Caterham Super Seven 1600

Today a small number of club members were allowed to visit Caterham's brand new Factory in Dartford.  This is just down the road from the old factory, in a new-build area called Dartford X. They have only just signed the lease, so it will take a while to fit it out. The Gatwick site will still be used until the end of the year. The new CEO and a few other senior staff were on hand to talk through the plans. One interesting point is that there will be no showroom or servicing department at this new site. When Gatwick is closed there will no longer be a Factory service option. Instead, Caterham are appointing a new dealer for Southern England that will handle new car sales and servicing. Dartford will only have a small customer-facing role, mainly for events and new car hand-overs. They will also deal with Parts.  That's all for the future. Today there was a small collection of cars on display. 

The standard wing mirrors as supplied by the factory are pretty awful. Vibration and the small field-of-view from the flat glass render them basically useless. Back when I got the car one of the first things I did was to improve the standard mirrors. I got new convex glass which I glued on top of the existing glass, and then filled the base units with glue to reduce the movement and vibration of the unit. This helped a lot and gave me wing mirrors that actual function properly ! With the weather improving I've been doing short drives in the car with the side screens removed. It's a slightly different experience, and I like it for little blats. So today I got a small wing mirror from Demon Tweaks that I can attach to the windscreen to improve the rear view when the side screens are off. This attaches to the windscreen stanchion with 2 grub screws that press down on a plate. I'm just testing one on the driver's side, if it works well I may get another for the off-side. F

Finally we had a Sunday with no rain and dry roads! 3 of us made our way from the Barn to Andrewsfield airfield near Braintree. A bit cold to start with, but a good first blat of the season. Thanks to Nic for leading. Hopefully it will be a good summer !