Pick up and Drop Off

Well, she's gone. Andy came around on Friday on his way back from another delivery and picked up the chassis from us. Hopefully we'll hear from Caterham soon about their proposal to fix the chassis.

He even came back after taking the chassis to deliver our missing driveshaft! Poor guy had it in the footwell and forgot to give it to us when he was first here!

Also to compound matters my old Land Rover failed it's MOT, so I'm going to have to find some time to fix her amongst the Caterham build and all the DIY we've currently got. Busy, busy busy...

It's all gone a bit Pete Tong...

Today was going to be the day we finally got to put parts on the car!

It ended with Caterham arranging to pick up the chassis to rework it.

Really disappointing day.

This morning Dad and I were up early, breakfast and into the garage. We were in good spirits, thinking that visible progress was finally going to be made. We had a beer the night before and a good look at the Assembly Guide, trying to iron out what we thought were some pitfalls and potential problems, especially with fitting the steering rack and front suspension.

Dad masked up the front of the body whilst I looked around for the parts. It took a bit of time, notably finding the correct fixings. It looks as though the numbering system has subtly changed between the manual (February 2015) and the number on the card-backed polythene bag so this threw us off the scent for a while. Also they were in a completely unrelated box to the wishbones and steering. Therefore, we've used one of the empty boxes and put ALL the bags of fixings from EVERY box into one place. Our reasoning was that you can generally tell which part is which (prop shaft, wishbone, steering rack etc), but fixings like nuts and bolts are always similar in appearance. Therefore if they're all in the same place then it SHOULD take less time to find the correct pack. I think at this stage we're still learning 'how' to build the car and how to work with/despite the Assembly Guide (and using some very handy blogs!). I'm sure as our build (eventually) progresses and the fewer parts left to fit we will get quicker and fit parts more easily.

We eventually got everything mocked up on the bench and came to fit the steering rack onto the car (first part, exciting!), bolts didn't fit! The holes in the steering rack platform were clogged with powder coat, so we had to drill them out (to prevent future corrosion we then painted the resulting bare metal in etch primer). This got us thinking, what else needing reaming? We then looked at next stage, the wishbone mounting brackets, and found this:


Looking down on the LH, lower wishbone, rear mount, rear bracket

View from the rear of the engine bay, looking forwards.


Looking from the front, with a metal rule showing the misalignment.

The eagle-eyed amongst you would say that the bolt is the wrong way around, you are indeed correct, the photo is just to illustrate the problem. What you see above is the LH lower wishbone rear mount, rearmost bracket and it was quite out of alignment. I don't think the photos quite do it justice. The other wishbone mounts were tight and but only needed a small amount of 'persuasion' when we tested fitted the bolts through them, no swarf nor any powder coat in any of the holes. This one however, no matter which way round you had the bolt, it would not (and I mean would not) fit through the square chassis upright section. It would go into the square section a few mm and the 'note' changed to a 'solid' sound when you were percussing the bolt. we retrieved the bolt and you could see the inside of the tube (I guess there's a bush in there?) was starting to get scored and that the threads on the bolt were starting to get mashed by all the bashing.

It was at this point we consulted the Caterham gods (the Caterham TechTalk facebook page) and the man himself Guru Derek Howlett. We weren't really happy with elongating the hole in the bracket, allowing the wishbone to chafe in what would now be a slot, plus also not having one end of the bolt potentially supported particularly on such a critical component.

After a bit of toing-and-froing it was eventually decided that the chassis had to be picked up and reworked. Really disappointing news, we knew there would be trouble ahead, but not this early on into the build. Also what will Caterham do with our car?

• Re-weld the bracket (potentially damaging the bodywork and surrounding powder coat, will never be the same again)
• Just elongate the hole? (not happy with that prospect)
• Bash it/bend it so it'll fit (again, what damage is being done long term?)

I have to say we're more than a little concerned over the above. This afternoon completely took the wind out of our sails and we'll just have to wait until she comes back, and plod on then. When will that happen, who knows...

Later that First Day.

I've been abroad for work and my flight only got back early this morning, so haven't had time to update. Suffice to say we haven't actually started building the car!

My previous post detailed the delivery and move of the kit into the garage, however this only took up the first half of the morning. We spent the rest of the day taking an inventory of the parts and organising the boxes, ready to start building this upcoming week (I hope!). I have to say it was a little bit like Christmas; the excitement of opening boxes and finding new parts (not always placed logically together), with the 'present opening' lasting well into the afternoon.


'Present opening'! Prop shaft, 'A' frame, exhaust headers in this (rather heavy) box.
From reading other blogs I was already aware that the customer's kit was not always complete (nor did they sometimes even come with the correct parts). As a result I was expecting the worst, but hoping for the best. I have to say, I have been pleasantly surprised. It would appear, so far, we have the vast majority of the parts required, in the specification that we ordered. We haven't checked every nut and bolt - too numerous to count and we really don't want to waste time, when we could be building other things. However the inventory taking threw up a couple of anomalies, no RH SV Driveshaft and two right hand mirrors! Not having a supplied build manual (apparently have to be downloaded and printed yourself), I thought was a little cheap. Fortunately I had already thought ahead and done one myself.


Right hand wing mirrors, may need one of those changing...
 
When the chassis was first moved into the garage it was initially placed onto the wheels and tyres (see my previous post). However, we used some off-cuts of old carpet and wrapped it around the 'V' of the axle stands and held them together using some garden wire (used for holding up plants). I think that'll prevent any scratching of the powder coating whilst we build her.


You can just about see the off-cuts of carpet protecting the chassis tubes on the axle stands.
 
Although little visible progress appears to have been made I did manage to spend some time on my flights to review the Assembly Guide and have a look at the build order. Hopefully the time spent highlighted some areas of concern and maybe expose some potential traps before they come up during assembly.
 
Next time I hope to update you with some actual parts on the car!

It's here!

This morning, not long after I finished my breakfast, there was a knock at my door. The nice man from Caterham had arrived with his van and our special delivery. Our Seven was here!








 
It was surprising how quickly everything got unloaded and plonked into the garage. In no time we were having a cuppa, having a thoroughly pleasant chat, signing the delivery paperwork and given a presentation box with our keys (nice touch Caterham!).

 

Soon after that Andy had to leave for another job in Coventry! I must admit I didn't really know what to do next, it was a bit of a whirlwind. Unfortunately my Dad missed the delivery, as he was still on his way over to my house, so was a little disappointed. However, the main thing was, she was here!

And so it begins...

Hi all,

My name is Kevin and my father and I would like to welcome you to our blog!

It's taken us 20 years of dreaming, but we've finally taken the plunge and purchased a Caterham 7 360R SV model.

Over the coming weeks and months I hope to update you with the progress of the build and share with you the trials and tribulations of assembling, testing and driving our 7. From reading fellow blogs and talking to owners and previous builders I'm sure there's going to be more than a few hurdles along the way, however we're looking forward to the challenge and hoping that it'll be a rewarding experience. Hopefully some of the information here will be useful to fellow builders in the future and shows that if we can do it, so can you!

So, without further ado, onto the build...