Passenger Ride, Blatting and Cat Bypass Pipe

I went for my first blat with another Caterham yesterday - Richard Malley, (aristocat on blatchat).  Had a good drive around the local area, and ended up stopping off for a pint at the Herts Classic Car Club meet at the Lordship Arms in Bennington, Hertfordshire.

Was a good turn out of cars there, and the Caterham's certainly drew plenty of attention and quite a few questions from the public too.

Here's a couple of pictures from the meet below:-

My Caterham R500 WOT at the Herts Classic Car Meet - Richard Malley's car in the background, Richard and his son James having a light refreshment.

Aristocat's (aka Richard Malley) Caterham Sigma 175.

Here's a video of a passenger ride of Lee a friend of mine, and then the best bits of the journey to the meet whilst following Richard.

On Monday I decided it was time to get to grips with my upgrades, and decided the first thing to do was to put the cat bypass pipe on.  As the exhaust has been polished, the cat bypass pipe was still in the 'normal' brushed stainless steel finish, so I sent the pipe off to custom chrome (the guys who polished the exhaust).  They polished the cat bypass pipe on the day they received it and then sent it straight back to me, and I received the polished pipe this morning - looks great, and will match the rest of the exhaust.

The Polished Caterham Cat Bypass Pipe

After loosening the manifold bolts, removing the exhaust and cat I then tried to fit the cat bypass pipe.  Unfortunately it doesn't fit!  As you can see in the picture below this must be for a different variant, as the pipe diameters are totally different.  So it all went back together, and I went for an impromptu, but totally hilarious blast around Stevenage... Was an absolute hoot! Shame I didn't have the camera's on as there were 'plenty' of good bits...

Cat Bypass pipe offered up against Cat - as you can see the pipe diameter is different.

I even started to make a comparison video of the two exhaust notes, so for now it's just a 'startup' video:

Anyway... Dean (CC Midlands) will have an email from me in the morning, and we'll need to work out what happens now as I've already shelled out for the polishing work.