September 13, 2003
Day 6 - harnesses
Started by quickly finishing off the steering - riveting the pedal box in place and tightening up the upper/lower column clamp properly. The pedal box plate is a bit of a pain because it's next to impossible to get the drill in the right place so I ended up drilling the holes at an angle. Did the job though.
Suspension and steering finished (except for putting the steering wheel on - I decided to leave that until later).
Moved on to fit the harnesses. Pretty straight forwards but they don't turn in their mountings like I expected them to. Blatchat confirms that this is to be expected but you can leave the crinkle washer out if you want them to turn. I'll leave mine in for the moment. I haven't fitted the crotch straps as the assembly guide doesn't seem to apply to lowered floor cars. I'll speak to Caterham Midlands about that one.
So, onto the cage. Firstly I needed to drill the holes for the front mounting points. The inner ones are alright because you can pull the trim panel away from the chassis but the outer ones are a bit scary because you need to cut the aluminium but nothing else. More than a couple of mm to far and you will start cutting the chassis boss. In the end it wasn't too bad and with a bit of help from the Dremel, the holes were sorted.
So, on to fitting the cage. I started trying to get the front bolts in and instantly managed to cross thread the chassis boss! Disaster! I tried to clear the thread by screwing a large bolt in from the other side but it was just damaging the thread more. After worrying about it and wondering whether I could just leave it to be sorted at the post build check, I decided that a 7/16" tap would probably save me - I hadn't gone that deep into the boss. A quick post to Blatchat and I had two offers of help (thanks Pete and Peter T). Maybe this will save me!?
Decided to stop doing anything else at this point.
7 hours today, 17.5 in total.
Posted by charles at September 13, 2003 6:25 PM