In Japan, Carmate based in Nagasaki, Toshima is known for manufacturing and selling car accessories.
Established back in 1965 as a company manufacturing headrests to prevent whiplash in car accidents and as the company grew, they would establish their car racing line known as RAZO.
Entering N1 races and having top Japanese Grand Prix winning drivers, the company would released shift knobs and pedals. And my first racing pedals back in my college years were RAZO and I sported RAZO with my old Nissan 200 SX SE.
I was fortunate to often go to car tuning shops in the Bay Area during that time, those were good times!
But fast forward decades later and I’m sporting RAZO pedals once again and this time, the Carmate Car Pedal Set RAZO GT SPEC AT (RP109BL, blue).
This time for my 2015 Toyota Aqua.
So, you may be wondering, how these pedals are and are they easy to install?
The concept hasn’t changed so much. Back then I had three, because my car was manual, but this set features two. You get the brake and gas pedals and two big metal bands for the brake pedal cover and two shorter metal bands (aka braces) for the gas pedal cover.
Screwing the metal bands to the pedal is easy, but where the challenge is making sure you can easily wrap the metal band (each with a slot in which a hook goes inside) to the hook. And sometimes, overtime you may find the metal band coming off the hook. It is bendable but sometimes that flexibility may lead to accidental unhooks.
For the most part, the brake pedal is one where you can easily preset the bands and then put one band over and the other you can move the band to fit it easily on the other side and press on the bands until the pedal cover does not move.
The problem is the gas pedal. For the Toyota Aqua NPH10, the gas pedal has a big plastic ridge underneath the gas pedal that prevents the band from wrapping around the main body of the pedal. What to do?
If I had another large metal band, I could have easily wrapped above the pedal but since I had to work with two shorter medal bands, one of the bands had to be modified. I added another metal piece and jerry-rigged it to extend the metal band to make it longer.
But after doing that, then everything worked.
Overtime, the pedal may get lose and you may need to re-adjust and retighten the bands/braces but for the most part, I do like the colors and the overall look. It’s much better than the basic one paint colored metal pedals.
But you can get these Carmate Car Pedal Set RAZO GT SPEC AT (RP109BL, blue) for under $5,000 yen (around $45 US) through Amazon Japan. They will work with Toyota Aqua/Prius-C, Toyota Yaris, Honda N-BOX, Daihatsu Tanto and Daihatsu Copen.
