Caterham Super Seven 1600

As I've now done nearly 4,000 miles I'm taking the precaution of changing the spark plugs. The service schedule says every 2 years, but I want to upgrade from the standard plugs. Caterham do a set of NGK Iridium plugs that are used in the race engines.  I picked them up direct from the Dartford factory. Probably my last time there before they move to the new place down the road ! To change the plugs you first need to remove the cover plate. On mine this is held in place with 4 x 10mm nuts. Removing it reveals the ignition leads. I replaced one at a time, just to be sure, but each cable is a specific length for the cylinder. The lead simply pulls off the head of the plug, and then you need a 16mm spark plug socket on an extension to get down to the plugs themselves. The new plugs need to be torqued very low, between 10 ~ 15 lbft according to the NGK spec. I didn't change the gap spacing. Looking at the old spark plugs they seem to have a very healthy brown-tan colour on the...

Having done London to Edinburgh and back last September, finally I have a chance to do another big trip. And it's more than just a trip, it's one of the biggest Owner's Club events, the classic Taffia Fish & Chip run. From it's original beginnings as a local area club blat, this has turned into a huge meeting with owners coming from all over the UK and beyond.  This is a well organised event, coordinated by the AR Andrew Wiggins, and I thought I had signed-up to registration back in January when it was first announced. Turned out that I hadn't, and checking the weather on the Wednesday it looks promising for the weekend. So a quick PM on BlatChat and I'm good to go. As my decision was confirmed on the Thursday morning, I could only get a hotel in North Bristol, at a very nice place called The Grange. It's out in the countryside and has secluded parking, so it's fine even though it's a 20 minute drive from the start venue in Chepstow which is over...

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 !

With the car still in the garage due to the cold weather and salt on the roads, now is a good time to do some anti-corrosion therapy. I'm using ACF-50 which is an aviation-grade formula. The basic idea is to apply a light coating to the chassis tubes, rails and underside of the car. Mostly I sprayed it on to a cloth, but some parts were sprayed directly. Cleans everything up nicely! I also took the front grille apart and cleaned the black metal mesh. At the rear of the car I did the whole underside. It should last up to a year, but I will see if it needs a fresh coat over the summer.

So after 6 months and 2,000 miles my factory supplied wheel nuts are looking pretty bad. Most of the chrome finish has come off, and they are starting to corrode. Poor show really. Luckily Sevens & Classics do a proper set of stainless steel ones. They're not cheap at £85 for the set of 16, but they are quality items.  Look great and should last slightly longer than the old ones !

The car has very nice individual throttle bodies, made by Jenvey.  Today I got a synchrometer so I can test the balance across the 4 bodies. This measures the airflow in kg/h. Jenvey provide instructions on how to balance them. Having warmed the engine and removed the air filters, I set the idle adjuster screw down a couple of turns to give a fast idle. Normally this screw is out and doesn't affect the idle. I tested each body and got a reading of almost exactly 4kg/h from each one. I'm happy that the balance is correct so I didn't adjust the idle bleed screws.

It turns out that my car has a proper Malfunction Indicator Light (MIL), which is the amber engine icon on the rev counter. I went out for a run earlier this week, the first time since November. As I was coming back down the A127 the light came on! The engine seemed fine, but I limped home and pondered what to do. These situations are where the owner's club really comes into its own. A quick message on the local WhatsApp group and the next day club member Chris Collins very generously came round to diagnose the problem.  Although we could not get Easimap to connect to the car, a standard OBDII scanner worked just fine. Turns out the warning light was due to a flood of speed sensor warnings. The speedometer had been jumping around and I just needed to adjust the sensor gap on the rear wheel hub. No major drama!  I've now purchased an OBD scanner that plugs into the port which is located behind a rubber grommet above my right knee in the cockpit.  £50 from Halfords, but it ...

I spec'd the car with the regular black leather side screen armrests. However, what I really wanted was armrests in biscuit beige to match the dashboard. I ordered these direct from Oxted Trimming, and after a 2-month wait I received them today. Fitting was straightforward as the holes were already drilled and matched up exactly to the existing holes in the side screens. They look really nice, and finish off the interior properly.

Over-ear Bluetooth headphones are really useful when driving the car. Firstly they protect your ears from the wind and exhaust noise, even more so with noise-cancellation. When connected to your phone you get navigation alerts and you can listen to music as well ! For anything over a short blast they are basically essential. Having previously used a pair of cheap Sony headphones, today I upgraded to some better quality ones. These are Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2's. They have a very good fit around my ears, and are very comfortable for wearing over long periods. Audio quality is great (for Bluetooth) and noise-cancellation seems better than my previous cans. Looking forward to testing them out as soon as the weather picks up and the roads are in better condition !

The car does get a lot of comments regarding the colour. It's Caterham's Caribbean Blue, which is a standard paint colour on the Super Seven. It's based on an old Aston Martin paint known as Caribbean Pearl that was used from the late 1950's. Here's an example of a DB4 from 1962. It's a metallic paint and looks great, especially in natural light. I think it works really well with the chrome finishes and white piping. It just suits the car nicely for this particular style, but probably wouldn't work on a carbon and black-pack version. It also goes really well with the biscuit beige and black leather interior.

So after a final blat with the Essex area team last weekend and falling temperatures it's looking like hibernation time till next Spring. It's been a great 4 months since I picked up the car and we've done 2,200 miles ! First up is a proper clean after last weekend's excursion. I used some Turtle Wax Rapid Ceramic Spray as a refresh on all of the paintwork and chrome, as well as on the wheels. Looks great. I also put a light coat of WD40 on as much of the chassis and under-side as I could get at from axle stands. I'm going to start the engine every week or so, and condition the battery every few weeks. I just disconnect the negative cables from the battery at the moment. Having pumped the tyres up to 30psi and filled the tank up with fuel that's basically it. Following advice from other owners I decided to replace some of the rear wing bolts with nylon ones. The forward five bolts go into rivnuts that can easily corrode over time which makes them very difficult ...

With the excellent weather this weekend the Essex Area group had another blat on Sunday. A bit chilly in the morning but it soon warmed up and by midday it was t-shirt driving weather. 12 of us started out from the usual Great Baddow Barn and headed out to the Abberton Reservoir, a nature reserve just South of Colchester. Our stand-in lead navigator did make a wrong turn half-way along and drove us down a very narrow single-track road that ended up at a deep ford. Basically a river! At this point we all had to reverse our way back up the road 100m, luckily it was quiet there. All adds to the adventure though, it was a good drive there and back to Romford. Let's see how many more dry Sundays we get this autumn.