Miatav8,MstrASE,A&P,F wrote:
I'm not talking about a bushing. The spacer provides a positive stop for you to clamp the bolt against to keep the bolt from rotating back and forth with the pedal. If it rotates, it will slowly slot the aluminum flanges. On the tracker shifter, I built similar to your pedal hinge but in steel. I used nylon bush on the bolt shank and no spacer, but I added shoulders to the flange that lock the bolt head so it cant' turn and used jamb nuts to set the end play. This meant the bolt shank always rotated with the flanges (i.e. no relative motion/wear between the flanges and the bolt shank. Also, it is a just a shifter so very low, not critical loads.
A spacer also greatly strengthens the flanges so the load is spread across a much larger area to prevent tear out and cracking. A brake pedal failure could be very dramatic. Just imho.
A thin steel spacer will work if you make room for steel washers inside the flanges to spread the load so the thin steel tube dose not dig into the aluminum flanges.Open up the pedal id enough to clear the spacer and use grease on the inside edges of the washers and the tube/spacer od. If there is enough cross section left in the pedal end, you can fit a bronze or plastic bushing.
If you can prevent the bolt from rotating with the pedal, that would work. Even with a bush, the friction will cause the bolt to turn unless it is held in some way.
Oh man I didn’t think all that out. I do have bronze bushings in the pedal where the bolts go through. Not the rest of it.