Post, Post Build Check

Post, Post Build Check

Having finally had the chance to have a look around under the bonnet and nose cone we've been able to find a few things that Caterham have carried out over the last week. Here are a few things that may help others who are building their car, and a few things that are the up-to-date how-to's for building the car ready for VOSA.
   

• One job that we were going to do, but ran out of time, was to bend the wipers so they are parallel with the windscreen, which Caterham have done for us.

• Caterham have added another negative lead to the battery, which then bolts to the chassis under the heater control valve.

Extra lead. Also the battery breather hose had also been removed.

The Battery covers have been changed and removed.

• When looking at the oil breather bottle we noticed that they had removed the breather hose, and had removed the hose clips holding the breather bottle hose.

The breather hose we had relocated has temporarily been plugged to stop dirt getting in and allowing us to later fit another cover or hose.

• Admittedly we made a little bit of a mess with the wiring for the right hand headlight, which was functional but not pretty, however it has been moved from under the expansion bottle and onto the chassis tube. Also the indicator earth we had sliced into the headlight assembly had been removed and bolted to the chassis in the same way as we had done on the LHS. 

We can't remember whether this hole behind the brake line was there before, but we can't imagine someone would drill a new hole into a chassis tube.
Also, as can be seen here, the trim around the exit hole for the steering arms have been removed.

• The braided clutch cable had a length of fuel hose over it in order to protect it. No idea how this has been put on, unless it has been cut open and cable tied, as I didn't check. 

• The front edge of the cat guard has had a small length of scuttle trim added.

• The way the handbrake cable has been fixed to the 'A' frame has also been changed. Before we used 'P' clips to hold it off of the drive shafts and the chassis, as others have done, however now it is being held in place with cable ties. 

Cable ties around the rubber sleeve pre-attached to the cable, and onto the 'A' frame.

The length above the diff has been held off by a cable tie.

• Another length of fuel hose has been used to protect the brake hose to the rear brakes.

• All of our cut down seat bolts have been removed and replaced with the original length of bolts...

• For the life of us we cannot unearth what they have done for the quoted two hours removing and re-attaching the Di-Dion ears.

Just no idea...

• The engine seems to be working fine, sounding like it should, and now all of the exhaust it the correct colour. 

• A piece of scuttle trim has been fixed to the underside of the steering rack bridge in order to reduce abrasion to the oil hoses.

From Above.

From the front.

To end the day we decided to add one of the last visual finishing touches to the car by adding the recently acquired nose badge. We decided to go for the black and chrome Super 7 badge sold by Caterham, as the rectangular green monstrosity isn't going to go well with the colour scheme. The dilemma of the badge seems to have been resolved by Caterham as, according to an article in Low Flying, the badge has been changed to a black circular design, which is currently on the 620R and 620S. 

By drilling through and bolting the badge to the nose cone we don't have to worry about the self adhesive patch, on the back of the standard badge, sticking to the paint protection film. 

The black badge surround is very similar to the "Starlight Black" stripe.

The only thing now is the painted grill.

Build Day 38- Boot Cover Prep and Headlight Wiring

Day 38- Boot Cover Prep and Headlight Wiring

Boot Cover Prep   

As Caterham have offered to replace and re-fit another rear bulkhead interior carpet we can't fully fit the boot cover, however we can at least do some of the fitting. The first job required removing the metal band from the forward edge of the cover. This required unpicking the stitching at one end and sliding it out.

Unpicking the stitching.

Once the strip was removed we could mark the positions of the harness bolts, then we used our punch set to cut holes for them. At this point we marked the popper base points along the top of seat bulkhead. We marked and drilled 3mm (7/64" = 2.8mm) holes 1 1/4" either side of the centreline, then one half way between each harness shoulder strap. Then decided to leave the rest of the attachment until after the post build inspection when we can do a proper job. After this we reattached the trim of the boot cover with impact adhesive.

Sticking the underside down. The top was most undamaged when we unpicked the stitching.

Headlight Wiring

Just a little bit of tidying and connecting before the cars goes off. We attached the wing repeater wiring into the connector block, then earthed the LHS repeater with a ring to the brake union t piece, and the RHS repeater earth was earthed in unison with the headlight earth in the connector block. We then tidied the RHS connector block under the expansion bottle bracket and the LHS connector block to the chassis tube under the top radiator hose.

RHS earthing of repeater piggybacked onto headlight earth.

RHS headlight connection tidied under bracket.