[rightrudder]

Those with smaller feet/shoes will never notice this, but when I'm working the clutch, the tip of my Stan Smith size 13 will sometimes brush against the plastic panel above it. Disconcerting to say the least, and very irritating!!

So I pulled off the panel and Dremel'd off the bump that the brake and clutch pedals protrude through. The pedals pass through openings in the bump, and are sorta sealed by a foam rubber widget, no doubt for an extra bit of sound deadening. It works great! No more toe/plastic contact, and no significant increase in sound. My cuts are a little ragged, but you don't see this panel unless you're lying on your back in the footwell.

Pretty easy to do. Remove the two 10-mm nuts in the center of the panel. Then get a thin pry tool and pop the front of the panel, below the steering column (the two clips are located outboard on either end, so pry there). Then pull the panel down carefully. There might be a little resistance as there is a little contact between the panel's cut-out and the knee airbag, but with wiggling it'll drop down. Disconnect plugs for the footwell light and speaker, and remove the panel from the car.

From there, it's pretty straightforward. You can see how I marked the cut line for the bump with blue painter's tape. Be careful when cutting, as the cut-off wheel will throw little blobs of molten plastic on your forearms. Eye protection here is a must. After the initial cuts, I smoothed out some of the rough edges with a No. 11 X-Acto.

Reinstall is pretty simple. But..the inboard clip on the forward part of the panel doesn't like to snap in easily because its receptacle mounting flexes. So put the steering column in the full up position, reach in that opening and you can push from the back to snap it in fully.

It's those little things that make a car nicer to drive!

Edit: You can see the Burger Motorsports clutch stop in the last pic too.

[BEM-S4]

That's a really clean job good work. Won't ever need this myself but that's some quality craftsmanship.

[rightrudder]

Thanks! I've done lots of stuff with a Dremel over the years. Hard to imagine life without one.

[RoundelM3]

Nice work...although I don't have a clutch in either of my cars at present, I understand your predicament. I wear size 15s, which sometimes causes my right foot to brush both the brake and accelerator pedals at once if I'm not careful.

[rightrudder]

Originally Posted by roundel335

Nice work...although I don't have a clutch in either of my cars at present, I understand your predicament. I wear size 15s, which sometimes causes my right foot to brush both the brake and accelerator pedals at once if I'm not careful.

I hear you. Worst case scenario was a Lexus IS300 w/ MT (a pretty rare car) where the brake and clutch pedals were angled severely near the pivot point. End result was the tip of my shoe would contact the upper angled part of the brake arm when depressing the clutch. Not the sort of heel/toe you want!

Pedal spacing is fantastic for (proper) heel/toe on the M240i. The auto rev match is really frustrating...just goes against the muscle memory ingrained from years of manual blips. So around town I'm shutting off every possible nanny to defeat the system; for a long freeway trip where I like the Comfort shock damping, I'll revert to nanny state. Nannies off, there's a lot less rear brake wear and a much purer feel.

Minor frustrations aside, I'm 850 miles in so far and loving every minute of it.