Westermann Motorsport Carbon Fibre Headlights and Fitting Guide

Around April to May time last year (2014) when my car was off with Caterham waiting for the fuel pump to arrive I found myself desperately NEEDING some Carbon Headlights which I discovered on the net.  I ordered them from Westermann Motorsport in Germany who make them to order.

They arrived a couple of weeks later, but unfortunately I was initially disappointed with the finish of the headlight.  The weave was very good, but they had a poor sheen, so I complained and Jutta (my contact at Westermann) she said they'd collect them (take them back to Germany), finish them off better and return them free of charge. I agreed, they were collect and a week or so later, they came back a bit better, but still not how I wanted and I couldn't be bothered to complain again.

So I found a local bodyshop http://www.daytonacoachworx.co.uk and Dave there who was very accommodating with my requirements.  He was also keen to do the job, as he quite likes the challenge of doing something a little out of the ordinary.  He sprayed on three coats of lacquer, then sanded the coats back using 1500 wet n dry, then sprayed another three coats of lacquer until a total of eighteen coats of lacquer were applied.  Well he done a superb job and he achieved the super sheen finish I was looking for.  

Standard vs Carbon Fibre 5.75 inch Caterham Headlamp Bowls

I collected the headlights and was super excited to get them fitted but after investigating it turned out that fitting was a fairly lengthy job.  So they've sat in this carrier bag, on a shelf in my garage for the last nine months.

The Carbon Headlights were 'housed' in this secure area for nine months prior to fitting!

With my girlfriend at her mum's this weekend, I decided to take advantage of my 'window of opportunity' by having a build weekend and tackling this headlight upgrade.

So here is my detailed headlight replacement guide (for R500 Duratec variant):-

I started by jacking up the front a little to remove any sag on the anti roll bar and wishbones, as the headlight bracket is behind the anti roll bar I thought this was a good idea.

The nosecone was then removed.

Nosecone removed and car jacked up

One of the main difficulties with this job I found was getting access to the anti roll bar nuts.  The R500 is pretty tight in the engine bay, and I had to remove the oil breather catch tank, the top aero hose into the dry sump, loosen the radiator and try to manoeuvre the plastic 'cats tongue' out of the way to get access.  

Accessing the two anti roll bar mounts is tricky on the R500

Plenty of scraped knuckles, cuts, swearing and general fiddling later the bolts for the anti roll bar were loosened (but not removed) to allow the anti roll bar bushes to be pushed into the centre to avoid scraping any paintwork and to allow access to the front upper wishbone mount.

Anti roll bar bush moved to centre to avoid scraping paintwork and give access to top wishbone mount

Using a 17mm spanner and socket whilst gently lifting the anti roll bar, you'll find access to the top front wishbone mount fairly good.

17mm spanner and socket used to remove top front wishbone mounting bolt

Simply undo the bolt and pull it through the wishbone mount.  The headlight will stay in place as the mount clips onto the top of the wishbone mount, but when you remove the light it will only be supported by the cabling, so be ready to unclip the lighting cables and to support the light.

Headlight bracket removed from top front wishbone mount

Unclip the headlight connector and it's worth taking a picture of the cable location for when you put it back together!  In this instance the top row of cables was red, green and black and the bottom row of cables was blue/red, blue/white and black (described as left to right)

Headlight cable connector block

The cables in the connector block need to be removed - this is a little fiddly, but once you know how to do it, it becomes easier.  Removed the yellow insert by pushing a flat head screwdriver into the top where the two black lines are, then using long nosed pliers just pull the plastic insert out.

Yellow plastic insert

Removing the clips that are holding the pins in place is very fiddly.  You need a very small flat head screwdriver.  Push it in and under the black plastic clip and pull the cable from the rear of the connector block - it should pull out with no effort.

Unclipping the cable pins

Pull the wires gently through the grommet (if it's still there) then you've removed the whole unit.

Both headlights removed

Onto the weight test... With Westermann Motorsport quoting a 'noticeable lighter headlight' I wanted to see what the difference was.

Caterham 5.75 inch headlight weighed in at 812g

So the Caterham standard headlight weighed in at 812g and the Westermann Motorsport Carbon Fibre headlights were 576 gram.  A combined saving of 472g which is nearly half a kilo and more than I thought it'd be.

Westermann Motorsport Carbon Headlight was 236g lighter at 576g a piece

Now the headlights are removed it is time to take them apart.  First unscrew the large nut underneath the indicator, then unscrew the grub screw on the top of the headlight and the glass front should pull away with a little force.

Headlight glass front removed

Now if you followed my guide to fit the headlights, you'll need to undo some of your hard work by removing the heat shrink tubing covering the main cables.

Heat Shrink tubing removed from cables

By pulling and slightly twisting the sidelight will come out quite easily.

Sidelight removed

Now take the black rubber cover off the main light

Rubber cover removed from main light

The bulb is fitted with a circular clip which you need to press down and twist anti clockwise.  Once the clip is removed the bulb will just lift out.

Headlight bulb removed

Undo the nut that holds the earthing cables in place.

Unscrew the earthing cables

You can now pull the indicator cables out from the headlight.

Indicator and cables removed from headlight

Now pull the cables through the main section of the headlamp bowl, as the connector and sidelight won't fit through otherwise.

