Caterham Super Seven 1600

Last weekend was the first big trip of the summer, the Wight Blat 2025. This is an annual club trip to the Isle of Wight, organised by Simon and Alex. The plan was to stay at the very nice Luccombe Hall Hotel in Shanklin for a couple of nights and drive around the island to various locations. I started off at 9:30am from Romford, and met up with Essex legend Debbie in her 1985 X-flow at Brentwood. We then headed down to Crawley and stopped at Pease Pottage services, before driving to Portsmouth to get the ferry over to the Island. It's quite fun getting on boat in a Caterham ! The ferry was super quick, just 20 mins to get to Fishbourne. Then it was a half-hour drive to the Luccombe Hall. After unpacking we did a short walk down Shanklin Chime to the beach, before dinner at the hotel. We had a proper itinerary for Saturday. First stop was the Military Museum. Excellent Auto Sport 50th Anniversary model, with factory CD player ! Then I followed another car to the West coast and down...

As my London Super Seven 1600 twin Nic got his car back after its year 4 service, it was time to do a little blat. We met up at St James's Square, in Central London. The original plan was to head South out of London to Chartwell in Kent, the home of Churchill run by the National Trust. It's quite a tortuous route, all 20pmh zones till you get past Croydon. Not a great way of getting out of London, heading East is probably the best option. Arriving at Chartwell it turned out to be rather busy, so we headed off to the White Hart in Sevenoaks. This is a very nice pub with an excellent kitchen.  Then it was a pretty good run from Sevenoaks through country lanes up to Dartford, and then back home. Checking the car after, I noticed that the new Caterham radiator was actually pressing onto the nosecone and leaving a mark in the fibreglass. This is because the new rad has a slightly bigger top edge than the previous one. So today I opened-up the righthand mounting holes to drop that si...

With the roads finally clear of most of the salt and pretty much perfect weather, yesterday we did the annual Eco Run. This is organised by Geoff, AR of the West London and Middlesex group. Whilst the objective was to see how little fuel one could use on a round trip in a Caterham, for most it was just a blat around the country roads in Surrey. Around 20 cars started off from the HWM Aston Martin showroom in Walton-on-Thames and headed down to the Surrey Hills.  Good to see Tim's new car, a blue 420R. After coffee and bacon rolls it was back to Walton for a tour of the Aston Martin showroom.  Thanks to Geoff and HWM for organising this !

So after 11,000 miles my radiator has started leaking. Just little dribbles down the sides that eventually drop onto the nose cone and then leave a little pool of fluid under the car. So it's time for a new rad! Getting the old one off is straightforward, after the messy business of draining all the coolant and disconnecting the hoses. I've also decided to replace the bottom hose as it was also leaking at the joint to the radiator. The original fan is still fine, did a little clean up. Fitting the new bottom hose is a faff as access is limited, but got there eventually. I collected the new radiator and hose directly from Caterham Dartford as I live only 30 minutes drive away. Very handy. We now have a shiny new rad ! The design seems slightly different from my original 2022 one. This now has a Caterham logo on the top. See how it fairs.. My procedure for filling and bleeding the system was as follows: 1. Remove the top hose from the heater assembly and fill a bit from there unt...

I've been using the Soft Bits standard shower cap for the last 2 years, it's been great ! Whenever I'm parked-up on a trip I put the half-hood and shower cap on. The only time I've had an issue is when there's proper heavy rain, as water leaks on to the scuttle and then down into the footwells. The solution here is a long-nose shower cap, which I got today. This has an extended front which covers all of the bonnet louvres and the K&N air filters. It's definitely more of a faff to put on compared to the standard item, but does give you complete rain cover over the whole car. I'll be using both !