Gentleman! Start your engine...

It's about ten days before the man from Caterham comes to take the car away for the post-build check (PBC) and government Individual Vehicle Approval (IVA) test. All that remains is the starting of the engine, tidy up the loose ends, tighten all the suspension bolts, and install the various plastic caps etc. that are required for IVA. Thankfully there's a huge long weekend ahead (courtesy of their highnesses the Duke & Duchess of Cambridge, gawd luv 'em).

First thing to do is fill up all the various fluids and check for leaks! For the brakes and clutch I used a Gunson EeziBleed which worked OK, I had to bleed the brakes at least 4 times over the space of three days and they still feel a bit spongy after all that. I'll ask CC to look at this as part of the PBC - There's no evidence of leaks, and it may be just that the pads need "bedding in".

I thought the clutch was going to be easy, but it is difficult to get at the bleed nipple without spilling fluid everywhere and I couldn't seem to get the pedal to operate correctly even after several bleeds. I finally realised that the problem was not hydraulic at all - The operating arm in the pedal box was not adjusted correctly to allow enough pedal travel, so I had to remove the split-pin and re-adjust the pedal "throw" myself and it works fine now. Phew!

Next I filled up with engine coolant and checked for leaks. Nothing obvious yet, but of course I expect things will change after the engine gets started and heating up! Incidentally the reservoir took all the 5 litre container plus nearly a litre of a second bottle, so I'm not too worried about airlocks since this is more than the manual says is required anyway.

Gearbox oil went in next, and this was the one I was expecting to be a pig given the notoriously difficult drain plug access. I created a filler tool, comprising a funnel fitted into a 500mm long fuel pipe of 6mm internal diameter, fitted into a final 100mm length of thin, clear, plastic tubing flexible enough to make a tight 90 degree turn into the gearbox side. I fed the pipe down from the top of the engine bay, and into the side of the box. This worked fine and I poured in about 1.5 litres of oil before it started leaking out all over the garage floor. Getting the drain plug back in was fiddly but not too difficult: I tightened it using not the recommended modified Allen key but instead the actual 15mm off-cut that I had sawn off the Allen key to start with - This fits nicely between the drain plug and transmission tunnel, and you can turn it with a spanner.

Finally I added 5 litres of engine oil, until it showed on the dipstick . Everything was ready to start up the engine! I had even charged the battery the previous night, and filled the tank with 15 litres of super-unleaded from the local garage.

The recommended procedure is to first "crank for oil pressure", so I disconnected the inertia switch to stop the fuel pump operating, gingerly inserted the starter key, and turned to position II, ignition on. The starter button was under my fingertip... press, and.... nothing. Not a dicky bird. A little flummoxed, I tried turning the ignition key to the normal start position and this worked fine - I cranked away, and lo and behold, got a decent pressure reading on the oil gauge. Hooray! But the push-button starter switch must be wired up wrongly....

Re-connecting the inertia switch I cranked again, expecting the engine to start, and... nothing. I scratched my head for a good few minutes, checked all the connections, and then realised that I probably had not disengaged the immobilizer. So I turned the key again, waved the fob around near the immobilizer aerial, and was rewarded by the sound of the fuel pump priming up the system. Another turn and.... life!

Brilliant! I was beginning to lose hope there for a while.... Anyway, the gauges are all reading sensible values so I switched off again to re-check the engine oil level which had gone down a little. Then I started up again, and ran the engine to "hot" until the fan started up. This all seemed to work OK, the temperature gauge stabilized at 80-something degrees, and I think the thermostat is working but some of the hoses seem to be remaining a little cooler than I had expected. The heater is pumping out hot air, though.

Into the final furlong now! With the car down on its wheels I re-torqued all the front and rear suspension bolts, and tightened up the rear hub nuts to 240nm. This was easier than I thought because there's a nice hole in the centre of the alloy wheels which is exactly the right size to allow the 41mm socket to enter, which means that if you put the handbrake on, chock the wheel, then you can torque away to your heart's content.

Last but not least, I installed some of the plastic caps that are required to get the car through the IVA test. Unfortunately CC had not sent me enough of the correct sizes, so this will have to be done during the PBC. ...And for a final laugh, I tried fitting the windscreen wiper arms only to find that they had sent me the ones for a left-hand drive car! Hohoho.

