Collection for First Service, Westermann Carbon Headlights and some other updates

With the first service interval of 1,000 miles nearing rapidly and a holiday on the horizon I decided to tie both things together... A couple of weeks back I called Dean Francis (CC midlands dealer principal) and we arranged to have the car collected today with the aim of the first service being completed whilst I'm away and the car being returned to me (hopefully) soon after I get back.

In the meantime after removing the wipers and windscreen at the weekend I thought it'd be a good idea to get some caps for the wiper spindles.


Caterham Wiper Spindle

Caterham Wiper Spindle with Cap

 So the car got collected today by Cockerills Recovery who'd been organised by Caterham.


Car being loaded onto transporter.

My R500 and Caterham's demonstrator on car transporter

Those of you who have been following my blog in detail may remember I had a bit of another 'saga' with Westermann Motorsport and a pair of carbon fibre headlights I purchased from them.  If you don't remember, then a touch of enlightenment will follow:-

I ordered the pair of carbon headlight bowls that took about six weeks to manufacture (twice as long as the quoted three weeks).  The arrival date came and I was very excited, but upon opening the box I was extremely disappointed with the quality - the manufacture and weave laying was very good, however, they were poorly finished, were scratched and the lacquer looked like it had pooled and run - not good at all, especially as they were about £600 for the pair!


Carbon Headlights from Westermann Motorsport - arrived scratched and poorly finished.

Naturally, I complained and the contact there agreed that they were of sub standard finish, (reluctantly) agreed to collect them, courier them back to Germany, have them finished to a good standard and then shipped back to me.  I tried to argue the point that it'd be better for them to give me a slight refund and I'd organise the finishing of the lights to a suitable standard myself using a local body shop, but they refused that idea.

Anyway, the lights got collected, were returned to me in around 10 days, and I have to say they were better - but still not what you'd expect for the money I paid for them.  I offered them up to the car and they were still visibly duller than the front cycle wings, and had extremely dull patches on them - which I just couldn't stomach to see fitted to my pride and joy!

Caterham carbon headlight bowls now better, but not excellent.

So I found a local body shop who were prepared to help and luckily enough they'd recently done some work to finish off a nice piece of carbon for a Ducati...  We agreed a price and I left the lights with them for about four weeks, which was a little longer than expected as David (the owner) who was doing the work had a two week holiday.

He ended up having to put eighteen coats of lacquer on them, which were applied in three coat intervals, then allowed to dry,  sanded with 800 grit sandpaper to cut them back to about 1.5 coats, so in total the lights have had about 9 coats of lacquer.  I collected them today, and they now look absolutely amazing as you can see from the picture:-


Caterham carbon fibre headlight bowls, freshly lacquered and looking amazing.

David from Daytona Coachworx done a superb job and I would highly recommend them... A link to their website is here: http://www.daytonacoachworx.co.uk/
They mainly specialise in Porsche work and accident repairs, but will take on smaller 'interesting' work too.

So hopefully by the time I'm writing this post the car has safely arrived a Caterham Midlands and will be worked on over the next few days / couple of weeks.  I, in the meantime will be off to Egypt for a two week diving holiday - happy days.