Yank Tank Specialties Manual Panther Pedals - Install + THRASH!

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome back to the TJR Auto channel. My name is Tyler and in today's video, we are going to be installing and reviewing, I suppose, a set of Yank Tank Specialties Panther manual swap pedals. For those who don't know, I have a 2009 Grand Marquee aka Bonnie. She's my first car.

[00:00:18]Love her to death. She's never leaving the stable. Now, I 5-speed swapped this09 Marquee about five or six years ago. It's about 18. Um, little naive when I was building the car. Uh, I basically built it myself. All the custom fabrication and everything going into it. So, I had built the original pedal box in that car. And ever since I swapped that car and got on the road, it was good, but it wasn't great. There was a lot of things that I cut uh cut corners doing and just things that I kind of ignored doing cuz I didn't think they mattered. And within this box, all of my problems will be solved. And I could not be happier. Now, shout out to Jesse over at Yang Tank Specialties.

[00:00:58]just started building these pedal box uh pedal boxes and basically like not a swap kit, but things that go with the pedal box. Um for anybody doing a manual swap and a Panther chassis. So, inside this sweet box, which also has his logo on the side, this is pretty bitching.

[00:01:16]We have a lot of goodies. So, right on the top, we have our installation guide, which is uh pretty cool. I like all the pictures in it. Um, Jesse just did this right. You know, you have a QR code so you can go to the website and actually view it on your phone if that's easier for you. I personally do like the paperback. Um, especially for, you know, like right now I have to film doing this, so I can't use my phone to look at the instructions. So, paperback makes it easy. Literally outlines for you what to do. Very specific stuff here. Very nice and simple. And I just do want to say before you guys see me pull stuff out of this box, I again already opened this and went through everything. So, things were packaged very nicely. They're they're not anymore, but they were when they arrived at my house.

[00:02:02]The first thing I'm going to pull out is this guy here, which is the firewall uh clutch adjuster strengthening bracket thing. It's a It's kind of a mouthful, but yeah, here it is. I really do like this light. It's like a gunmetal metallic gray. It's almost the same color as my truck. I like it. It's very nice quality.

[00:02:22]Everything is solid. This thing is strong. Welder definitely good on it.

[00:02:25]So, I like this piece. Like where we're heading with this. Our next thing now, this is something that I never did. This is a corner that I cut when I built my car and I just ignored building this. I somehow got by for years with it. Caused other problems, but this I am very, very excited about.

[00:02:45]This right here is the drivebywire gas pedal uh relocation bracket, relocation mount, whatever you want to call it. I somehow got away with not running one of these in my car. And um the car worked, but I did cause a lot of issues from ignoring doing this. So again, this thing is nice quality. She's beefy. She ain't going anywhere. Again, welds look pretty nice on it. I really do like this color. I'm I'm actually I'm more excited about the paint color than I should be.

[00:03:13]But these things look super quality. You guys are going to like what's next in the box. And the main star of the show, we have the actual pedal box, which again, super nice quality. Everything looks super good here. I'm loving it.

[00:03:27]Paint color mint. And got nice welds on it. It's got more welds on it than mine do, I'll tell you that. And uh I do like that we already have our, you know, like basically Mustang manual pedal uh pads on here. Everything looks really good.

[00:03:42]First thing I noticed on this when I took it out of the box was the fact that over here we actually have a clutch pedal adjuster spot. So this is going to be our stopper right here. This little flat piece where my thumb is. And then there will be a bolt here that we can adjust to set our pedal height depending on our clutch adjustment and stuff like that. I'm stoked about that because that was a problem I always fought with on my homemade pedals. And again, it's just nice. As soon as I pull this thing out of the box, I'm like, "Oh yeah, this is good. This is a lot of good stuff on it." And I'm very, very excited for this. So, with all of our fabricated custom pieces out of the box, now we get into the little nitty-gritty stuff. So, here we have a new brake light switch.

[00:04:24]We will need to be installing that.

[00:04:28]We also have this bag, which has some stuff in it. And something that I absolutely love is our sweet Yang Tank Specialties holographic sticker.

[00:04:39]All right, so now we got a little more room to breathe with the big box out of the way. So beautiful fabricated parts.

[00:04:46]Just love it. We have our brake switch.