Anyway, nothing was going to dampen my spirits as I merrily drove the car down my gravel drive and back again, revelling in the fact that most of it works! Brilliant. It's a sunny spring day and I have a top-notch sports car, shouting "Drive Me! Drive Me!" loudly in both ears.

 
Ironic post-script: Mr. Caterham arrived today to collect the car for the post-build check and IVA. Would it start? Would it f**k. Over a minute of cranking and bugger all. Mucho embarrassment as I had to push the car onto the van... I'm still puzzling over this, don't quite understand what the problem is/was. Will be very interested to hear from Caterham what the diagnostic computer says...

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.

Interior Comfy Bits

This is the part of the job I was least looking forward to: I'm not very good with upholstery and that kind of thing, I can sew a button onto a shirt but that's about the limit of my competence. Anyway - it turned out rather easier than I thought, and I think the results look pretty good. First thing to do was glue the carpet onto the main bulkhead behind the seats. This was straightforward, I used Evo-stik Impact contact adheasive for all the carpet work, mostly using the aerosol spray dispenser. Surplus overspray was wiped off with a rag dipped in white spirit.

Note the spring clamps holding the rear vinyl bit whilst the glue set.

Next, the transmission tunnel carpets are glued down both sides, and the glue is allowed to set for a good while prior to installing the main transmission tunnel "leather" console. This was quite tough, manouevring it over the handbrake and gear levers, then around the main wiring harness at the front scuttle end. A lot of sweat and strain was used to get this located properly, but once in place, it looks first class. Especially with the gear knob in place!

Next I did the carpets in the boot area. This was quite fiddly but the carpet pieces in the kit were all approximately the correct size and shape, so only a little Stanley knife fettling was required. I removed the roll-over bar and the boot floor whilst doing this job, it made things quite a lot easier. In fact, I think I'm going to leave the boot floor out for now, because it looks like this will make the connecting up of the rear wheel arches and lamp clusters somewhat easier.

After the boot carpets, the next job is to install the natty stainless steel "sill protectors" that fit over the driver and passenger side door sills. You push these into place, then drill through the stainless to match up with the rivet holes in the side panel & chassis rails. I bought a couple of new drill bits especially for this - stainless is really tough to get through unless your tools are sharp. After drilling the holes, I fitted the IVA-required rubber piping strip between sill and panel, plus the "knee protector" metal panels that go just under the dash in front of driver and passenger. These panels needed to be bent into shape a little to fit properly. After this, it's out with the rivet gun and pop all the interior panels together including the rear curved bits by the driver/passenger shoulder, which also need rubber piping.

Note the little "escutcheon plate" to hold the door arm-rest clip.

After this, I laid the rubber floor mats and under-seat carpets, which do not require to be glued because they are held in place by the seat runners. I also installed the 12V cigar-lighter socket in a hole I had drilled through the rear bulkhead between the seats - this seems a strange place to put it, but the wiring harness is there in the boot area and it is actually quite convenient even for the cable to a windscreen-mounted GPS. Trust me, I think it will work...

Next I installed the driver and passenger four-point harnesses. This was easy, but I think I will have to remove the top bolts again when I get around to installing the fabric boot cover.

 Just a minute... There's something missing!

 That's better!

The seats went in easily - where the bolts go through the chassis I had to file down the sides of the penny washers, because the strengthening-rail rivets were too close to the seat mounting holes, but aside from that it was simple. Boy, it feels really, really good to sit in the car for the first time! The seats adjust for position OK, I can reach the pedals fine, and it is comfortable! Bloody brilliant.

Brrrrmmm! Brrrrmmm!

Next up is the front & rear wheel arches, and lighting / electrics. Total build hours so far: 100.

Diff & Rear Suspension

First job on the rear axle assembly is to get the handbrake installed (!)... This is because it is easier to route the handbrake cables without the diff in the way. The handbrake went in without any problems - I had to wind out the adjuster quite a long way to be able to get the clevis pin to mate up with the handbrake assembly, but otherwise no difficulty. I have wired up the brake microswitch to the connector on the harness, although there is no mention of this in the manual - hope it works!

