Merry Christmas and finally we have parts on the car!

Firstly I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! I hope you all have had a lovely day with your families and loved ones. I've spent most of the day being on call for work, (fortunately I was not needed) and I'm presently sat on my parents' sofa with a sherry, trying to digest half a Duck and assorted accoutrements, realising I hadn't posted in a while. (Edit: I'm actually finishing this post in Hong Kong as I was eventually called away at extremely short notice on Boxing Day, before I had a chance to publish it!)

After 'Delivery 2.0' and some fretting on the Caterham and Lotus 7 Owners Group with Caterham's reworking of the chassis we decided to proceed with assembly. Dad wasn't initially happy with how they had dealt with it (effectively Caterham had just enlarged the hole on the offending bracket to allow the bolt through the chassis member- see detail on earlier posts below). However the advice (as always) on the Facebook group was reasoned and very forthcoming (thanks everyone who replied!) and maybe we were making more of a mountain out of it than we needed to. Also, being away on holiday whilst Caterham had the car meant that we didn't really lose any build time.

However, since then we have struggled to find the time to actually commence building! With a full time job (meaning I'm away a fair amount on business), planning our wedding, building a utility room, renovating the downstairs toilet and now repairing the Land Rover after a MOT failure, it's been difficult to afford some time. Never a dull moment!

The reason why the build hasn't progressed so quickly: Tiling and finishing our new utility room.

However we finally have bits on the car! Not many due to the electrician having to change our fuse box and killing the light in the garage, (meaning an early finish on the one day we did have). The front suspension is largely in and we're now looking ahead at shoe-horning the engine in. The good news is I have a big block of days off coming up in mid-January so planning on focusing on the Caterham then.

As the car has wide-track suspension the washer arrangement is somewhat different when fitting the wishbones. It was a little fiddly and tight getting them in, but managed it pretty well. Again the Assembly Guide was not the most helpful; it lead you down one course of action before telling you about the other condition. We had been pre-warned by others to expect this from the manual and had read up beforehand! However it was most satisfying when we tightened the bolts and the torque wrench made the satisfying clicking sound.

Hopefully I'll have plenty to report in the next couple of weeks. Thanks for reading and will report back soon!

Delivery 2.0

She's back!

Andy stopped by this morning with the reworked chassis and I'm happy to report that the bolts now fit!

I've ordered an industrial looking electric fan heater from Machine Mart, hopefully that'll warm up the garage enough when we're working in the dead of winter. Was hoping to have the majority of the build complete by now. Alas it was not to be.

Let's get building!

Some good news!

We've been away in Hong Kong for a family wedding last week and landed back at Heathrow very early this morning, fortunately I slept ok on the flight so all in all I'm not feeling too bad. We've needed a holiday after a hugely busy summer, nice to get away from things for a while, see family, get some sun and not have to deal with the daily grind. Feeling refreshed and reset, ready to go again.

Whilst we were away Derek emailed about the chassis problem saying that it's been rectified and is now ready for redelivery! The washer on the bracket had been welded out of alignment and this has now been corrected. Delivery scheduled for tomorrow! Hopefully we can now start building (again) in earnest. I hope that the rework is of a good standard and the offending washer has been moved, not just drilled through, creating an elongated bolt hole. We wouldn't be too happy about that, especially considering all the forces this has to deal with (weight, suspension, steering etc).

Although having to return the chassis to be reworked was very disappointing I'm being philosophical about the whole affair. Yes it shouldn't have happened, however problems occur from time to time and we're not the first and definitely won't be the last Caterham owner to have them. We still have confidence in Caterham and their engineering. Also, having the chassis reworked and redelivered in only a week has meant in reality we've not lost too many build days, especially considering we've had this wedding to attend planned for a over a year. Other people's blogs have been invaluable in preparing us by raising potential pitfalls and problems that other owners have had and as a result we've come into this with our eyes wide open. In turn hopefully our aim is that this blog informs and helps others that come after us and the cycle can repeat itself (after all we are a community, aren't we?). Caterham (i.e. Derek) also has been at all times professional, courteous and prompt in all our dealings and we confident that any issues we have going forward will continue to be resolved in a similar manner.

Now to get into excited schoolboy mode again for what I'm calling 'Delivery 2.0'!