Passenger Footwell Balast - Reinforcement Needed?

#1

Anybody running 100 lbs of balast in the passenger footwell? I’m having to run 100 lbs (plus a passenger seat) to make weight. I got some nice rectangular steel plates in 25 lbs segments, drilled through the rails in the passenger footwell, and secured the plates with 2 1/2" bolts, large washers, & lock nuts.

I noticed the rules allow reinforcement of that area. I haven’t done anything to reinforce the stock footwell and now I’m having nightmares about ending up with a large rectangular hole where the steel plates fell through…

Thanks in advance,
-Joe

#2

I run roughly 65lbs of lead in the passenger rear footwell, use the required hardware and have never had any issues.

#3

Thanks for the info. That area seems pretty beefy, but I got to thinking that it wasn’t really designed to carry any load there. Good to know you haven’t had any problems.

#4

As long as it isn’t a point load, the floor pan should be able to carry loads in excess of what you need. The largest forces acting on the floor pan will be in a downward direction and will occur as the suspension bottoms out. The loads acting on the bolts won’t exceed 1G in normal driving, but in an incident where the roof of the car takes an impact those loads could be much larger. I’d suggest a reinforcement plate under the car like used for a seat belt attach point.

#5

jschmid wrote:

While it’s not in the exact same location the floor pan was designed to carry the load of a seat and passenger that would exceed the allowable ballast weight. So it seems to me—it’ll hold up

#6

I use really beefy large fender washers.

#7

and the frame rail that I use to jack up the whole side of the car is right under the passenger footwell
bruce