the arrow b is shorter than the arrow a, thus making it possible to turn the thingy around it's axis for the same angle as before with much less cable travel. As a bonus, gas pedal coil spring will now feel stiffer than before, for the same reason as above.

Your feet are cheering and thanking you for your effort in making them comfortable.

All procedures presented on this pages are presented in good intention but without the warranty of any kind.