"tim.dockree" wrote ...
Interesting, we just had a discussion about this at work the other day which led to a quick parking lot survey. (No argument about clutches or brakes, they all pivot at the top, we were just talking about gas pedals.) While all gas pedals "hang down from above", only about 30% (of the ones in our parking lot ;-) are actually fixed arms that rotate around the point where the pedal arm comes through the firewall. That is, they pivot at the top -- when you push down on those pedals, the bottom of the pedal travels a longer arc than the top of the pedal. That's what you'll have when you hang your game pedals upside down, except that road car pedals of this type are generally curved so that the sole of your foot rolls up the pedal as you depress it. If your game pedals have a flat gas pedal, I would think it would feel quite weird upside down.
Although the rest (70%) hang down, they actually pivot at the bottom instead of the top. On these units, the arm that comes down from the firewall attaches below the center point of the gas pedal, and there is a spring-loaded hinge at that point that lets the pedal rotate around the bottom of the arm instead of the top. In other words, when you push down on the pedal, the top of the pedal travels a longer arc than the bottom. Game gas pedal units simulate this second type of pedal, where the bottom stays relatively still and the top moves down.
I've never noticed pedals from a genuine race car as to how they're configured. It would seem they must pivot at the bottom somehow, and I'm only basing that on in-car shots of Rusty Wallace's footwork at Homestead last week. His heel never moved forward or back as he got off or on the gas, but when he had it floored his ankle had no more angle than a woman in 9-inch heels ;-) I would have thought that if the pedal pivoted at the top, his heel would have needed to travel some and there wouldn't have been the pronounced straightening of his ankle.
All of which is a long-winded (and no doubt unnecessary) way of saying that when you're making a set of these modified pedals for me for Christmas, I want you to only turn the brake upside down, my gas pedal's realistic enough the way it is <g>.