[00:04:49]Again, we have our sticker. So inside this little baggie here, we do have some hardware, rubber band, couple cotter keys. We do have our neutral safety switch that we can install here. So, when we have, you know, the clutch pedal hooked up, you do have to press the clutch pedal to start the car. We'll see if I end up using that or not. Couple insulated crimp ends, nut and bolt for actually setting the clutch pedal height, you know, the stopper height.

[00:05:14]This can go over here where the safety switch goes as well. And this basically can set where the pedal depth is going to be, I guess, relative to your brake pedal. Also, I think is going to depend on like your clutch cable adjustment and whatnot. Depending where you adjust it, there's a lot of adjustment points when you're building a car like this. You have adjustment here. I at least have an adjustable quadrant that will go here or here um for the cable to connect to. So, mine is adjustable. There's two different locations that you can put the cable to. I also have a firewall adjuster, so I have adjustment there. I also have an adjustable cable, so I can adjust it underneath the car as needed as well. So, I like that we got adjustment. I like that we actually have the right things to get the job done this time. Now, back in the day when I was building my car, I really do wish that another pedal uh kit like this was available. The only one at the time was Pierre's pedals, and he is the one that made like the how to build your manual pedals like 14 or 15 years ago. It's crazy. The videos are still up on YouTube. That's what I used to build my homemade pedals. I'm not knocking Pierre. He gave you the right instructions. I just didn't use the instructions the right way. But back then when I was building my car, it was tough to get a set of his pedals. He wasn't making huge batches of them or anything. And when they were up for sale, they were on the pricier side. So, what's nice about this pedal setup, it comes with all this stuff. And it's cheaper than those pedals, I think, ever were. Again, not knocking Pierre, but just saying it's nice that these are pretty available, honestly. And uh again, they're nice quality and it takes all the thinking out of it. Like you you just buy this and you do it and you're done. It's great. It's not like my homemade pedals where I had to keep chopping little pieces off and rewelding stuff and all this stuff and the pedals just they're not they're not great. They did their purpose, but they're not great. We actually want to get into the nitty. We can take a look see at what we got going on here. So, obviously again, Yang Tank Specialties pedal box I just acquired. This is my homemade pedal box.

[00:07:16]So, we see a lot of differences off the rip.

[00:07:20]Pedals much nicer. Paint much nicer.

[00:07:25]Overall, much nicer. Well, just literally spent a minute swapping over the quadrant. Got our new uh cotter pins installed there.

[00:07:34]So, it's time to go throw this bad boy in the car. Like I just said, it is time to start installing all of these goodies. We are going to start with the Freshy pedal box down there. Now, to get to the point of assembling all these parts into the car, you got to do some disassembly. You're supposed to pull out, in my case, the gas pedal, the brake pedal box, the wiper assembly, um the cowl, the brake booster. That is all included within the instructions that Yank Tank supplied. But if any of you guys watched my previous video on this car itself, I actually already did all that disassembly because I had to repair my firewall because my firewall was torn because I skipped a couple steps when I built the car the first time. I did not reinforce my pedal box the correct way which caused to a lot more stress on the firewall in certain areas which caused tearing. I also did not reinforce the clutch cable adjuster at the firewall.

[00:08:24]So that led to other tearing. So, I already did the repairs to the firewall.

[00:08:29]Still very happy with how those came out. But I'm just at the point of assembling. I'm not at the point of disassembly. So, just so you guys know, I'm not just magically taking everything apart off camera. It's already taken apart. So, anyways, let's get into it.

[00:08:42]So, we're going to start off with putting our little uh spacer plate onto the booster studs.

[00:08:53]Beautiful. New pedal box going in. Now, I do know this takes some finesse to say the least. So, you kind of just got to do it and then it's done. And then we do a cartwheel and then a somersault and then it's in.

[00:09:08]And then this goes up.

[00:09:14]Let's see.

[00:09:19]Something like that.

[00:09:21]Damn, that looks nice. All righty. Well, pedal box is uh she's up and in. And uh it looks awesome in here. I didn't tighten any of the nuts yet, but uh I just have all four nuts that hold it to the booster studs loosely on just so at least it's hung up in there. Um yeah, that was easier than I remember it being actually. So, let me show you how it looks. So already just this site alone, seeing the the same pedal pads is so exciting to me because that's that's something I've never had in this car.