The next thing to do is insert the propshaft into the transmission tunnel - do it NOW, before the diff goes in! It is not possible to install the propshaft after the diff is fitted.

Diff installation is next. I put the diff on a wooden block on top of the trolley jack and gently raised it into place, this seemed to work quite well (it was too heavy to lift into place manually). The bottom bolts go in quite easily, and it is relatively straightforward to add shims to get the diff centralised left-to-right across the car. The top bolt was a bit more tricky, I had to thump it in with a soft hammer, which made adding shims quite tough! I used sellotape in a ring around the washers to keep them together whilst inserting them between diff & metalised bush.

Having torqued the top bolt, I removed the lower bolts one side at a time and put Loctite on each before re-inserting and torquing up. Final measurement of the diff centrality left-to-right is within 0.5mm.

Next job according to the Guide is installation of brake pipes onto the De Dion tube, but before this I decided to add some rustproofing to the inside of the tube. I squirted Waxoyl as far as I could, from each end, to try and stop the tube rusting if there is any moisture ingress.

Next I put the tube on my workbench and lightly bolted the aluminium hub carriers, caliper brackets and brake calipers to each end. I installed the 3-way brake union onto the tube (the nut was very difficult to tighten, it was getting really hot and I thought I was stripping the thread - but I was definitely using the right size according to the Guide, and it feels OK now). The brake pipes fitted OK but both left & right pipes needed to have the final 10cm bent into a semi-circle in order to locate properly into the brake calipers. I clamped each pipe into a bench vice (with soft jaws!) and hand-bent the pipes using my 41mm hub socket as a former...

Next the De Dion tube is inserted into the chassis, behind the diff. I protected the chassis rails with foam wrap in order to prevent scratches. The rear shocks and radius arms go in next, and these are bolted to the De Dion tube. I'm not going to torque up these bolts until I can put the weight of the car onto the wheels/springs, to make sure the rubber suspension bushes are not twisted under normal loads.

The radius arms stop the top of the De Dion tube from rotating, and the bottom of the tube is held in place by an "A-frame" bracket. The apex of the A is bolted to a central rubber bush on the bottom of the De Dion tube, and the two arms of the A to the suspension bushes in the front of the wheel arch. Installation was straightforward except that the central bush can only be tightened with a very thin socket set (the nut & bolt are recessed into a metal sleeve). Also there are badly-fitting nylon washers either side of the bush, which do not fill me with confidence....

My kit did not include a rear anti-roll bar, so the next job is to build up the remainder of the hub components onto the De Dion tube ends. This starts with inserting the drive shafts into the diff, then locating the aluminium "ears" and the main hub carrier bearing over the ends of the shaft & De Dion tube. These are then bolted in with loctite and torqued up.

After this, the brake discs can be located over the driveshaft ends and the big locknut screwed on (note that the shaft on the left side of the car has a counter-clockwise thread). The nuts are supposed to be done up to 270nm, but I'm just taking up the slack for now until I can lock the wheels properly.

The speed sensor is screwed on to a small bracket on the right-hand-side hub, and adjusted to be 1mm away from the serrated ring on the driveshaft.

Finally the brake calipers and pads can be installed onto a carrier assembly that bolts onto the top of the aluminum hub ears. The brake pipes can now be screwed into the caliper assembly, and the handbrake cables connected.

Ready to roll!

Adjusting the handbrake tension was extremely difficult. The adjuster plastic nut is hard up between the diff and the chassis, and I found it almost impossible to tweak from below. It's much easier from above, but after the interior trim is installed this won't be possible... Hope I don't have to adjust it any more!

Last but not least, I filled the diff with the EP90 oil. I did this from above, using a funnel on a 2ft pipe, having removed the boot floor. Whilst I was there I also painted the wooden bit of the floor with preservative.

Interior is next up....

