November 28, 2003
Road legal
Picked up the car from Caterham today. Met Simon and he went through all the paperwork before getting the car round. They had fitted the switch to allow both oil and water temperature to be read from the existing water temperature gauge. It had passed SVA without problems, but it's interesting to see how many things have gained rubber edges - even the bonnet clip covers had rubber piping round the outside! I'd made one mistake on the build - the rear flexible pipe was fitted incorrectly and they had to move the lock nut to the other side of the bulkhead. I'd noticed this during the build and was sure that I'd followed the manual, even though it was obvious that the lock nut was going to pull the joint apart when tightened. Oh well. Simon handed me all the paperwork including my stamped service book and off I went.
I haven't had a chance to check everything I put on the list but as soon as I got in the car it was obvious that there was now much better clearance for the accelerator pedal, and the seat seamed to slide (reluctantly) on its sliders. I'll have to go through the list when I get the chance.
Drive home was great, if a bit cold, and I made a diversion to the Caterham builders second home - Halfords - to get some spray paint to redo my wing mirror brackets. They had to remove them for SVA and the paint was now flaking off. Once home I gave the car a quick wash and cleaned out all the bits of metal swarf that had been left in the cockpit following the switch fitting :-(. The aluminium has a bit of a nasty mark where the windscreen washer water has sat on the bulkhead after testing and I didn't really have time to get rid of it properly. I did fit the fire extinguisher handle whilst I was waiting though! I also pulled selected bits of SVA trim off - the dashboard bulkhead cover was the first to go. Sometime after me dropping the car off, Caterham had lost my fuse box cover and I quite liked that so I might have to get them to send me a replacement.
Well, it was very dark by now. I put the car away and won't be able to drive it tomorrow as I'm off to Caterham Midlands for the Academy 2004 seminar.
Posted by charles at November 28, 2003 7:27 PM