March 2008
Summary
8th March 2008
Fitted the LHS seat and the fasterns for the boot cover today.
Fitted the LHS seat in the same way as the RHS one. This is a picture showing both the seats.
The other main thing today was fitting the boot cover.
Firstly, some fastners are located on the rear bulk head. These are to secure the tonneau cover and can (just about) be seen here. There is one either
side of the centre line of the car, and one between each of the harness brackets.
The boot cover has to have several fasteners fitted so that it can attach to the fastenings that are already on the body.
The fastenings are secured using the tool shown here, along with a hammer!
Next up is fitting the hood and side screens.
15th March 2008
Fitted the roof and side screens today
Firstly, I realised that I still had the hoodstraps on incorrectly. I hadn't noticed a 'loop' in the rearward part of the hoodstrap
which the rear hoodsticks have to go though. This was a 2-minute job to change, and then the hoodstrap has to be secured to the rear tube of the boot.
The distance from the boot to the rear hoodstick has to be 395mm. I also took the opportunity to use a popper base
to give the self tapping screw a neater appearence.
Next was the fitting of the hood. The poppers on the hood are already fitted and on my car the majority of the popper bases were too.
Reading the manual, I think it implied that I should have had to fit more popper bases to the car, but I only had to fit two - one on each side.
There is a 'process' to follow to fit the hood correctly, which inloves tightenting the hoodstraps so that the hoodsticks align to the correct
place in the hood. This was actually a fairly easy job to do. These two pictures show the roof from the front and the back.
Next was fitting the hinges and sidescreens. The hinges have to be fitted to the sidescreens and order to do this, holes have to be drilled in the frame of the sidescreens. The build manual mentions that this metal is very hard, so I drilled the holes for these using a bench drill, which gave quite a good finish.
There are a few things to tidy up here, but I am missing some parts. For example, there are some clips to hold the screens in place from the inside. Additionally, parts are needeed for the SVA to cover the sharp edges of the hinges and also to fit the side mirriors.
I have got some time off from work in the week, so I'm hoping to make some more progress. There are a few niggly things that need finishing off, which all take time. For example:
Also, hoping to start on fitting the rear wings and lights. I need to get a 15mm bit in the week, as I haven't got one currently. Reading ahead in the assembly guide, this is needed to drill the fibre glass at certain points.
19th March 2008
Had an afternoon off of work, so got a few of the niggly things done.
Got the handbrake cable fitted to callipers. The way the cable is routed is that each end is routed over its drive shaft, turned back 180deg under the driveshaft and then turned back on itself again to fit up through the calliper abutments and clipped over the sprung hook on the calliper. To stop the cable fouling the driveshafts, cable ties are used. It is essential that the handbrake cable is slackened right off, otherwise there's no chance of securing the it to the calliper.
After this, adjusted the handbrake. The recommendation is that the handbrake should lock the wheels on the third click of the ratchet, so that's how I set it.
Not a particularly difficult job, but attached the windscreen wipers. Fit the wiper blades, and the wole thing just slips over the windscreen wiper mechanism on the car.
Probably the simplest job so far!
Can't remember why I didn't do this earlier, but fitted the fuel pump cover in the boot. This should have been done earler, as a smaller drill was needed
because with the roll cage in place, drill that's been used throughout the build couldn't be used because it was too tight a space.
Fitted the steering wheel and horn connector. Wasn't too bad a job, although with the SVA pad on and the horn connected, there was initially a problem
that the horn sounded all the time (obviously, not ideal!). I'm not quite sure what fixed this but I think it was that initially the pad
wasn't fitted quite correctly meaning that the 'pencil connector' inside the wheel wasn't touching with the contact ring.
The top picture shows the wheel without the SVA pad and the bottom one shows it with. I've been reliably informed that this pad is one of the first
things to be removed when the car gets through its SVA....
20th March 2008
Had all day off work to get on with the car. A couple of niggly jobs were completed. I fitted the new callipers and pads. I reported earlier that the RHS was faulty, but it turns out that unluckily both the left and right ones were leaking. Both new ones were fitted today and the brakes rebled.
The other job was to put the rear of the car on the de Dion tube so that the dampers are taking the weight. With the car like this, the torque setting of all the components are recheced.
After this, the right hand rear wing was fitted.
The fibreglass wings come with most of the holes predrilled. One task that has to be done is to cut away the fibre glass where the radius arm (and watts link if fitted)
coincides with the wing. This shows a picture of that.
The wing is then offered up to the car and ten bolts secure the wing. The front nuts are secured into pre existing rivnuts in the car and the rear ones are secured with a nut and bolt, going from inside the car outwards into the wing. Initially these connections are only loosely tighted because some rubber protector piping has to be fitted between the wing and the car. A square cut has to be made for each of the bolts and a series of v-shapes has to be cut in to ensure that the piping follows the edge of the wing.