[00:09:57]Then we look up in here and fresh pedal box. Like I said, I uh just have the nuts loosely on there. So now I need to uh tighten the nuts. I need to hook up the brake booster to the brake pedal. Also install the brake light switch that goes on there as well. All righty. It is now time to install our new little brake light switch. Now, I was running a different style before. Uh you can actually see the burnt end from when I was welding in here on the firewall. Um you can see my old burnt connector. So, I already basically have like the conversion wiring to run a switch like this. Um my car again is an09. I think the wiring does vary per year, but it's pretty straightforward.

[00:10:45]Well, away with this garbage. So, I'm going to do is I'm just going to put this bushing over the pedal rod itself.

[00:10:52]Then, just onehandedly, we are going to swing the booster arm over and back. And then kind of walk the pedal on. And I want to get the bushing like that. No, not like that. So, I just have this sitting right on the tip of here. And we have the bushing installed in between them. And now what we're going to do is we're going to take the new switch. The open end is going to go on the inside like this. So this will basically pop up like so. And uh might take some jimmying.

[00:11:27]But this will fit on there. There we go. Just like that. Now there's not nearly as much play. I uh had dry fitted the switch and I was like, "Wow, this thing is really loose." And then looked it up, found out you're supposed to have that bushing in there. So thankfully I hold on to all my old stuff. Then we can install our wiring.

[00:11:48]Just like so. Boom. Now we have a nice brake light switch. Quick pause for a little editor's note or I guess two notes. Number one, don't forget to put this factory cotter key back into the brake arm. And number two, I tried to install the cruise control switch off camera into this little hole here. The plunger does not make contact with the tab on the brake pedal arm. So, I did let Jesse know about it, but in my opinion, it doesn't really matter. I'm sure most people don't have cruise control hooked up in these cars with the manual swaps because it is a royal pain to do. So, in my case, it does not affect me having that switch disconnected. I'm sure most people are going to be the same way. But again, I did at least let Jesse know about it and he is going to be working on a revision for that in future pedals. So, I might have jumped ahead a little bit on this install. Um, should have done this when the booster was loose. would have been a lot easier to have some room in here, but we do need to make some small incisions here to then straighten out this piece of metal for our firewall brace to go in. So, since I'm doing it after the fact, we're just going to use a sawzaw and hope for the best.

[00:13:03]Yeah, that's about that's all needed.

[00:13:13]And boom. Just like that. Now I'm just going to take a pair of channel locks.

[00:13:17]I'm going to bend that little tab flat.

[00:13:25]Like so.

[00:13:28]This one is probably bent more than factory because I have been in this area many, many times in the past. But again, squeeze her flat.

[00:13:39]You probably could get fancy and like hammer and dolly this area. I'm not going to bother cuz these pliers do the same thing.

[00:14:00]Look at that. Beautiful. Now, we just got to pull this little uh I think it's for the wiper cowl. Well, the lower piece, I guess. Really, it's for like the wiper motor holder thing. One nut on that. We just got to remove neutral drop.

[00:14:15]There she is. There she is. Love to see it. So, that's this bracket. And now we get to swap in this beauty. Oh yeah.

[00:14:23]Look at that bad boy. She's looking mint.

[00:14:29]We can basically just take our firewall adjuster, slip it right in the holes, and then we will be using these two holes to actually bolt this in. Now, in the instructions, it does say for this mounting hole here, you will be using one of the speed nuts that was already, you know, factory hardware. Um, that's long gone for me because I did this swap so long ago. So, I'm just gonna find uh some washers, a nut and a bolt to be able to clamp this together right here, and we should be good.

[00:15:00]All righty. Well, I got a nut and a bolt, some washers for there. If this little nut and bolt ends up causing any clearance issues with, you know, the wiper mount and cowl and stuff, then I'll just find some other hardware to uh make do. Time to toss in the uh firewall adjuster. I forget what brand this one is. It's an adjustable one. It's either like STA, BBK maybe, probably STA.

[00:15:24]Slap that right there. And then we'll take our supplied hardware, get her mounted.

[00:15:37]All righty. Well, that is now installed.

[00:15:42]So, we take my old dusty trusty clutch cable that I had tucked in front of my motor for God knows how long and I guess underneath my intake.

[00:15:52]We can route it yonder.

[00:15:57]We'll shove her through the hole.

[00:16:02]Did I How the hell think this goes like that?

[00:16:10]and up into there.

