Caterham Super Seven 1600

Last weekend was the Big Picnic, an owner's club event in aid of Prostate Cancer Research (PCR). It's held at the home of club member Barry Searle, on his 70 acre estate in Ashton Hayes just outside Chester. As the weather forecast looked amazing I signed-up the week before. With the picnic on the Saturday I decided to do a visit to Morecambe first on Friday to see a friend, stay overnight there, and then drive down to Ashton Hayes on the Saturday morning. I could stay overnight in Chester before driving back to London on Sunday morning. With hotels booked it was an early night on Thursday.. With so much traffic on the roads I much prefer driving first thing in the morning. So I'm up at 4am and leave London at 5am, heading round the M25 to the M11 and up to Cambridge. My plan is to do the A1(M)/A1 up to Wetherby, and then cut across through the hills and moors to Morecambe. It's quite cold in the morning so I start out with the half hood on. With the heater and my over-...

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.