Hobbies

Every couple years I get a special project from a friend of mine that is a rural mail carrier.

Right hand drive conversions on Ford Escapes. The last few she has gotten have been hybrids, which I'm not overly fond of, however for a mail carrier to get 40+ mpg on a mail route is outstanding.

I have over the years came up with a workable system for getting the pedals on the wrong side. If it was a Jeep they make all kinds of kits for this but they make nothing for a Ford.

We ended up buying a brake pedal kit for a Jeep and modifying to work.

Well,,, Ford no longer makes the Escape hybrid and the new Escapes are on a different platform than the old ones so my system had to be modified a bunch to work.

Since these things are fly by wire on the throttle its easier to make a long bellcrank that runs across from one side to the other. On the previous models it could run straight across and had plenty of space in front of the console to put it.

The new ones are much different, first off the console sides run all the way to the firewall and are one piece from the firewall to the rear of the console and there was a lot of parts removal just to get the sides off and once I got them off the big empty space that used to be behind them is now filled with heater box.

Add in the fact that there is only one place for the throttle shaft to run thru, which is half perfect, drivers side is fine but on the passenger side it would push the pedal assembly back 5-6" further back than it needed to be.

Since I am real good friends with Rube Goldberg I added a couple of U-joints and came up with this,,,

 

 

The brakes are Hydraulic with a master cylinder and pedal on the passenger side and a slave that pushes the pedal down on the drivers side, made for a Jeep and modified long ago to work in a Ford. The throttle pedal and mount I added as well. The traction tape was added by the owners.

 

 

 

 

 

This is how it connects with the go pedal. The shaft floats in bronze bushings so its nice and smooth.



 

The slave cylinder used to mount to the floor on some rather flimsy tube mounts and thankfully the new truck has an impact tube running across the bottom of the dash and I was able to mount the slave of it and its much stronger and was a lot easier to get in place.

 



 

 

 

 

I shot a vid of how it works, its a bit dark but at least you get the idea,,,

 

 



 

Of course the entire operation was done with direct supervision as shown at the end of the vid.

 

Since I am making a Mail truck I refer to this as a sex change.........