UPDATE
Caterham Superlight R
I went and collected the Caterham from TSK a week last Thursday. The job over-ran by a few months longer than i was quoted, but having dealt with bodyshops in the past I was surprised how near to the quoted initial deadline it was finished in. I was also really pleased with the finished job and was happy that I'd sent the car back to the factory paintshop for its full respray.
The finished paint was brighter than I could have imagined and it's worth stating that the pictures here just don't do it justice at all. The camera completely fails to reproduce just how bright the colour is.
An extra touch I had Tony undertake was to colour-code the 'Caterham Motorsport' camcover infill. The original gold cover of the VHPDs really clashes with the fluoro yellow. This was also a step to improving the overall aesthetic coherance under the bonnet and to reduce the number of colous under there that cause quite a visual clash.
It's possibly worth noting that at this stage, the front and rear suspension and brakes were just loosely connected to enable the car to roll onto the trailer. It's also worth mentioning that I had an MOT booked for the Friday after collection and a car show at Goodwood booked for that afternoon...
This is Tony and his chaps doing some last minute clean up and attaching some new DZUS fasteners to the nose so I could attach it for the journey back so I had one less thing to put inside the tow car.
WIth that done, and an illuminating chat about the 21 M5s that Tony has owned (!) I loaded up and headed back around the M25 and home to Sussex.
The chassis on this car is in great condition. But while the car was stripped and I had access to the chassis behind the panels I wanted to do all I could to keep it that way. So I pumped waxoil iinside all the tubes where I could and also inbetween the cavities where the chassis joins the external panels.
Next, I set to connecting the front suspension and brakes properly. Plus attaching the front lights and rerouting the wiring neater and reconnecting it.
Before then moving onto the rear suspension and brakes and attaching the exhaust manifold and wideband lambda sensor.
...quickly followed by the exhaust, which I'd polished while it was off the car.
You may remember I'd chosen to have two scuttles painted. One with the wiper bosses and windscreen mounting locations and one with as few holes as possible to fit the aeroscreen to. I decided the first main job was to re-attach the firewall and prep it to accept either scuttle panel and allow a quick change-over. Firstly though, I wanted to clean up the firewall as it was looking a bit scruffy.
So I stripped the paint, cleaned it up and repainted it. I then bonded it into place and rivetted the heater blanking panel on and sealed that up too.
...and on the other side of it under the dashboard I reconnected the various boxes to the back of the firewall and reconnected all of the wiring.
With that done I could test fit the scuttle and bonnet to set the scuttle alignment.
...and then working inside set the scuttle brackets in the correct position to mark the scuttle and prep it for drilling through to fit the mounting bolts using the aero screen as an additional reference.
Not forgetting to fit the foam protective strips on the nose and scuttle for the bonnet to close down onto.
I wanted to change the original stainless-steel sill covers as they now matched nothing on the car and I much prefer the look of the carbon fibre ones. Incidentally the genuine Caterham ones are made by Tillett so match my carbon Tillett aeroscreen and half-doors perfectly.
An additional benefit is a not-inconsiderable weight loss.
- 494g for the pair off SS
- 107g for the pair of CF
I was advised to Sikaflex them down before drilling and rivetting them to give them a 'cushion' to compress onto when leant on. Without this they are apparently prone to cracking. So I did just that, taping them in place while the Sikaflex set.
With the sills bonded on I could test-fit the half doors as an additional check for the scuttle position before doing the final fix in place.
Last thing for the day was to head over to Owen Garages in Haywards Heath. I've used Olly there for years and he's fantastic. I got him to remove the Toyo 888s off the MB magnesium splitrims and fit a set of Avon ZZRs.
...and back home I removed the Caterham 8 spokes and fitted the MBs and ZZRs. I have to say, I love the look of these things. The tyres look ridiculous.
The next day I set to the repetitive task of fitting and removing the scuttle numerous times to mark, drill and attach fastenings to make it 'quick-release' and able to swap over to the windscreen scuttle easily. It was a case of measure lots, drill once.
...and my 11 year old son helped to fit the M5 rivnuts into the firewall.
WIth this finally done and bolted down solidly I moved on to drilling the scuttle and fitting the kill switch...
...and wiring it up. And then drilling the top of the scuttle to accept the press-studs for the centre aeroscreen mounting.
I then moved onto to fitting the fuel tank and fuel system, plumbing it in and connecting the fuel pump and gauge wiring.
...marking and drilling the holes for the filler...
...and fitting the aero filler.
With the tank in I could fit the boot floor and then the rollbar. Or at least I could after I remembered I needed to remove the rear dampers to access the small bolt that comes from underneath into the rollbar.
The next day my black Samco silicone hoses turned up. A nod if you're thinking of ordering anything from Samco; their current lead times are quoted as 10 weeks. That in itself is nuts, but they failed to meet that deadline and mine were delayed longer than that.
