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 41- First Start Up

Day 41- First Start Up

Start Up Prep   

Before we can start the engine it needs filling with coolant and oil. After our research we have decided to run in the engine using mineral running in oil, and thus have decided to go for Millers CRO 10w40 Running in mineral oil. Initially we put in the 6trs the manual says to put in for starting. Also before starting we turned the engine over to circulate the oil properly. (http://www.millersoils.co.uk/automotive/tds-automotive.asp?prodsegmentID=187&sector=Motorsport)

Letting the bottle drain. Not a drop seems to come into the tank, evidently it requires turning over to circulate the oil.

Running in oil.

We then filled the cooler bottle, and the radiator through the top plug, with a 50/50 mix of de-ionised water and the supplied coolant. This was only filled to the minimum fill line then topped up as required. Finally we filled the petrol tank with roughly 15ltrs of petrol.

Be very careful, over fills very quickly.

Before putting the car on the floor we gave the exhaust bolts a quick torque, put the wheels on, then dug out the keys.

Primaries looking great with the wrapping off.

Certainly an unexpected surprise unveiling these when the car arrived.

Car rolled out ready to go.

Start Up

As instructed we initially disconnected the fuel inertia cut off switch on the bulkhead, then proceeded to turn over the engine for 30 seconds in order to circulate oil and coolant, and to get to 4+ Bar of oil pressure. Then we reconnected the switch, primed the fuel line with the ignition, then started the engine. This started straight away, however, as the idle hasn't been set yet the engine requires some revs in order to not cut out. We kept the engine at 2000 revs for a few minutes to allow for proper bedding of the heads.

This process quickly stopped however as we noticed that the catalytic converter had become cherry red and only two of the primaries were discolouring. After this we decided to allow the cat to cool, then we wheeled the car back in and not do anything more until we have talked to Caterham.

Only primary 1 & 3 being heated. Evidently not firing on all cylinders.

We have made a guess that the two misfiring cylinders are dumping fuel into the catalytic converter, which was burning from the exhaust gasses, thus heating the cat and eventually spitting flames out the exhaust.

Each of the light specks is a small blister where the heat was starting to damage the shield.

While the cat was cooling we decided to put the adhesive foam strips, supposed to be fore the cycle wing fitment for the protection of the paint under the bonnet. This is only going to be a temporary matter until we get some different foam.

Foam along front edge and underside.

Build Day 40- Exhaust, Battery, Steering, and Wipers

Day 40- Exhaust, Battery, Steering, and Wipers

Catalytic Converter   

To finish off the exhaust system I fitted the cat heat shield, and dad fitted the lambda probe. The heat shield went on simply enough, just thread the two jubilee clips through the shield brackets and slide over the cat, then tighten with the heads on the inside of the cat. The lambda probe simply screws in and connects to the wiring loom. In order to protect the wiring we wrapped the head and the first few cm of the wiring with self amalgamating tape. We have the wiring routed up the front of the foot box and then along the front of the pedal box to the connector.

Clips threaded through shield.

Polished cat with springs and band clamp on.

Shield on.

Lambda probe in and wrapped.

Battery

Quickly connected the battery leads after giving them a quick clean, then managed to break both of the very brittle terminal covers. We just used some glue to fix the top and cut come slots out to allow the leads out.

Leads connected.

Cables tidied and covers fixed and on.

When the battery was fully connected we tested all of the electrics, apart from the engine, and everything works so far!! Fingers crossed that the engine start goes without a hitch.

Wiper Blades

As the blades have smaller than a 3mm radius on the ends of them they require to be filed down to comply to the IVA test. I did this with a small hand file, then painted the ends with some black Hamerite metal paint after I had cleaned them.

Blade ends.

Steering

Started by attaching the steering wheel, then the universal joint. However first we had to make a better assessment of the steering, as at the moment they are a few degrees toed out, despite having 13 turns on each rod end, so turned each one in, on turn at a time, until they were straight, then did it one more turn on each end. Then we reattached the track rod ends to the uprights, put the rack central, then attached the universal joint to the steering column. 

Wish the pad wasn't required, the wheel looks much better without it.

Steering universal joint, as straight as possible.

Build Day 39- Exhaust

Day 39- Exhaust

Fitting Exhaust   

To really set the car off we decided to get the primaries, cat, and silencer sent off and professionally polished. We called round a few places and eventually got a decent quote from Mark Feltham, from Mark's Mirror Polishing, based in Peterborough, specialising is small scale polishing of car and motorcycle parts. Took them up on the Tuesday and picked them up the following day. They look fantastic. We had asked for the whole set to be race polished, but he decided to go half way between race and mirror polish for the Primaries and silencer, and the y look even better than imagined!!!!

One of the pics we sent Mark for the quote.

Beforehand I had done a fair bit of work cleaning the primaries and silencer with wet and dry paper in order to clean the weld marks and remove embedded grease. 

Our polished pipes.

This is the picture Mark sent before we picked them up. There are now other pictures on his website (marksmirrorpolishing.uk/mmp-gallery/) and I'll try and take some better pictures of them on the car.

To fit the pipes the instructions turned out to be useless, apart from the fitting order, because we had removed the labels from the ends. However they are pretty simple to fit with two sets of hands, mainly as the front and rear primaries have special ends which only fit to the block one way, and the middle two only go in one way too. 

Primaries in, car wrapped again in bubble wrap just in case.

Cleaning the bracket mount with a tap.

Cat required a few taps with a mallet to get it seated enough to get the spring clamps on.

As others have done, two cable ties around the springs.

For the silencer bracket we cut a small piece of rubber from some excess wing trim, and put it in-between the bracket and the body, which was then tightened appropriately. Then the exhaust bobbin was inserted into the bracket and tightened before the silencer was added, ensuring that the band clamp was put on before the silencer was put on.

All together, just the band clamp, cat heat shield, and the IVA trim.

A touch of exhaust sealant joining the cat and pipes.