Front Suspension

Right - spanners at the ready, let's build a car!

First job in the Assembly Guide is to protect the whole front-end paintwork of the car prior to assembly of the front suspension components. This took over an hour - I used thick polythene sheet and masking tape. The first proper mechanical install is the steering rack - no problem here, except they have improved the design of the mounting bolts so you don't need the washers mentioned in the Guide. Note that the steering column and wheel don't get put in until after the engine install, and you must leave the bolts on the rack loose for the moment.

I was slightly confused about the PVC boots on the track-rod ends, until I realised that the ones supplied in the kit have to have their ends sliced off with a Stanley knife in order to fit.

Next the lower wishbones are installed, with copious copper-slip grease. Again no real problems - instructions are clear and precise. Front hubs and upper wishbones are next, but if you have the ventilated disc & 4-pot caliper option (the salesman talked me into it) then remember to install the brake pads first before building up (the cycle wing support bracket covers the brake pad locating pin).

The only confusing part of this section was the headlamp mounts - Caterham have switched to the "EU4" style which is not covered in the Guide. The new bracket fits over the front-top wishbone mount, but you need a couple of extra 10mm flat washers to pad out the bracket and make a tight fit. Installing the spring/damper units was quite a struggle: I used a soft-head hammer to knock the top bushes into place, but I have had to order some special hexagonal-drive sockets to be able to torque the damper Allen bolts correctly.

Final job on the front suspension system is the installation of the front anti-roll bar. The bar is supported by brackets on the chassis front, but the actual bar-ends have plastic balls screwed into them which locate into sockets on the top of the upper suspension wishbones. It was fiddly getting the plastic balls to sink into the sockets - First you need to bend the roll bar to get the balls roughly in the correct place, then work the bar up and down a few times to make the balls enter the sockets correctly. Rubber boots are cable-tied over the joints to prevent ingress of crap.

  

Last job in this section: connect the flexible brake pipes between the disk calipers and the copper pipe unions inside the chassis. Only problem here is guessing how tight to make the joints...

Engine & gearbox next.

Arrival

(References to "The Prisoner" are part-and-parcel of any Caterham/Lotus 7 discussion!)

The scheduled delivery date for my Caterham kit was the first week of December 2010. Unfortunately  nature stepped in and dumped a load of snow on southern England - I think the Caterham factory actually had to close for a few days. I was going away on vacation in the weeks before Xmas, so we decided to delay the delivery until the New Year.

So, first day back at work in 2011, and there's a big van outside my house...

I went outside to say hello, only to find the Caterham delivery driver deep in conversation with a local guy in a beat-up old Land Rover Disco, who claimed the Caterham van had clipped his rear bumper in the narrow lane outside my house. It all ended amicably though - the Disco was falling to bits anyway, and the driver admitted that the Landy was an MOT failure...

(Check out the personalized plate. On the van, I mean...)

Cup of tea later and the driver & I set about unloading the boxes and various bits and pieces. Note to anyone else thinking of doing a build - Gravel drives are not ideal for small-wheeled barrows! The two of us had to hand-carry the engine 20 metres to the garage, nearly did my back in. Here's what I had after the driver left:

The first few days after delivery were occupied with a good check through the various boxes, to make sure everything was present and correct. Caterham are slightly notorious for forgetting the odd few bits and pieces... There are a number of lists and photos in the Assembly Guide to help with this process, but unfortunately the Guide is not exactly up-to-date ("guide" is the correct description for this document) and some of the items vary depending on what spec of car you have. Sean at Caterham Cars is your best mate now, he'll sort out any shortages pronto.

Preparation

Before choosing the exact Caterham model that I wanted, I rented a Roadsport 175 SV for the day from Mark On Europe in Swindon. I went there rather than direct to Caterham because I wanted to drive 300 miles or so on nice country lanes - and I know Wiltshire / Somerset / Dorset rather better than south London! Anyway, the guys at Mark On Europe were very friendly and helpful, and I had a fantastic day out in their 175 SV. It was a beautiful spring day in late April: sunshine, speed, and the wind in what little hair I have left. Seven heaven.

The week after my test drive, I went up to Caterham to talk about engine options and have a good look at all the different colours etc. There were a lot of cars in the garage at the time, all different shapes and sizes, so it was easy to compare the different options. I sat in a couple of the non-SV cars, they were too cramped for my liking. I chose the 2.0 litre Ford Duratec engine which I had used the previous week, it is plenty powerful enough to get me into trouble...

