April 14th/15th - Day 13/14 - Fitting De Dion and first roll-out...

A very satisfying weekend.  Followed the AG and it all went together very well.  Hardest part is sorting throgh and finding the right fixings.  Threr were no instructions for fixing the calipers together.  A plus was that bending the brake pipes seems to have got pretty straightforward.  Took the opportunity to spray Dinitrol inside the de Dion tube.  So late on Sunday afternoon out rolled my new Caterham into the fresh air for the first time.  Seem to have come on much quicker than I anticipated - although there's lot of stuff still to do.

Time to fill in the SVA forms.  Despite the cost I'm leaning towards letting Caterham collect the car and deal with all the Post Build Check and SVA stuff .  Aiming to have it readiny in the next month or so - which I believe is thye current time it takes to get a SVA date at Gillingham (only 170 miles away)!

Day 12 - Weds 11th April - Diff Fitted

This was the bit I'd feared.  First of all I prised the flanges off the diff - pretty straightforward - simply leverage off with metal chisel tapped with mallet. Figured out the without theses it would be less of a weight to lift (or drop).

With the help of two of my teenage sons (after inserting the prop shaft we jacked/hoisted the diff into place (tied a rope round it and attached to the rollover bar) fitted the two front bolts and pushed two screwdrivers through the top mount. Then worked out that I needed 3mm each side to centralise the diff. Then tightened the bolts and then tried to fit the big long bolt. Once I fitted the required washers/spacers I really had to hit the big bolt hard to encourage it to move through the location points - but once I worked up the courage to use the hammer in the bolt it was pretty straightforward.

Also fitted the headlights/indicators - just takes a while to feed the five wires through the mounting into the car - had to tightly wrap the sleeve to make it feed through. Oh, and I fitted the handbrake cable (Which has to cross-over and attach the adjuster to the bracket on the diff cage - not the chassis as it indicates in the AG)

Easter Weekend (Day 8-11) 6th-9th April - Cooling, Wiring & Exhaust

After a busy week at work and a week on hols with the family we returned on Good Friday.  Down to work on the cooling system.  A bit of a mystery as my combination of alloy radiator without bleed pipe and heater didn't match any of the pictures I had or the AG.  Still a question on Blatchat and a call with Ian provided most of the answers - and it turned out I had far too many pipes.  Key was to use the t piece and create a link to the heater and expansion tank.  Fitted most of the wiring and tidied up with the wiring as well as fitting the far too long throttle cable - fitted by bending the throttle peddle about 2 inches by bending with screwdriver - crude but effective (but why don't CC supply a shorter cable?)

Also fitted airbox (almost) as the bobbin mounts were missing.  In the meantime fitted the steering column - very straightforward apart from fitting the top bush which took a lot of pressure and silicone lube and the bolts on the Q/R steering wheel where the wrong sort - a call to Sean had the missing parts in the post..

Fitted the exhaust headers and cat - very straightforward - just need to figure out how to secure the lambda wiring under the car as there's no obvious fixing.

At the same time another Supersport builder (Mark) brought our virtual team to 3 and made pooling questions/solutions easier and quicker - we're getting quite a catalogue of photos and tips from Sean.

March 24th - Build Day 3 - Engine Goes In

A brilliant day today. Glorious sunshine as summer came early and the engine installation went according to plan.

Yesterday my £139 engine crane arrived in bits. An hour later it was ready to use. Bit of an eBay bargain.

Today kicked of with son Dan and I moving the engine and gearbox out of the garage so we could rest the front of the car a bit lower on the axle stands (because the roof of the garage is quite low). With the gearbox/bell housing on the workbench and the engine rolled up to it and the help of my next door neighbour we kicked off with joining the engine to the gearbox - which went very smoothly.

With the two fitted together they hung a the desired 30 degrees. After lunch joined by another volunteer - Mark -  we then moved the engine/ gearbox over to the car and lowered the crane as we walked the engine into the car. It was as easy as that (we had removed the engine mounts before attempting fitting). Once we had the engine in position we bolted the gearbox mounting bolts on first and the fitted the front mounts loosely. Fitting the mounting bolts was a bit harder - we had to unbolt the rubber mounts in order to get the big bolts to fit. Then we attached the mounts to the chassis rails.

After releasing the crane we worked to centralise the gearbox in the tunnel. Then it was a question of torquing up all the bolts and hey presto in a little more than an hour the engine was in.

We did remove the gearbox filler plug before fitting the engine gearbox. Looking at the space available to access, fill the gearbox and replace the plug, that's going to be a tough challenge.

Overall observations - a straightforward operation if you work methodically (and have a couple of friends to help you along the way).

16th & 17th March - Day 5&6 - odds & ends and Gearbox/Engine prep.

Spent Friday evening and Saturday finding off some of the small jobs. 

After receiving another box off missing parts I could now fit the front brake pipes.

Also fitted horns, washer bottle and jet and the engine mounts (removed some of the paint underneath the LHS mount to get a good earth).  Heater went in without much of a problem - removed battery and the eased the front of the heater panel - containing the vents - behind the dashboard wiring.

Connected the bell housing to the gearbox and fitted the clutch release gubbins, loosened the filler plug. Fitted the U-shaped hose on the back of the engine - after trimming a couple of inches off each end of the pipe. So with lots of pipe insulation protecting the chassis I'm nearly ready for the engine install next weekend.

15th March - Build Day 4 - Fitting Heat Shield Material

Spent a couple of hours this evening fitting heat shield material around both foot wells and the transmission tunnel.  I was keen not to get hot feet or legs as there's no carpet on the transmission tunnel of a my car.  Made up a lot of paper templates and then transferred them to the heat shield material.  I bought a metre square from Woolies Trim for under £30.  Fiddly bit came when applying the contact glue to both surfaces and then trying to get the pieces in the right position - because as soon as the glue touches it's stuck - so you can't really adjust it.  Pretty happy with the finished result.

I was considering having the header pipes ceramic coated (Camcoat or Zircotec) but Sean has advised my that shield will be enough.  Can't say I took much persuading as it was going to cost £250 (and I can always wrap them if it turns out to still be hot in the foot well.).

On the trail of the missing parts - Sean continues to live up to his reputation of being very helpful. A box of missing parts is on it's way for the weekend.  A set of photographs of the engine bay he sent me will also come in useful when it comes to installing the engine in a week or two.

I remain pleasantly surprised that the build is going so smoothly (touch wood). If only Caterham could do a better job of picking the parts when they put the kits together (and included a list of what's not included) the experince would be almost perfect. Can it be that difficult?  What would Caterham F1 say if on unpacking for qualifying they found that they'd only packed one set of wheels?

14th March - Build Day 3 - Front Calipers and Front Anti Roll Bar

After a couple of busy days at work just did a few things this evening.  Calipers went on very easily following Ian's tip to fit a washer between caliper and hub (no mention in the AG which I guess assumes the calipers come attached to the upright unit).  Pads very simple to fit. Tried fitting the front brake pipes but they're too short (Sean subsequently told me there's been a spate of the wrong pipes being included in wide front track ca kits (Ian's having the same problem with his Supersport build).

Teenage son Dan had his first go with the sockets fitting the anti roll bar.  It was a lot more straightforward than I expected - maybe that's because it's a blue coded roll bar.

Checking out some of the other boxes I discovered that I'm short of a number of hoses and have some duplicates.  A call to Sean to follow up a late night email will hopefully sort....