[00:16:13]Just like that. I'm going to adjust my firewall adjuster uh towards the firewall itself just so that it's easier to get the cable on inside the car. So, from the inside of the car, we can tell that my original hole is uh quite far off of where it needs to be now. Um yeah, that's suboptimal. So, I should probably fix that. But I think right now is a good time before we fully adjust this bad boy in there to put in the supplied um I guess stop pedal stop adjuster.

[00:16:49]It's going to go in this back hole here.

[00:16:51]And then the neutral safety switch would go into this larger nut spot right here.

[00:16:55]But I think I might pass on that for now. If I end up putting like two step back in the car, I probably will hook it up to a neutral safety switch because that would be pretty cool. Um but yeah, I just I don't know. I'm just going to act like that's not there even though it's a really nice and safe option that you should probably hook up. Don't be like me. So, yeah. Bolt comes in through the top and then the nut goes on the bottom as a jam nut against this welded nut um according to the instructions, which actually makes a lot more sense cuz you just loosen this nut and you can turn the bolt whichever way you need to.

[00:17:30]So, all I had to do basically was just kind of put pressure on the pedal, lift it off the bolt, and I could spin it wherever I wanted. I'm going to leave it right here, and I'm going to leave it loose for now, cuz I'm definitely going to have to dial in the clutch cable adjustment. It's going to be way different with this pedal setup than my old one. Now, we're at the point of needing to install the gas pedal relocation bracket to install the gas pedal. But, it turns out I actually don't need this bracket. So, I need to do some more research into it, and then I will put that into this part of the video. Quick pause for a little editorial note. I ended up speaking with Jesse, doing a little bit of research online, and what I've come down to is 05 to11 cars, so drive by wire cars such as mine, either came with adjustable pedals or non-adjustable pedals. In my case, I have non-adjustable pedals, which might be kind of a rare thing. I don't really know. Seems like most people online do have adjustable pedals. So, in that case, you would need this relocation bracket. Essentially, what it's doing is deleting the adjustable portion of the pedal. So, in my case, non-adjustable.

[00:18:29]My pedal is one piece assembly. If you were to have an adjustable pedal, you would have a two-piece assembly.

[00:18:35]Basically, a mounting bracket with the adjuster on it and then the pedal itself. So, there's the answers to that.

[00:18:40]So, with my old setup, I did cut off the third mounting ear here. And you can see the original bolt pattern. You have one there, two there. So, it actually would go like this.

[00:18:52]This being the top of the firewall, this being, you know, near the floorboard.

[00:18:56]So, it's supposed to mount like that.

[00:18:58]So, I still have the two mounts on the right side. I don't have the mount on the left anymore. And one more quick pause for the last editorial note, I promise. So, my gas pedal currently is missing that left side tab. I also did shave the stud off of the firewall totally. That would have gone to that third ear. Um, again, clearance issues with the clutch assembly from my original pedals that I had built. In the install instructions for the Yangt Tank pedals, it does say that you need to trim that stud, but you don't totally need to remove it for clearance to the clutch quadrant. Well, we're at the point now where uh we can give her a little test drive. I haven't driven this car in probably almost 2 months. So, again, we are all buttoned up out here.

[00:19:37]Looking good. Shut the hood. I already uh connected the battery. And again, for those who don't remember, underneath now, we got three pedals again. Such a nicer look. So much cleaner. H, this is going to be great. Let's see.

[00:19:58]Where's the kitty? There's the kitty.

[00:20:00]See if Bonnie starts.

[00:20:07]Oh yeah. Roars right to life.

[00:20:19]Oh, Bonnie. It has been a while.

[00:20:22]Bonnie's officially back. She might need some refinement and, you know, like the wipers and the cowl installed and stuff.

[00:20:30]You don't need that for a test drive.

[00:20:43]Feels great.

[00:20:57]Honestly feels great. Like right now we're in fit. So just to make sure that the clutch is set up to where it's grabbing as much as it needs to. I'm going to floor it in fifth gear doing 50ish.

[00:21:09]And uh we'll we'll see if it slips.

[00:21:13]It doesn't feel solid.

[00:21:24]Brakes work. Clutch feels the best it ever has. I always had an issue getting pedal feel to be even decent on this car. I don't know why power steering doesn't really work right now. That's strange. Um, I always had an issue with the clutch pedal feel on this car, and this is the first time I can confidently say it feels real nice. So, very stoked about that. This is overall very easy to do, as you guys saw. It really wasn't bad at all. Um, granted, I already had the car taken apart, so there there's that. But it's not hard working on one of these cars. It it's fairly simple, I'd say. Well, as the youngans say, let's spin the block on them.

