Lotus Europa Pedals 

No, the Europa doesn't have four pedals.  Pictured are both the right hand and left hand drive accelerator pedal assemblies.  The RHD one straddles the chassis backbone and the LHD unit  is that flimsy little thing on the right side of the drawing.  It weighs next to nothing but seems to stand up just fine.  (I have several in GC) The brake and clutch pedal cluster is another story...

Clutch and Brake

Compared to Porsche pedals, these look like a high-school shop project... Or do they?  They are about 1/4 the weight of the Porsche units and have vastly fewer (beautifully forged, precision machined, exquisitely detailed, easily serviced) pieces.   Check out the very thin tubing and equally thin bronze bushing in the brake pedal.  Rather elegant really.

The other side of the coin is that the Lotus items - at least post S1 - cannot be serviced or even properly lubricated and they can break.  Fabricated of steel and floor mounted, the pedals will get and stay soaked and rust solid if the car leaks.  All Europas leak.   Once rusted, the clutch pedal can be easily broken by a careless or frustrated owner.   I found my original clutch pedal lying on the wet, mouldy carpet when I got it the car, and found another similarly broken clutch pedal was in a box of spares I purchased.   

In attempting to repair my two rusted sets of pedals, I demolished one set and despaired of using the other.  I  had resolved to convert to very spendy but gorgeous reverse hung Wilwood assy.   Installation of those takes some thought.  I planned, plotted, and painstakingly calculated the pedal ratios and cylinder sizes, and devised overhead mounting strategies.  I found that with dual 5/8" cylinders and 5:1 ratio pedals, the maximum pedal travel I could get would be around 3/4 that of stock.   No problem and the hydraulic clutch would be a bonus.  Exciting, but a significant project and more bad news for the budget.  Unfortunately with car restoration, patient, canny buying and horsetrading will save you hundreds, but the unexpected problems inevitably stretch the budget by thousands.

Having devised the solution, for some reason I started to play with that TC set again  I drilled some holes in the tubing surrounding the pedal shaft, barely larger than the little tube that comes with aerosol penetrating oil.  I clamped the assembly in a vise and heated it with a blowtorch.  I then stuck the penetrating oil tube in each of the holes, and gave it a serious blast, while applying steady, firm pressure to the pedals.  They budged and I began very slowly, very carefully to exercise each pedal while blasting with penetrating oil.   Years of rust and grime ran  from the gaps in the assembly.   More oil, more heat, more cycling, more crud, less resistance.  Then I drilled a second hole on the opposite side from the first and really flushed it out again, still while working the pedals.  Each time the pedals turned more and more freely, until eventually, after a zenlike 2 hour session,  the oil came out clean and they worked perfectly! 

I worked them over with a scratch wheel and countersunk a small well in each of the holes I drilled to serve as an oil hole.  Colin Chapman would be proud, additional weight saving and improved specification! 

These are from a Twin Cam.  I ruined the stock set trying to disassemble it, and figured that these were beyond hope.  Here they are clamped in a vise, sprayed with penetrating oil.  They  wouldn't budge.

After some persistent work and paint, here's the result.

And here's where they'll be oiled in the future.  Each tubular section has at least one hole.  They will be oiled regularly, and the floor nearby will not be carpeted.