Caterham Super Seven 1600

Today we went to an Open Day run by Lotus specialist Malcolm Ricketts. This was at his workshops out in Wheathampsted. He has a great collection of early Lotus vehicles, and many more turned-up ! There was huge selection of cars on display, from the first race cars, 6's and 7's, through to Elites, Elans, and Esprits.  

So a final weekend of sunshine for the summer and I headed to the Caterham and Lotus Seven Club London Concours. This was held at the Hare & Hounds in Osterley. I finally got to meet the West London owners club people, having met the AR Geoff at the Fish & Chip run earlier in the year. A nice selection of cars, mostly fairly new vehicles. My car looking fab in the sun.. And I won the trophy for 'Best Four pot'..

Last weekend I did a final trip of the summer, a blast up to Morecambe for the Vintage by the Sea festival. This is an annual vintage-themed event, which includes a car show. As usual I didn't decide to go until 2 days before the event, with the weather looking great all weekend. The show was taking place in the car park of the Midland hotel, the classic Art Deco building in Morecambe. Having booked a room in the hotel I then had to contact the event organisers to arrange a permit to be able to park there. No problem with my vintage-style car ! I left London on the Friday afternoon, to do a stopover just outside Manchester. This left a one hour drive to the event on Saturday morning. I arrived just in time to park next to Chris's excellent Delorean. The show had a real mix of cars. A good day with lots of very nice people dressed up in vintage gear, although it did get pretty warm by the afternoon. Hope to go again next year.

Having purchased a GoPro Max I initially tested doing 360 degree videos. However, recording audio with the built-in GoPro microphone just sounds terrible. So I record the sound using a separate Zoom H1n audio recorder. Then I have to edit the video and audio track together. I only have iMovie and I ran into a problem with the 360 videos. When you export the video from iMovie the 360 image is incorrectly stitched together, giving a weird seam which looks really bad.  So today I decided to do a test using Hero mode on the GoPro instead of 360 mode. I think the results are much better, and the video is in mp4 format straightaway. There are no problems using iMovie, removing the original audio and then adding my new stereo track. Whilst 360 videos are kinda fun, I think this Hero mode video is better quality and the audio sounds great!

Today was the first annual service. A last trip to Caterham Gatwick before it closes in September. I've done 4,600 miles. A good effort ! Still quite a lot of activity there, but they are winding down. There will be no Factory service option when it closes. All servicing will be through the dealerships. They are still building Sigma-engined road cars for export to Japan. There's 2 of them here. They saved a batch of engines just for them. There were also some 420s and 620s waiting for delivery. My car had no particular issues. They changed the oil and tightened some bolts, that was all. On leaving there was another Super Seven 1600, one of the first cars. Apparently it also lives in Romford. They only made 40 cars so that's quite a coincidence !

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...