[00:22:16]Oh yeah.

[00:22:21]Let me tell you, she meant. All right, let's see how she does.

[00:22:29]Oh yeah.

[00:22:31]Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

[00:22:34]Magnificent.

[00:22:44]Oh man, I miss this thing, dude. Shout out Jesse over at Yank Tank Specialties for getting us hooked up, getting Bonnie back on the road. I'm beyond stoked with all the products I received in that box.

[00:22:56]And I know any of you guys that spend that money, too, are also going to be very, very happy.

[00:23:02]And now I get to enjoy Bonnie again.

[00:23:04]This is great.

[00:23:25]Woo, baby.

[00:23:38]You know, I love that this car sounds fast, but it's not. It can barely spin second. It's great, though.

[00:23:45]You're like never breaking the law in this thing. I've been daily driving Bonnie basically since I got the car drivable. Um, and it it's honestly, it's been great. This thing is so comfy. It's again slow, but it's very fun to drive, you know, banging gears, making some noise, spinning some tires. Um, what's nice is you can go through a couple gears and you're not committing a felony in this car, which is great. It's just overall great to have this thing back on the road. Now, we got the summer weather coming. This thing's got ice cold AC.

[00:24:11]It's comfy to sit in traffic in. You know, I know I put bucket seats in it from a cop car, but it still feels like you're sitting on a couch. It's just like, you know, a single-seater couch. I know I've said it multiple times, but I really could not be more stoked on how uh this whole pedal ordeal went. You know, making the firewall repairs, getting now a new set of pedals, the correct bracing for the firewall, all that kind of jazz. It really is just the cherry on top for Bonnie. So, I'm very happy about it. Again, shout out Jesse over at Yank Tank Specialties for building these beautiful products.

[00:24:51]So good.

[00:25:09]Oh, she's a little shaky. All right. You know, don't think I ever changed the front rotors on this car and I've had it.

[00:25:15]nine years. So, that's good. All righty, guys. Well, that is going to be a wrap on today's video of unboxing, installing, and I guess kind of basically reviewing the new Yangt Tank Specialties manual swapped Panther pedals.

[00:25:29]That is a mouthful to say. Now, you guys already heard me say it a million times, but honestly, the pedals are really nice. They were really easy to install, and I'm also very happy to have this car back on the road. So, for me, it gets a nice check mark. It gets a 100 out of 100. It might even get, you know what, I'm going to say it. It gets a 110 out of 100. That's how much I like these pedals. So, shout out to Jesse over at Yanktank Specialties for helping me out, giving me a killer deal on these pedals and being able to, you know, let me make a video on installing them. For anybody out there that plans on manual swapping their Panther, or maybe you already have and you're not too happy with your pedal setup currently, for a basically open the box and throw them right in package, I definitely say they're worth the money. And uh yeah, I think that's about all I got. I'm very happy that Bonnie's back on the road, of course, just because now three out of three of my vehicles are running and driving. So, you can't beat that. But what's nice about this being back is we can now make some advancements on the other cars cuz the truck and the GTO do need to be pulled off the road at some point in the near future for some work to be done to both of them. So, now having Bonnie back as a stout daily driver, it's time to party. I got a lot of parts stacked up you guys haven't seen. We got a lot of stuff to do coming up. So, as I always say, thank you guys so much for tuning in. I truly do appreciate it. If you want to support the channel more than you already do, down below will be a couple links. One of them little merch plug. Go get you some merch. Go look good merch. Go buy it. If you plan on upgrading any of the lighting on your car to some LED johns, go click the link for Auxo. Use my discount code. Get you some money off. Help your boy out. help me buy more car parts. maybe I'll even buy another car just cuz. Or you could also hop over to my Shine Armor link down below. Use my discount code, get you some discounts, get you some money off. And again, that helps me buy parts and potentially just another car.

[00:27:25]I have a problem, okay? Cuz I'm not near finished with any of these cars. I have no money and I still really just want to buy another car just because honestly, I think it's an addiction. But the first step to addiction is admitting it. So, we're like halfway there. But again, as I always say, thank you guys so much for tuning in. I truly do appreciate it. I love each and every one of you. And I'll catch you guys in the next