Safety isn't always a hot rodder's main priority, but an emergency brake is a must if you want to finish off your ride the right way. I've heard more than a few stories about freshly painted cars rolling down driveways and streets unattended, only stopping abruptly thanks to a damage-inducing solid object. Here's a solution.
There are plenty of options available for emergency brake installations. Lokar and Gennie Shifter, as well as other manufacturers, offer floor-mount (horizontal) handbrakes, original stickstyle (vertical) handbrakes in a variety of heights, and the foot pedal used here in a few different finishes. If you can find one, a stock '40 Ford handle works very well, too, and looks original to boot.
Lokar designed the foot brake we'll be using with built-in adjustments so it can fit most applications, but we wanted to achieve a precise fit in Roy Brizio's '55 Chevy. Though we could have made it fit without any modification, we changed a dimension or two and fabricated a few brackets. This allowed us to maximize the throw of the pedal, and to mount the release handle exactly where we wanted it.
Once installed and hooked up to the brakes with Lokar's cable kit, this pedal offers plenty of leverage. We may never be quite sure what's likely to happen when Roy is flying down the highway, but at least we're confident that his 3,800-pound Chevy is safe when it's parked in his driveway.
