June 26, 2017

Spacing out on the Focus ST

One of our major gripes with the Focus ST is accelerator pedal placement. After owning and driving many performance oriented cars, with proper pedal placement for heel and toe action, the ST’s gas pedal felt way too recessed in the foot well in relation to the brake pedal. This is something we wanted to address straight away, to make heel and toe transitions during daily driving and track use more natural and manageable. Seeing as we have a 3D printer in our arsenal, we drafted up a design and gave it a shot.

Starting with a print 1.5” thick, we mounted it up, went for a spin, and immediately disliked it. The pedal sitting near the plane relative to the brake pedal felt unnatural. It did make toe rev matching with light braking more possible than with the factory placement, but under hard braking, and doing actual heel and toe rev matching, the spacing seemed way off. We tried this thickness with multiple mounting points to raise, lower, and mount the pedal side to side, and all locations we tried at this thickness all felt unnatural. We went back to printing to test out various thicknesses and placement, till we found an ideal pedal placement.

Our final prototype. Machined out of aluminum, it spaces the pedal .75” outward, and moves the pedal down and closer to the brake pedal for a more natural feel while rev matching. The reasoning for spacing the pedal downward was to allow for better heel and toe action with the actual heel and toe method. The leftward spacing brings the pedal closer to the brake pedal for ease of full foot toe rev matching. When measuring this spacing we hopped in some cars we’re familiar with and have tracked, to measure and work off their pedal spacing, to mimic their pedal location relative to the brake pedal onto the ST. We feel we’ve accomplished just that, and can now offer a more natural spaced accelerator pedal option for the Focus ST. Hell, the first time tracking the ST with the spacer felt so natural, we completely forgot it was installed.

Here are some before and after shots:

Stock pedal position on top

After Damond Motorsports APS on bottom