The Scorpion shop manual seems to indicate that you must remove the steering rack in conjunction with the pedal box. So... that's what we did.
It wasn't terribly straight forward, but that was partially due to our inexperience with this type of extraction. Looking at it with the benefit of hindsight, it isn't all that challenging. So for future reference or for the edification of anyone reading this who's embarking on a similar bit of work, don't bother taking out the whole steering assembly.
There are six fasteners which secure the pedal box. Two are nuts (13mm, I think) which are accessible from within the trunk. The other four are accessed from within the cabin. These basically hold the pedal box to a metal plate which acts to join the steering assembly to the pedal box and hold both of those items to the structure of the dashboard.
Two of the four cabin fasteners are nuts (13mm, I think). These connect the pedal box and steering jacket to the dash mounting points. The other two (the two closer to the front bulkhead) are a bit interesting. They are round-headed bolts which have no keying (no hex or philips head) that thread into nuts which are welded to the back side of the pedal box. We had to use vise grips to grasp the round heads and rotate them off. This strange design "feature" was not a favorite of ours. Much cursing was involved. So we replaced these with M8x1.00 25mm bolts (Derrick, correct me if I'm wrong). I also ripped the head off one of the dash mounting point studs. We replaced that by drilling out the remaining stud and substituting an M8x1.00 45mm bolt.
Oh, there are also the three brake hardlines which run from the pedal box, through the bulkhead and off towards either the rear brakes directly or the brake booster. The brake lines were 10mm and something else....Derrick? Also the bulkhead fixtures connecting the hardlines on the pedalbox side to the hardlines on the truck side...those were 19mm and 24mm (I think).
Hopefully that makes sense when being read.
Anyhow, once we managed to extract the sucker, we realized just how badly off it was. The brake MC had most definitly spilled its guts all over the pedalbox.
The picture doesn't due it justice. It was a real mess. The brake fluid had eaten away or weakend the bond on much of the paint and there was a pretty decent amout of surface rust. Given the amount of effort to take it out, we decided it would be best to replace the clutch MC at the same time. We also wanted to restore the pedalbox and pedals as much as possible, so we have a nice, clean set of stuff to reinstall.
So we disassembled everything and set about cleaning, sanding, priming and painting.
Ah, during this whole process we realized two things. 1) I had ripped one of the welded-on nuts right off the pedal box as the round-head studs confused and frightened me. My natural response was anger and the liberal application of my massive and powerful physique. 2) Someone prior to us seems to have done the same thing to one of the pedalbox studs that allows mounting to the bulkhead.
So we pulled a 'spare' pedalbox out of Red and set about refurbishing that units for use in Black while we enact repairs on Black's pedalbox.
Here's a shot of the pedal box refurbishment:
We essentially washed the pieces with some dish-detergent, and then sanded them all down. We hit them with some primer which claims to be specifically formulated for 'rusty' metal. Once that had time to dry we sprayed them with the final coat of paint. The first box we did in a nice gloss black. Then Derrick channeled his inner fashionista and did the second set of parts in a dashing silver with a 'hammered' texture. It goes well with his favorite handbag.
The replacement clutch master cylinder was due to arrive last Thursday. So hopefully Derrick has gotten some of the reassembly work done and can give us an update on that work.
I leave you with this shot of Derrick enthusiastically supporting the refurbishment.
