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Lighting
The Build Manual notes this as the “trickiest job on the car” and this is the only section that contains the word “difficult”. I was happy to find that although the lighting required some care and planning, it wasn’t really tricky or difficult at all. This could be because, having acquired some aftermarket LED headlights…
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Radiator & Fan
The mounting brackets for the radiator and fan assembly needed a little “fettling” to install correctly/ In particular I wanted to ensure the radiator was mounted without any inherent stress from the mounting points as I know this can be a failure point. Radiator … meet Fan I first installed the fan to the front…
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Catch Can & Bracket
Quick job and great to tackle alongside the expansion tank since both involve some drilling and riveting – although note that the Catch Can uses 1/8″ rivets whereas the expansion tank uses 5/32″. I totally failed to take a “before” picture of the chassis plate but it should be clear what the problem is –…
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Anti-Roll Bar
Installing the ARB really went pretty smoothly 馃榿 I collected up the various parts, all found in the bag labeled “Front and Rear Suspension” I also used some “Super Lube” to grease the balls, bushes etc. Whatever grease you use needs to be compatible with plastic/polyurethane/rubber. The only real complicaton here is that powder coat…
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Front Uprights & Wingstays
This part of the build was (yet another) instance where Tigger’s Annotated Assembly Guide with it’s careful walkthrough of the Upright assembly process was absolutely invaluable. Uprights bring together the upper and lower wishbones, the dampers, the tie rods and also locate the wingstays. As such, this was a really nice step to complete and…
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Front Dampers
Installing the front dampers shouldn’t take too long as they only have only a few parts: the damper itself, bushing sleeves and two bolts & washers. However, Caterham saw fit to note that “the bottom can be a tight fit”. Warning enough given Caterham’s carefree attitude toward interference! The Upper Bolt I think the Build…
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Front Wishbones
“Torquenti” from the Latin verb torqueo: “to turn, twist, hurl, torture, or bend” Perhaps a little dramatic, but I had expected to be assembling carefully engineered suspension parts. Given childhood exposure to the fruits of British car industry I should have known better! Anyway, consider me surprised at the amount of hitting and twisting required to…
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Engine Install
The Big Day! Having never installed an engine or transmission before and it being such an obvious, large change, I was excited to complete this step early in the Build. Per my previous post, I relied heavily on some of the build blogs, in particular Chris Collins’ Alternative Build Manual and Brownmonster along with Tigger’s…
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Engine Prep
OK, having lined up a friend and my brother-in-law as helping hands, and having arranged to borrow a hoist I needed to be ready for action! The hoist came from the owner of Auto Europe, the local & very friendly Lotus & Morgan dealer who even offered to drop-off and pick-up their very beefy (8…
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Preparations
The day after D-Day was spent crawling around opening boxes and familiarizing myself with the contents. Items were pretty much where you would expect them and having spent a lot of time on the various blogs I recognized 95% of the parts, which was reassuring. Based on the Build Manual, Tigger’s Manual, Blogs etc. I…