First, the actual effective travel required to disengage
the clutch on my M3 is very short. Having the pedal as high as it
was from the factory provided way too much travel and caused a lot
of wasted time and movement, as well as making the clutch difficult
to modulate. Some BMW owners fabricate a "pedal stop" to prevent
unnecessary travel in the clutch pedal. This is a viable solution
but it negates one of the other advantages of the current method.
Namely, having the clutch pedal farther away than the brake pedal gives
me more room to come across with my left foot during left foot braking.
And I use left foot braking almost exclusively when I auto-x. Lastly,
having the clutch effort concentrated farther away from my body means that
my leg is more extended when operating the clutch and this saves my knees
some irritation when driving in traffic. Moving the seat farther
back was not an option as then my arms are too stretched out when reaching
the steering wheel.
I also adjusted the positioning of the brake pedal so that under full
pressure, it comes to rest in-plane with the throttle pedal. This
makes it much easier to heel-toe. Luckily, BMW engineers saw fit
to place the brake and throttle pedals close together so that pedal covers
(extensions) would be superfluous. This is definitely not the case
with my 87 GTI! I suppose VW is more sensitive to lawsuits after
the AUDI debacle in the 80's.
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