The final question was colour scheme. I was quite tempted by the "traditional" Prisoner colours (green and yellow), but that almost seems too common these days... I saw a picture on the Caterham website of the Gulf Oil scheme in light blue & orange, which I thought looked really cool, but there was a car in these colours at the Caterham garage when I visited and unfortunately I didn't think it looked quite so good in the flesh. So I chose the metallic Viper Blue instead, with a silver noseband & stripe.

So the car went on order in May 2010, and I was quoted a delivery date of December. That was fine, it gave me several months to clear out my garage and make all the preparations. A couple of things I would recommend for anyone contemplating a Caterham build:

1) Garage flooring: A nice, clean, even floor in the garage makes the build a whole lot easier. I chose to put down some 5mm vinyl tiles, these are a little pricey but are simple to lay, very comfortable to kneel on for long periods, and easy to roll the car, trolley jack, and engine hoist on. Dark colours are recommended, because over time they can get stained by black tyre rubber. http://www.paftektiles.co.uk/

2) Mobile axle stands - I've found these very useful. You can easily move the car around to access any part, they are very stable, and you don't need to worry about accidentally knocking the car off the stand.
Check out http://www.cjautos.site90.net/mobax.html

Here is my garage before any work commences:

On the Caterham website you can download the Assembly Guide, this is quite useful because it lists the tools and lubricants you will need and you can get these in advance of the kit arriving. They also have a "first fill pack" available on the website spares page, containing all the different oils and anti-freeze etc. I ordered one of these to be delivered with the kit. I didn't need too many special tools - Just a humungous torque wrench and 41mm socket for the hubs, and a few other small items.

Then the waiting began...

Introduction

(with apologies to Jon Anderson.... Song of Seven is a great album, and I thoroughly recommend it!)
This blog is intended to be a more-or-less accurate diary of the builiding of a Caterham 7 Roadsport 175 SV, taking place in north Hampshire in early 2011.

For many years I have contemplated getting a Caterham kit, but always rejected the idea due to lack of time, family commitments, resources etc. However, on my (ahem) 50th birthday I was reminded that the clock is ticking, and if I don't have a go at it now I may not be physically willing or capable in the near future...

Before I begin on the actual nuts and bolts of the build, here is a quick precis of my background. I am only including this in order to demonstrate that you don't need any professional qualifications or experience to build a 7: Only a love of cars, infinite patience, and a lot of determination is required!

Like most young boys I loved toy cars, and my favorite as a ten-year-old was the Matchbox Lotus Europa. Lotus seemed to represent everything that was cool and sexy about British automotive engineering in the 60s and 70s, a fantastic mixture of great styling and great engineering. And infinitely preferable to anything the Germans or Italians could throw at us...

Skip forward to 1982 and I finally saved up enough to buy a Europa - a beautiful JPS black-and-gold S2 (the one with the Renault engine). What a great car - almost. It actually spent more that 50% of time off the road, and I have to say (from bitter experience!) that the acronym Lotus: "Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious"
is not very wide of the mark. The paradox for any Lotus owner is that when the car is working, you never want to get rid of it - then it breaks down, and you say "why didn't I sell?".

(Please note: This photo is 30 years old and I wish I still had both the hair and the physique!!!)

After the Europa I had a variey of more-or-less interesting cars, including a superb Talbot Sunbeam Lotus and a brilliant Chevrolet Camaro Z28 (I lived in the States for 6 years in the early 90s, and shipped one of these over the the UK). I'm still trying to decide whether the Sunbeam or the Chevy had the best-sounding engine: The four bell-mouths of the Dell'Orto carbs at 6500rpm in the Sunbeam, versus the full-on brass band of the "small-block" 5.7 litre V8 in the Chevy at 4000rpm....

For the past 10 years I have been driving the Subaru Forester, a car about which I can only say good things. In fact, I'm on my second one now - I did 120k miles in an X-plate S-Turbo without a single problem, then I traded it in for a 2007 XTE 2.5 turbo. I have 50k on the clock and (no surprise) not a single problem.

So that about brings us up-to-date: Here I am waiting for the delivery of a car that I have to assemble myself, having not really raised a spanner in anger for the last 10 years... We'll see how it goes!