This shows the inside of the wing and the radius arm is in view due to the piece initally cut out of the fibre glass. Also,
4 of the bolts that screw into the rivnuts in the body are in view here.
This shows the wing from the rear of the car, and the rubber protector piping is in view. The pre-drilled holes are for the
rear light cluster.
This shows the wing from the front and again the rubber protector piping is in view here.
Quite a long day as the bleeding took quite a while and the rubber tubing on the wing was quite tricky. Other than that, I tested the rear light clusters and they both work, which is good. Next time it will be to fit the left hand wing and the hopefully the light cluster.
Also, unfortunately, at the moment I'm not convinced that one of the new callipers is correct - there could still be a leak. I'll monitor this.
22nd March 2008
Fitted the LHS Rear wing in the same way as fixed the RHS one previously. Also fitted the rear lights to the wings.
This shows a picture of the rear light clusters fitted to the wings. Wasn't too bad a job - one hole for the base of the
light cluster is already drilled, so 3 other holes have to be drilled per cluster. Was a bit worried drilling through the
fibre glass but it worked out okay. Was running out of time, but tried to get the number plate light working as well,
but it didn't work straight away and I didn't have time to look at it as off to a beer festival...!
24th March 2008
Had a spare half hour so quickly looked at the rear number plate light. As sort of expected, it was a dodgy earth conection.
The earth is made via the number plate light base plate, which is painted so wasn't making a clear connection to earth.
Quite straight forward to fit, although I had to cut the cable that enters the light casing because it was too long. I understand that
it comes at a certain length assuming that a spare wheel carrier is being used.
29th March 2008
Todays tasks were to get some more of the 'niggly' things done that I've been putting off. This included wing mirrors, door catches and some SVA safety bits. Also, got the wing protectors on.
This shows the LHS wing protector on the rear wing. Rubber tubing has to be placed around the edge of the wing protector
for safety reasons. The wing protectors are pre drilled but the wings themselves have to be drilled and the protectors are attached
to the wings using 15 rivets. The wing protectors themselves come flat so they have to be lightly bent to the shape of the wings.
The LHS wing protector (on a car which has the exhaust pipe on the LHS) is smaller than the one on the RHS to allow for the cut out in the LHS wing which accomodates the exhaust.
I put the wings on last week, but was told that I may have had to have taken them off again to fit the protectors due to space reason when using a drill to drill the holes in the wings. However, I have quite a small drill which was ideal for this job which meant I didn't need to take the wings off again, which I was pleased about. Also, I think it was probably easier to fit the this way becase the wing were rigidly attached to the car.
Fitted the wing mirrors to the stanchions of the car. For the SVA, they have to be fitted to the stanchions but I understand
that the majority of people attach the mirrors to the sidescreens after the SVA. This is primarily because with the mirros on the
stanchions, the side screens do not fully open because the mirrors are in the way.
Presumably from the SVA perspective
the mirrors have to be on the stanchions because therotically I could take the car to the test without the sidescreens.
If the mirrors were fitted to the sidescreens in this case there would be no mirrors, hence a failure.
This shows two catches that hold the side screens shut. The one on the top left of the picture is in place and securing the door.
The one on the right of the picture shows that a popper base has to be fitted to the panel and attached using a rivet.
Some rubber covers have to be fitted to the bolts on the side screen hinges. I lightly glued these in place as they weren't
a particularly tight fit.
Additionally, a length of rubber has to be fitted to the scuttle for safety reasons. This can be seen here too.
Next main things are the front wings and lights.....
31st March 2008
The front wing edges have to be covered in rubber edge trim for the purposes of the SVA.....
....as do the reverse and fog lights.
Was going to fit the rest of the SVA parts (various rubber parts to cover 'external projections') but I've realised I don't have all the parts so I did what I could (for example exhaust and harness bolt covers).
Today I've also emailed VOSA a load of photos of the build along with the website address and scanned copies of the receipts I have from Caterham. VOSA need these before they can give me a date for the SVA test. I've requested a date towards the end of April, but it depends on the availability of my local test station (as well, of course, on if the car is ready!).
With an end date potentially looming, I'm pleased with what I've done this month. Amongst other things:
However, there is still a fair way to go yet with the front wings and lights being the main parts to complete. Also though, I'm still not convinved that my front callipers are right and I've asked Caterham for advice as I can't believe I've been unlucky enought to have had 2 sets of dodgy callipers! If they need replacing, that means more bleeding of brakes which is quite time consuming. Also, today there is a fault in the horn - it looks like it is a fault in the push button, so I need a replacement for that too.