Plumb Crazy

Next job after the engine bay electrics is to install all the cooling hoses and ancillary bits and pieces. This begins with the crankcase breather bottle, the radiator and electric fan, then the primary water reservoir:

This was all quite straightforward. Then came all the hose connections, which was a bit more tricky... trying to decide which hose went where, and cutting them all to the right length, was a bit of a jigsaw puzzle. Thankfully a friend at the Lotus Seven Owners Club forwarded me some photos from Sean at CC, showing how the hoses ought to be routed - this made life much easier, but I still had to be a little creative with the routing of the hoses around the heater area. Firstly these hoses foul on the engine air inlet filter, and secondly routing the hoses down to the oil cooler 'modine' unit was difficult due to the ever-present washer bottle (which seems to get in the way of everything!). Anyway, I think I've got all the waterworks sorted now:

The heater control cable went in OK, and then I went around with a bunch of cable-ties making sure all the hoses were located tightly and not flapping about in the breeze. There was only just enough hose to go around, by the way, and I also had to buy a couple of spare 25mm hose clips.

Final job in the engine bay was to install the throttle cable, which I thought was going to be easy but turned out to be a bit of a pain. Firstly the throttle pedal didn't have a slot in it for the throttle cable to fit through, so I had to get the hacksaw out (always a bit worrying when you start cutting bits off a new car, and you're not quite sure if you are doing it correctly!). Secondly the throttle cable seemed to be a couple of inches too long to be able to adjust correctly. Scratched my head for a while over this one, until I noticed that pedal mounting bush had been bolted on the wrong hole (there are two possible threaded holes in the footwell!). Anyway when I changed to the alternate mounting hole everything lined up OK and I could adjust the cable tension correctly to get the full range of motion on the inlet diaphragm.

Job's a good 'un!

Next thing in the manual is to actually fill up with anti-freeze mixture, but I think I'll leave that until later on in the build process, and move onto the rear suspension.

Total work hours so far: 55

Engine Bay Ancillaries

After the engine install, then comes the big connecting-up operation! Actually the first thing I had to do was move the washer bottle bracket over an inch - the factory had put the bracket in a location where the bottle fouled on the starter motor. Doh! After drilling out the rivets, I re-fitted the bracket in a better place. Then I set about fixing up the various electrical connections to the engine: ECU, MFU, sensors, etc. The MFU had to be fixed to a bracket rivetted to the battery tray/holder strap, which is stainless steel and was bloody difficult to drill through...

I've bolted the battery cables & earth straps in places where I think it makes sense, I guess I'll know if this is good enough when I try and start the engine! There's still a couple of loose wires yet to connect up - water temp sensor, rad fans etc., these will be done in due course.

Next I bolted the exhaust pipes on, after removing the sticky paper labels (to avoid the disturbing burning smells when the engine is first started!). This was a fairly straightforward process, note that it is very important to protect the bodywork orifice with card or foam to avoid scratching. The first 3 pipes went in OK from outside-to-inside, but the 4th pipe I could only locate by manouevring it from inside-to-outside. The collector/cat unit slipped on easily, then I supported it's weight whilst tightening up the pipes on the exhaust gasket and making sure there was even space around the pipes and bodywork hole. Finally the 2 spring units were coaxed on, holding the cat unit to the pipes. Point to remember - the hooks on the pipe & cat need to be "knocked in" after fitting the springs, for IVA purposes (according to the Caterham guide).

I'll put the silencer box and the heat shields on when I've done the rear wheel arches.

Next the gear lever and reversing switch went in. I have to say that I felt a bit of a tingle when first moving the gear lever around in the gate - I'm so looking forward to doing this many times in the future!

Finally for this section, I installed the steering column and wheel. This was not really feasible before the engine went in, and in fact I'm glad that I waited until after fitting the exhaust pipes as well. It would have been very tough fitting the pipes with the column in the way.

The lower column and UJ goes in first, then the upper column and joining bracket. The upper column was tough: The rubber & plastic bushes are tight in the column surrounding tube, and it is easy to knock them out of place if you are not careful. Also, I belatedly realised that my quick-release Momo wheel only goes on at a specific rotation angle - you need to line up the steering straight forward, with the lump on the column splines in exactly the right place. I had to re-adjust the lower column UJ spline bolts a couple of times to get this spot on. The wheel looks really good in situ. This bag of bolts is beginning to look like a car!

Next week I will move on to the plumbing & heating...