This was a job I really wanted to get completed and had in mind from the day I first saw pictures of the car's engine bay before I bought it. There's no doubt that the engine bay looks much better without the clash of blue hoses. However fitting them was a real pain and i still have cuts and bruises on my hands from accessing the two hoses that sit under the throttle bodies and partially obscured by the dry sump pump. Submersing them in boiling water and using liberal amounts of silicone lube finally got them on.
Hoses in place I could also fit the rad and fan, wire the fan up and fill the car with coolant.
I then moved on to rivetting the interior panels back into place. The weather was hot during the week of the rebuild and you can see in the pictures how the waxoil had ran down and set on the floors.
It was only before starting this job that I realised i needed a lot of black rivets and that it was one thing I'd missed off my post-paint shopping list. Luckily PGM (Partridge Green Motorsport) are very near to me. I called round there and was handed a bag with a few 100 black rivets in, told to use as many as I needed and to take the unused ones back. Excellent service.
With a small, manual hand rivetter I hadn't been looking forward to this job at all, but actually it went together quite easily and without too much effort.
With the panels back in place, the carpet cleaned and glued down it looked really tidy and I was pleased with the finished result.
WIth the interior finished, the Tillett seats could go back in.
I gave TSK the grille to re-paint the yellow 7. Tony told me he couldn't be bothered to strip the old one, so he painted a new one up for me.
However when I peeled the masking tape off, the grille parts underneath were still in primer. So I had to reverse mask the yellow bits and shoot the grille parts in primer...
...and then black...
...which when dry looked like this.
...which I attached to the mesh...
I always thought the original yellow Caterham nosebadge clashed with the fluoro yellow paint.
To fix this aesthetic blight and to also save a huge amount of weight I set about a solution. I found that the 620r has a stick-on black badge. Not only would this look better, it would save me a whole 10g.
Original nosebadge ~10g
620r nosebadge <1g
In all seriousness though, I'm really pleased with how much better it looks. It's a bit of a nod to the stick on Porsche crests the RS Porsches have.
Grille and badge fitted and nose finished
Amongst all of the spares that came with the car was a full set of genuine Caterham Superlight R decals, so this saved me sourcing and buying them.
I measured up where the decals had been on the car prior to it being stripped for paint and set about attaching the new stickers in the correct locaions based on that.
I ordered quite a few parts from Westermann Motorsport to fit to the car as part of the rebuild. The service from Westermann was fantastic but the delay in getting parts was significant. When they eventually turned up every part I'd ordered had an issue of one kind or another. This was really unfortunate but I returned the whole order and Westermann dealt with the refund process very well, so kudos to them for that. This however put the whole project in danger of missing my deadline. One item I'd ordered was the carbon boot cover. Unfortunately it had been made incorrectly and couldn't fit to a car.
I contacted Soft Bits for Sevens and enquired about one of their covers to fit a car that didn't have hood sticks. They were happy to make me one, but their usual lead time was beyond my deadline. I explained my predicament and they said they'd do what they could to help. I have to say a huge thanks to them because they did exactly as I requested and did it in record time, meeting the tight deadline I requested.
Another part I sent back to Westermann was a pair of carbonfibre rear arches. At the advice of PGM, I contacted Simon at Meteor Motorsport who stepped up and got a set to me in a really short time, so again, thanks to him.
The quality of these is really good. They're made by an F1 manufacturer from proper pre-preg.
Initially I did a dry fit to check fitment and to see if there were any issues.
This highlighted that the nearside arch clashed with the exhaust mount on my K-series car. So I measured the clearance required, marked it up and cut away the offending area.
I then measured lots before drilling the mounting holes in the arches and drilling the car body and fitting rivnuts to take the arch fixings.
Now the arches were fitted I could set about mocking up, measuring, aligning and fitting the rear lights to them. The lights are Just Add Lightness LEDs fitted to carbon blocks. I won't namecheck the supplier of the carbon blocks as the service I received was poor and the parts were sub-standard. He offered to sort my issues but eventually did nothing about it and I ended up re-finishing them myself. I'd recommend JAL hugely though; great service and a fantastic product.
It was now the morning of the MOT and I still had some last minute jobs to complete.
The problem with a new paint job and fitting lots of new parts is that your other parts start to look scruffy. The belts looked a bit dirty so I gave them a thorough clean before fitting them.
I quickly velcroed the fog light under the rear panel as a temporary fix for the MOT.
...and with that and a large fully legal front plate fitted I went off for the MOT.
So in 7 days from collecting I'd rebuilt it and just met my deadline. I was really chuffed that it drove there and back really well, nothing fell off, no fluids leaked and pleasingly, it passed.
The MOT tester remarked, "It's not really a colour is it, it's more of an attitude."
Back from the MOT I could then 'finish it off'.
I measured, marked up and drilled the body and boot cover to fit the pressstuds and as a 'final' job fitted the rear Superlight R onto the rear panel.
I then just had time for a quick shower, to stick my tent, sleeping bag and some beer in the car and head off for my weekend away at Goodwood for Retro Rides.
Deadline met, really pleased.
I didn’t realise Hoyley Scott and Dave teh Bear were related.
