July 2007
This section shows the build process during July 2007.
Summary
July 16th was the day when my Caterham kit arrived, with lots of pictures taken.
16th July 2007
Okay....today is the day that I have been waiting for. My Caterham 7 Kit Car has finally arrived! It seems to have been a long time coming but in fairness to Caterham, they always said it would be here in July, and here it now is!
I was at home when the delivery driver started reversing up the road to my house, and I immediately ran out of the house to greet him. He was a very nice chap and between him, my Dad and myself, we unloaded the van contents into the garage and house.
I had the axle stands to hand and after we had removed a few boxes from the van onto the ground, between us we moved the chasis into the garage and got the axle stands in the correct position. I needed it slightly to the left, because I had left space for the engine to the right rear of the garage. Also, along the right there is room for a few boxes, along with some of the flatter boxes being stored underneath the car itself.
I opened a few of the boxes and along with the printout of the parts, eventually came across Box 8 which contained the Caterham Assembly Guide. Most of the heavier items have been stored in the garage, with the seats, seat accessories, roll bar, bonnet, nose cone, doors and arches being stored in the spare room.....well, the room is spare, so it seems perfectly reasonable to me. At least it's not all in the living room!
The following pictures are taken from when the kit was finally delivered.
The next task is to go through all of the boxes to see if anything is obviously missing and preparing the car (in terms of masking bits off for precautionary measures), before starting on the front suspension.
19th July 2007 Yesterday I had a quick chat on the phone with Sean of Caterham. Basically, the part numbers listed in my Rover Assembly Guide do not match up to the parts that I have
actually received. This is because the Rover engine was originally fitted to an imperial chassis etc, and it is now fitted with a metric one.
Sean has sent me a Ford Sigma assembly guide (which arrived today...great service) and advised me to follow that, apart from the section
involved with fitting the Rover engine which I should use the Rover guide for.
I've posted a question to BlatChat and they have confirmed this. BlatChat is a great site which I am glad I have joined...I think I will be using them a lot over the coming weeks.
21st July 2007 Have been going through the steering and suspension boxes as these are the first items to be tackled in the build. Purchased a few things that will be required through the build:
22nd July 2007
Decided to make a proper start on the car today.....although what I tackled isn't overly awe inspiring. I made the steering wheel! Got to start somewhere I suppose.
Infact, I was surprised to see that the steering wheel assembly takes up pretty much a whole page of the build manual. 1 page down, only another couple of hundred to go...
27th July 2007
Today was the first day I actually bolted something to the car. The first thing to start with is the steering rack.
As well as this, put a call into Caterham about the seemingly missing cigarette lighter. It seems that there has been a mix up with the order
because apparantally the lighter is only an optional extra (at pre-build stage) on the SV cars. Caterham can fit the lighter at the 500 mile service.
However, a post to BlatChat confirmed that I could fit one myself with out too much trouble. This is something for much later on in the build.
28th July 2007
Created a quick Excel spreadsheet to show how long sections are taking, along with a running total for info.
29th July 2007
Incredibly frustrating day today, where at one stage I thought I was going to get nothing meaningful done. In the end managed to get the right hand damper, upright and cycle wings stays fitted.
The problem I had was with fitting the damper to the top mounting on the chassis. It literally took over 3 hours to get right, but once that was done progress was quite swift with the rest of the right hand side completed
(except for the correct tightening of the bolts with the torqe wrench).
Have a concern about the general positioning of the wishbones, particularly the upper one. At one point the build manual mentions tightening up the bolt to the correct torque setting for the upper wishbone
(because the bolt is later made impossible to get at due to the damper being in place) and to make sure that it is in a horizontal position. I did this,
but when it later came to fitting the upright, there was no way that I could fit the upper wishbone to the upright without dropping the wishbone down from its
horinzonal position. Therefore, some questions, which I'll be putting to BlatChat:
This is of the kit before it being unloaded.
This is a picture of the chassis on the floor with most of the kit still in the van. From here, we moved the chassis into place onto the axle stands in the garage.
This is a picture of a large number of boxes, in which one of them is the all important build manual
This is the Rover 1.6 16v engine that will eventually go in
Here is the chassis on axle stands, with most of the boxes not in the garage as yet
A picture of inside the car with the bonnet still on, with a load of boxes and the wheels/tyres to one side
A picture of the car with the bonnet off
Me with the all important build manual, which I'll need to read very very carefully...!
The spare room containing bonnet, arches, nose cone, seats etc
A picture of the parts list that should be in the boxes, along with the A4-sized Assembly Guide.
Been around the car applying 3 layers of masking tape where the steering rack, suspension and exhaust exit the car. Also
protected the body work under the bonnet catches by using card.
The bits required for the steering wheel. Contains the wheel, pencil contact, horn contact ring, wire for connection to the steering column bush in the chassis (not done yet obviously), mounting boss, screws and horn push.
Completed steering wheel. Horn contact and the wheel itseld to be fitted to car at later stage. Infact, the wheel will be the last item of the interior trim to go in, to aid space whilst fitting other parts. At least now though I can say I have formally started the build!
This shows a picture of the steering rack being held in place by the aluminium clamps. The steering rack has to be firstly passed through the
passenger side of the car (through the circular cutouts in the body) to provide enough room to pass the end of the steering rack that has
the rack pinion back through the drivers side of the car.
Part of the assembly requires the fitting of SVA Covers. This picture shows the covers as they come in the kit. From the diagrams, I wasn't sure if these
were the actual bits, but a quick call to Caterham confirmed that the ends had to be cut off to fit over the end of the steering arm.
A picture of the rack from inside the car.
A picture of the rack from outside the car, with the track rod ends fitted. These were turned 11 full turns to give an approximate track setting.
The steering rack attached and a view from the front of the car
Prepared the lower wishbones for fitting, which is the next job.
Fitted the lower and upper wishbones. The lower wishbones weren't too bad (although having to fit two washers where only one would seem to go was a bit tricky), but the upper ones were a bit harder to get into place. Basically, a bit
of brute force was needed to get the headlight bracket arm in place as it is a very tight fit. Got there in the end though, and called it a day after that.
This picture shows the lower and upper wishbones, together with the headlight bracket and steering rack with track rods.
This shows the finished right hand front suspension, with the cycle wing stay, steering rack, upper and lower wishbones, spring damper unit and upright assembly all in place.