Suicide clutch, Jockey shift

     I hear people say suicide shift all the time but it's the clutch pedal that deserves the moniker.  I was at work about a month ago and a fellow came into the store to get machine work done on a 4.6 V8 from a Lincoln.  He had this gnarly looking bent connecting rod he was looking to replace to fix the engine in the car.  The head gasket had leaked a bunch of coolant into the cylinder and when the car tried to start it hydra locked and bent the connecting rod.

     John was back in the store again on Friday and I asked him about the bent connecting rod. He said he was just going to hang it up in has garage on the wall.  I told him I thought it would make a great clutch pedal on my chopper.  I traded him a case of Bud Light for it.

     When I was at my folks house today I brought it with me and told Roger what my plan was and asked him to help me make it.  I already had a nice chrome bracket to use as the pivot point I just needed to re do the big end of the rod to size it correctly.

     Roger had a nice piece of 1 3/4" shaft in his stash and he used his portable band saw to cut a chuck of it off.

     He chucked it up in the lathe, trimmed it to length, and drilled a 1 inch hole through it to match the pivot shaft.  It fits perfectly on there.

He used the bandsaw to cut the big end of the connecting rod off and welded the two pieces together.  I now have a perfectly bent connecting rod suicide clutch pedal.  I would like to find some small I beam stock to make my fender support struts out of to keep a matching look.