Weather kit and sundry bits

The project is getting close to completion now, and I've started reading through the new IVA Guide provided by Caterham. The first thing that hit me was that all my work on the front lights (see the previous blog post) was going to have to be done all over again! The new rules state that all wiring harnesses need to be sleeved, and wherever a harness passes through metal it needs to have a grommet. So the main headlamp harnesses need to be reworked, and the indicator repeater wires where they go through the cycle wingstays need to be re-routed via grommets, and (most irritating of all) I need to add grommets to the top wishbone mounts, requiring the wishbones to be disconnected (which in turn means unbolting the front anti-roll bar). Bugger. All this faff took me a whole day.

 Grommets a-plenty

As with most of the frustrating jobs on the car, I feel much happier now that this has been done...

Next, I re-connected the battery to check the lights were all still working. This revealed quite a perplexing problem with the indicator repeaters working intermittently. After much probing with my meter, I located the problem to poor earth continuity on the actual hub assemblies (left & right), which are the return electrical connection for the indicator repeaters. This is because the only mechanical connections to the hub are via wishbones, track-rod ends etc. and all these are via plastic or rubber bushes. In fact the only metal-to-metal connection from the hub to the car chassis is via the brake hose (!). So my wiring problem was due to a tarnished copper washer on the brake pipe entry to the caliper. Who'd have guessed that?

Now, with the electrics finally put to bed, next job is to fit the weather equipment. This meant first of all that I could finally re-install the boot floor and carpet, tie up the diff breather pipe (which I have brought through the boot floor, clipped to the sidewall, and added a black-painted breather from a toilet cistern), and bolt down the luvverly painted roll cage.

Next, the hood goes on. This is, as anyone with knowledge of Sevens knows, something of a Heath-Robinson affair. Nevertheless my hood fitted OK, although I hope I don't often have to use this in anger or in despair.....

I also drilled holes and bolted on the hinges to take the doors (or "sidescreens" as you are supposed to call them, because for legal reasons a "door" is fixed, whereas the Caterham screens are removeable).

Next I fitted the IVA mirrors, which are bolted onto the windscreen uprights (rather than onto the sidescreens). Finally I fitted the boot cover, which requires fixing the "durable dot" popper buttons to the leatherette cover. I'm not very happy with the tool supplied for this - it doesn't do a very good job of peening over the dot button rivets, and I think I'll do these again later.

Last, but definitely not least, I applied the rear-end badges. I think this looks bloody good myself...

The only thing left to assemble on the whole car is the exhaust silencer, which I bolted on without the supplied heatshield (because the shield appartently fails IVA).

The end is in sight now......

Wings and Lights

The front cycle wings of the Caterham are supposed to be bolted onto the black wingstay supports on the front hubs. Unfortunately the bolts are a little unsightly, so I chose to glue some cable-tie brackets to the underside of the cycle wings so as to leave the painted upper side smooth. I found some suitable cable tie brackets here: http://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/FXCTB100B.html and I glued them on using a black polyurethane adhesive from Car Builder Solutions: http://www.cbsonline.co.uk/

I fitted the IVA rubber piping around the periphery of the cycle wings and glued this on with ordinary Superglue - seems to work fine. The indicator repeater lamps bolted on OK, and I drilled a hole in the wingstay for a self-tapping screw to hold the ground wire (CC recommends using a rivet, but I prefer something easy to remove!)

The white blobs are Tippex, where I marked the bracket locations

With the front wings securely located, it's on to the rears. First job is to rivet on the nice shiny stone guards, complete with the IVA rubber piping around them. This was reasonably straightforward, but I'm always a bit hesitant when drilling the rivet holes through the nice fresh paintwork!

One of the strange historical quirks of the Caterham is that the left & right stone guards are assymetrical. Originally the left-hand side was cut away to make room for the exhaust, and this has not been changed even for the Duratec models with the exhaust on the right-hand side. So the rear wings end up looking like this:

Ignore the protective plastic film on the stainless steel

Fitting the rear wings to the body, complete with the thick rubber piping gasket, went OK but I had to file the mounting holes in the wings a little bit to get the bolts to fit through nicely. And whilst I remember, I also had to cut a slot to allow the wings to fit over the already-fitted radius arms.

Three bolts on each wing actually go through into the boot area, so for these I fitted the bolt head from the inside, using a penny washer between the carpet and aluminium body skin, and covered the bolt head with a plastic cap. I think the final results look very nice!

After finishing off the front & rear wings, I thought I'd treat myself to seeing what the car was going to look like "fully clothed", so to speak. So I offered up the nose-cone for the first time, fitted the nose badge, and put the bonnet on. Doesn't this look just brilliant:

Next job was to fit the front and rear lights. On the front, the indicators are housed in black plastic pods which need the rubber IVA piping glued all around (I'm not sure I've done this right, but I hope so...). The main headlamp bolts pass through the indicator pods, and clamp down onto the front suspension bracket. My car has the new "EU4" headlamp brackets, and the cable harness is supposed to pass through the bracket and into the engine bay. This was quite fiddly, and having done some reading on other blogs and the CC IVA guide, I think I may have to do this again - to add grommets to the bracket metalwork, and some extra sleeving to the cable harness. A royal PITA, but I want the car to pass IVA....

The rear lamp clusters were easy, you have to drill mounting holes into the rear wings but CC have made life easier by already drilling one hole in the right place for you. The cable tails are really short on the rear clusters, I had to untie the main harness and move it around a little to give enough length on the left side. I think I need to add some extra sleeving to the cables inside the wheel arch to make sure no bare wires are visible, this is an IVA requirement. Incidentally, this company has all the necessary wiring spares:
http://www.vehicle-wiring-products.eu/

Need some extra sleeving on this cable

To check the lights were wired OK, for the first time I actually connected up the battery, inserted the key and turned on the ignition - Hooray! No smoke! And the lights all work! Phew...

Finally I added a silver vinyl stripe to the rear panel of the car, to match the bonnet. This looks really nice, and for some reason CC do not offer this as a standard option when you order the bonnet stripe. Perhaps because a lot of people have the rear spare tyre option. Whatever.

The car is now booked in at CC for the Post-Build Check, followed by the IVA test in about 5 weeks from now. There's not much more to do; quite a lot of little jobs though (such as the small matter of starting the engine...).

Total build time to date = 125 hours.