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.........