It's Arrived

Happy New Year to everyone, this is my first post of 2016 and of course the post you've all been waiting for; I know...  Well I'm pleased to say... It's arrived - the delivery of the Blue, Orange and White.... Tamiya polycarbonate paints! I need to spray up the body shells for my 1/18th scale RC car!  The plan is to spray the shells blue, with an orange triple stripe down the centre and sides also spraying the model designation into the sides, so hopefully a decent replication of the Caterham's colour scheme - more on that when they're finished.


Tamiya Polycarbonate paints, Blue, Orange and White.

Not only did I receive my blue, orange and white Tamiya paints yesterday, but the Caterham was delivered back as promised!  Now that is something that is blue, orange and white too - but seeing it again was a 'special moment'!  I really cannot wait to drive it again, it feels like I've not seen it for months (I think that's because it's been gone for months)... but there are a few things to do first...


The Caterham R500 is back!

With a lot of help from Simon Lambert, Mick Atree and the guys at the factory Caterham have replaced the gearbox seal with a genuine Ford seal, sorted out the leak from the diff and also fixed the issue with the ignition part of the loom.  I'm very, very happy, borderline ecstatic to see the car again and have a whole heap of things that I want to get stuck into so I'm  'ready' for the 2016 season.  I'll bullet everything below and go into a little more detail with some pics where possible.

• Road Wheels Re-spray
  I'm going to get my 'road' wheels repainted in the same 'Skoda black' :-) as per the track wheels (in the picture above)  I'm not sure if I want to get the orange stripe painted in as this was quite pricey, but looks cool - I'll probably be left with 'no option' in my mind, but to bite the bullet and get the orange rims painted too!
• Polishing the Exhausts (again!)
  Staying true to my 'polisher' status, the manifold, downpipes and cat bypass pipe(s) will be removed and polished up, using my buffing wheels and compounds.
• Rear Wheel Arch Repair
  One of the rear carbon wheel arches has a very small crack in it where Lee (my business partner) clipped it with his X5, so I'll get that repaired, and also where I made the carbon battery housing, a bit of carbon epoxy got stuck to the other rear wing, so I'll get that rubbed out too.
• Replace ANOTHER headlight that's cracked
• Just before the car went off to Caterham,  I noticed another headlight glass has cracked - and strangely enough it's pretty much the same area as the last one that broke and the same side... Fortunately I bought a two of the headlight lenses when I replaced my last broken headlight, so I'll be fixing that.

Another cracked headlight glass

• Fit my lovely new carbon interior panels!
  With a view to reducing weight, and getting a 'cooler' look, I badgered Caterham enough to let them sell me the interior panel set that comes in the 620R and Seven 20 edition!  I think I'm the first to have this set of panels and I'm really looking forward to getting these fitted... I'll create a full detailed fitting guide and so on...  There are five panels in total, and this will be a good project to get stuck into over the next few weekends.

  

  A couple of the new Caterham carbon interior panels and rivets

• Remove the hoodsticks and replace boot cover
  Carrying on the weight saving theme, I'm going to remove the hood sticks (as since change to aero screen - there's no going back!) and I'll also be fitting a new boot cover designed for cars without hood sticks.

I'm sure there's a few other bits that'll crop up, but there's certainly plenty to keep me occupied for a few weeks!  Watch this space...