October 27, 2003
Day 26/27 - lighting, bits and pieces
Did a load of small jobs over the weekend. First one was to finish off the front wings which were straight forwards. I then fitted the inidicators and lights, swapping the indicator lenses and bulbs for clear and orange ones, courtesy of Vehicle Wiring Products - looks much better. Shame about the repeaters; if anyone knows of a source of clear lenses and orange bulbs please let me know! Unfortunately one of my headlamps was missing the lock washer and it's basically impossible to retro fit (unless you undo all the wiring) so I'll have to get one from Caterham and split it. After one mistake with the LHS plug, everything was fine. However, the flasher switch doesn't work and I'll leave this to Caterham to work out.
Fitted the wipers and adjusted the waster jets.
Fitted the rear lights - again, no problems.
I'd noticed that the reversing light wasn't working so I took the cover off and wiggled the bulb a bit and it then lit up.....
Did some trim fixing around the indicator mounts and finally the scuttle trim. I then set about trying to fix my speedo which doesn't indicate a steady speed but waves around a bit. Caterham had suggested that this might be the sensor drive rotating and doing this by hand certainly produced the same results. However, I went out for another drive and held it steady and the same problem was there so that's another thing to go on the list for the post build check.
I then fitted the pedal stops, accelerator and clutch (these are mandatory in the Academy). They went in fine although the accelerator wasn't quite as central as I'd hoped. It is a bit tricky to drill through the pedal box....
On to the nose cone. Steve (Grubbster) had prepared me for this being a bit of a challenge and it didn't disappoint. The clearance round the lower front wishbone mountings was negative and first of all I set about it - the nosecone that is- with a hacksaw. Once I'd got the worst off I got the Dremel ready with a small circular sander. I wish I'd used this at the beginning as it made very short work of it!!! After another 10 trial and error fits it went on properly, but only after shaving some off the cuts for the front ARB as well. [You can see my clear indicators in the shot below as well]
Well it's not quite finished. The wing mirrors aren't on yet (not sure how/where to fit them), nor the rear number plate light.
Drove it round again and really want it to be road legal now. I don't seem to have got the steering on as straight as I thought I'd had and although it's easy to change the wheel, I might try and get the universal joint straightened up as well. I'm going to wait until it's had the tracking adjusted at the PBC first though.
Then I had the fun of trying to get all three cars in the garage...
8 hours over the two days, 93 hours total.
Posted by charles at October 27, 2003 9:46 AM