The Seven comes before the Six (plus)

After my last mildy ranting post a week ago, I had a call from Dean (Francis) at Caterham Midlands first thing on Monday morning.  Wether this was prompted by my post or not I don't know - but he said he was off the week prior.  Dean was apologetic that no-one had been in contact with me about the status of my warranty repair, mentioned he was extremely short staffed as Tom has left and Simon is on Paternity leave too... Anyway to cut a long story short he said the gearbox was fixed.

The issue was what I expected - there is a washer/gasket where the prop shaft spline connects into the  rear of the gearbox and there was a slight issue with this part which led to the fluid weeping out the back of the gearbox.  Apparently there can be a number of reasons this part has this problem, but in most cases it's linked back to a manufacturing defect according to Dean.

I thought it'd be an engine out job as it's extremely difficult to get the propshaft out due to the prop shaft guard, but Dean said they take the diff and propshaft out and got access to the rear of the gearbox from the rear.

The part has been replaced, the car was taken for a reasonable test drive and then was left stationary over the weekend to see if any fluid was weeping (again) out of the back of the box... No fluid now present, the box was totally dry.

So Dean suggested I could get the car back on Wednesday (yesterday) which was much earlier than expected.

Keith from Caterham delivering my car back post gearbox fluid weep fix.

Keith delivered the car around 11am - I took the car to work and went the long way home... Was a great blat back, and when I home I double checked the gearbox for any fluid or weeping and it's bone dry - so hopefully that won't crop up again in the future.

Propshaft in gearbox with no leaking fluids.

Whilst I was on holiday way back in July, I was trying to get a set of driving glasses that were ballistic rated and had a strap on them.  I ordered a pair of Dixon's but they just didn't suit me, and although there were other styles that may have suited me I had a brainwave about a pair of Oakley Jawbones I used to use from my Mountain Biking days...  They were ballistic rated, fit really well, and I also had a number of different lenses for them too - the only problem was they didn't have the strap to hold them in place and were white too!

So a quick check on Oakley's site showed they've renamed the Oakley Jawbones (some issue with a bluetooth company's trade mark or something like that) to the Oakley Racing Jackets.  The good thing is the lenses swap over and the Racing Jackets have a rear strap too.  I spent a while conjuring up a colour combination that I thought would suit, so I went with full black frames, blue lenses and orange o's on the side.  I also got one of the lenses etched with 'Caterham R500' which looks quite cool too.  The only negative was the delivery time... It was quoted on the Oakley website as a 10-14 working day delivery, and I ordered them on 30th July.  They finally arrived some seven weeks later...  Anyway I really like them - picture below.

My new blatting glasses - custom Oakley Racing Jackets

How does the title of this post mean anything?  Well I ordered an iPhone 6 plus last week, and one of my friends asked whether or not I thought I'd get the iPhone before the Caterham back - and I wasn't too sure....  Well the Seven did come before the 6 and I'm very happy about that.  In the meantime I printed out some templates of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus to see how large they are and to ensure I wasn't getting a phone too big in the 6 plus.  The only place where the 6 plus is too big is the 'phone holder' in front of the gear lever.

iPhone 6 fits just perfect in Caterham transmission tunnel top.

 The iPhone 6 fits fine, but the 6 plus is just a touch too big...

Whereas the iPhone 6 plus is just a bit too big.

So for those of you that are thinking of ordering an iPhone6 and wanted to know which one will fit into the tunnel cover are (if you're an Apple person that is) at least you now know - but I'm still sticking with the 6 plus.  I'm sure that's a weight off everyone's mind! :o)

Tick tock, tick tock

Half way through our mega one day blat to Aberystwyth and back I noticed there was some fluid on the chassis member inside the drivers area near the front of the seat...  Not good - especially as I was some 200 miles from home!

A quick check underneath the car and a few of us came to the conclusion that the rear of the gearbox was leaking.  The leak seemed to be coming from where the prop shaft fits into the box - I'm led to believe there can be issues with the seal in the gearbox to spline connection area.

I got back all ok, jacked the car up, gave it a check over and it was easy to spot where the fluid was coming from... There was quite a lot of fluid around the inside of the tunnel, on the rear of the prop shaft, the underside of the diff and around the A frame... I gave it all a wipe down and took this picture:-

Propshaft to gearbox connection is the area where the leak is coming from.

I think I went for a track day at Bedford the next day, but whilst I was there (and before running on circuit) I put a quick call into Caterham to check it was ok to use, and they confirmed it was still 'ok' to use the car, but it didn't really feel right to - as it's not normal to drive a car with leaking fluids!

Once back from the track day I checked underneath the car and was hardly any new fluid in the chassis tunnel and so on, but the box felt a little notchy when I was at the track day. To be fair it'd always been a little notchy getting it into third gear ever since I got the car but just thought that was usual.

I'm pretty sure it's an engine out job to fix this, and I really couldn't be bothered with the hassle so I checked the lead time for an available time slot for Caterham to fix the issue which was a month away, so I booked my first warranty claim there and then (hopefully the last too)...

It was the first week of August when I booked the collection for this Monday, the 8th September... I got a call from a woman Alex? at Caterham Midlands on Friday last week to confirm the collection would take place on Monday and sure enough at 11am on Monday Keith? arrived to collect the car.

Loading the R500 into the Caterham transporter.

And off it goes - hopefully see it again soon?!?

Here is a picture of a month's worth of fluid that's left the gearbox and is now on my garage floor.

Lost gearbox fluid on garage floor.

So it's now Thursday evening, and I've not heard a thing from Caterham... They've not even said my car has arrived ok-nothing.  Considering I've waited an entire month for the available mechanics slot, I'm once again left unimpressed by Caterhams service.

I've decided to run an experiment to see how long it'll take to get some communication from them, and how long it'll take to get my car back.

The clock is ticking.........

How it's made video

I've not been out in the car for a while or blogging about it, as I've been super busy with work - yawn.  Might try and get out for a blast tomorrow night to blow the cobwebs out of the engine and hopefully some stress levels at the same time!

The link to this video (below) got emailed to me today, which is a youtube video from the program on the discovery channel called 'how it's made'...

In this episode the how it's made team are at the Caterham factory covering quite a lot of the factory build processes and some interesting insights into the chassis (and pre kit delivery) build stages too.

I recognise some of the cars in the video too, the white 620R with black stripes is... I'm pretty sure Mr. S Wright's car - the owner who's seats were delivered to me, and also the engine being dropped into the blue 620R is Mr. M Weatherby's too...

Anyway, I fully enjoyed the video - I hope you do too.