IVA and Race Prep

I've not been blogging for a while... Firstly as I've been on a holiday, and secondly I'm very busy with work once again, and my spare time is really limited... I'm hoping this will change soon, but there you go!  

Whilst I was away the car passed it's IVA (with no problems as Caterham took care of the presentation and so on - which is highly recommended for other builders as it's well worth the money and hassle saved!)  

My academy car having passed it's IVA waiting at Caterham south for me to come back from my holiday!

The IVA paperwork has also been sent off by Caterham, first registration has been paid for, so I'm just waiting for 'that brown envelope' to arrive through the post... Should be any day now...

Whilst the car was at Caterham, and knowing how limited my spare time would be, I thought I'd kill a couple of birds with one stone and get Caterham to do the race prep bits I didn't want to do...

The first of which was to disable the inertia cut-out switch (this has to be removed by Caterham due to the regulations not allowing any tampering with the wiring loom):-

Inertia cut out switch disabled and removed - oh and I've fitted a 'race' brake reservoir cap

Next job was to wire in the fire-extinguisher, and tape the boot... I didn't fancy taping the boot as it looked quite fiddly, otherwise I probably would've done that myself.  I've also removed the tie wrap on the fire extinguisher too.

Fire extinguisher connected and boot foot taped

Part of the 'race prep' requires towing straps to be fitted front and rear, so Caterham fitted these for me...

Front and rear towing straps fitted by Caterham

I also asked Caterham to rivet the front wings into place, using black rivets and washers, and keeping the indicator repeaters 'live' too... Let's see how long these wings stay on!

Rivetted Front Wings

The regulations also require a rain light to be fitted, which required a bit of loom fitting (I think) so Caterham fitted this light for me.

FIA Rain light fitted

On the R500 I had a 'breakdown' due to fuses, and funnily enough I've blown a dash fuse on this car already (which is quite common) so I've decided to use my 'own advice' and fit some mini LED blade fuses as they illumiate when the blow which makes it easy to identify if this is a problem.

LED Mini Blade Fuses

A bit of an odd one - but the oil breather tank gets quite pressurised, and sometimes worries owners as if the engine is overfilled with oil this breather tank can fill with quite alot of oil and crud and become emulsified... Anyway, to reduce pressure build up it's recommended to drill four holes in the cap to allow the pressure to vent.

Oil breather tank cap with four holes drilled into the top to reduce pressure build up

Tie-wrapping the dipstick down, is also a good idea as this prevents it coming loose and spraying oil all over your engine!

Oil dipstcik secured using a tie wrap to prevent unwanted oil going EVERYWERE in the engine bay 

Again in the regulations, you must use wrist straps which are attached to the six point harness and to stop your wrist straps getting caught in the handbrake, the handbrake lever needs to be taped over.

Handbrake lever taped over

I really wasn't a fan of the 'standard' mirrors, and have always like the SPA mirrors I have on the R500, so went for a pair of them on the academy car.  I thought they'd look good in yellow, so dropped them off with Dave @ Daytona Coachworx before I went away, and once again he's done an awesome job:-

RAL 1016 SPA side mirrors on Caterham Academy car

Fitting the SPA side mirrors was pretty easy too - I used the existing middle mirror mount which goes into the windscreen (with a slightly longer bolt) and the bottom required drilling, and then securing on the other side of the windscreen sanction with a washer nyloc nut.

SPA side mirror fitted to windscreen sanction

I was torn between which rear mirror to go for, and eventually settled on the SPA mirror (with a DPR mount - which JUST fits)... But the good thing about the SPA mirror is that you don't see 'too much' behind you, so leaves the windscreen nice and clear for good forward visibility.

SPA centre mirror fitted to roll cage using a DPR mirror mount

It's also allowed in the regulations to fit some tape along the top edge of the windscreen to 'limit' the amount of water on the inside of the screen should it rain, so I fitted a strip of black tape, and then went over that with some yellow tape to give it a 'seamless' finish with the screen and roll-cage colours.

Tape fitted to windscreen and roll cage to limit water on the inside of the windscreen

For those of you who are following my progress on the blog / youtube etc, you'll probably see the nice looking academy video's with data, telemetry and so on... Well the video overlay I created myself over xmas, and the hardware is a VBOX HD2 with three cameras (only two are ever 'live')... One forward facing (which is required for the regulations) and one either on the pedals for training, or facing rearwards when racing :-)

Below is a picture of the VBOX which I've installed in the passenger footwell, and used some corrugated tubing to keep all the wires etc safe and nicely routed.

VBOX HD2 in Caterham passenger footwell with corrugated tubing keeping everything neat and tidy

There's also a dash mounted timer, which I've had fitted for a while, but I found that by enlarging the hole for the heated windscreen in the scuttle you can (with a grommet for protection) feed the cable for the timer through there nicely...

VBOX Timer cable fitted through scuttle

I've 'kinda nearly' finished trimming and fitting the roll cage padding - I'll do the last bit tomorrow night at the circuit!

Roll Cage Padding (partially) fitted - must change the colour of the tape!

So the car is (aside from a couple of minor bits) ready to race... 

Things I still need to fit are:-

• Finish roll cage padding
• Fit decals (to be supplied this weekend by Caterham)
• Make my 'resin bead' seat.... Given the cost for a resin bead seat is around £900, and the kit plus bits is about £400, I've decided to give this a go myself (with no prior experience) so will be blogging about how easy / hard this is... 

Pretty much race ready Caterham Academy car

Well that's about it for now... Tomorrow is a track day at Donington and then Saturday the 'Academy Season' kicks off (albeit not a championship scoring event) but it'll be good to see everyone's cars nonetheless...  Oh and to get a 'free' buffet lunch too :-)