Caterham headlamp with all wiring removed

These are the parts you need to keep from your existing lighting.  The indicator, washer, main bulb and wiring loom.

These are the parts you need to keep from your existing lighting

Onto the rebuild.  Take the headlamp glass off by removing the three grub screws.  You can also remove and discard the sidelight fixture provided, as the one on the loom fits.

Take the headlamp glass off by removing the three grub screws

Remove the black rubber and fit the main bulb.  There should be three cut outs which the headlight will fit directly in, then place the circular clip on top, push down and twist clockwise until it clicks in place.  Then refit the rubber cover.

Main bulb fitted

I removed the connector bolt assembly from the headlight to just show the parts involved.  The bolt has a centre hole for the wires to go through, there is a crimp holder welded onto the nut for the grounding wires, and the plastic bowl has a hexagon female fitting for the bolt to sit in.  The lower metal rounded washer fits to the outside of the headlight bowl and then the nut is fitted last after indicator mount is slid into place.

Connector bolt assembly removed from headlight bowl

As there is a crimp holder, the eyelet connectors will not fit, so these need to be cut off.

Cut off these eyelet connectors

Thread the wiring loom down through the bolt, and push most of the wiring through not leaving much slack.

Feed the wiring loom down through the bolt

This is the part you need to get right, otherwise you'll be doing it over and over again.  It sounds simple whilst typing this, but it's easy to make a mistake.

1. Feed the main headlight wiring loom through the bolt (already done above)
2. Feed the headlight wire through the rounded washer and then put the washer onto the the bolt on the outside of the headlight
3. Again feeding the headlight wiring through the indicator, then put the indicator onto the bolt
4. Feed the headlight wiring through the hole in the mounting bracket and then place the bracket onto the bolt (these and the indicators are handed, so make sure you have the correct one for each side)
5. Feed the headlight wiring through the crimp washer and nut, then screw the nut loosely into place to hold everything together.

Headlight wiring fed through bolt, washer, indicator, bracket, crimp washer and nut.

Feed the indicator wiring back up the centre hole of the bolt into the headlight.

Indicator wiring fed up through centre hold of bolt into the headlight

With the indicator wiring inside the headlight bowl, double back the green down the bolt, ensuring you keep the black wire in the main headlight bowl.

Double back the green indicator wire down the bolt

Remove some of the protective plastic covering the three earth wires, twist them into a fine point, and  place a bit of solder on the inner end to ensure a good connection.  Do not put solder on the front end of the copper wire as this will make it very difficult to put into the crimp.

Three earth wires twisted and lightly soldered to form a good connection

Push the soldered earth wires into a blue flat blade crimp, and squeeze the crimp using a crimp tool to keep the wires from coming out.  Put the crimp onto the mount on the back of the bolt.

Earth wires crimped and fitted to back of bolt

Using some electricians tape, place the connectors into a row one after another and tape then quite tightly as you'll need to push them through 10mm heat shrink tubing.  Note that the indicator green wire will be much shorter than the four wires for the main lights.  Cut a piece of 10mm heat shrink tubing and gently thread the cables through.

Tape the wires together ready for inserting into heat shrink tubing

With the wires threaded through the heat shrink, apply heat and shrink wrap the cables.  Push some of the cabling up into the bolt.  Then thread the cable gently through the mounting bracket (if this was for IVA you'd need a grommet in this part, but no need on this occasion).

Thread headlight wiring through mounting bracket

You should have something that looks like this, but don't remove the electricians tape just yet, that's still needed.

Wiring fed through headlight mounting bracket

Now fit the headlight connector block to the bulb connectors and push in.  Also push in the side light and fit the front of the headlight into place and tighten (gently) the three grub screws so as not to damage the carbon.

Connect lights and refit front of headlight

That should be the headlight rebuild stage over, and you should have something that looks like this.

Completed carbon fibre headlight and indicator on mounting bracket

Using some Holts RL2R Rubber and Nylon lubricant, spray a little onto the grommet on the top of the wishbone mount.  Even though not a requirement I like to still use this grommet as it's not fiddly to fit and adds a little protection in an area that could have some movement that may damage the cables.

Apply a little Holts RL2R to the grommet in the upper wishbone mount

The rubber lubricant should help the headlight wiring feed through easily.

Feed headlight wiring through grommet

Ensuring that all the cabling has been fed through into the chassis, the headlight mount should clip into place and not trap any wiring.  Then refit the top nut and bolt and torque to 34nm.  Push the anti roll bar bushes back into place and torque these to 20nm.

Top nut and bolt being refitted and torqued to 34nm

Remember the location of each wire (from the picture you took) push each wire into place and they should lock in.  Then once all five wires have been fitted you should be able to gently push the yellow  plastic insert back in taking care not to bend any of the connectors.

Wiring, connectors and plastic insert replaced into connection block

Clip the connection blocks together and tie wrap into place.

Connection blocks refitted and tie wrapped into place

I then had to put the aeroquip hose back onto the dry sump, refit the oil breather catch tank and then put the nose back on.  The lights were aligned, the nut was tightened, but not too tight as otherwise the carbon may crack and the job was done.

Westermann Motorsport Carbon Fibre Headlights on Caterham R500

A picture with the lights on.

Carbon Fibre headlights fitted and working

Another picture in the daylight.  The headlights really look good, as though they're made by Caterham and should be part of every 'Superlight' model.

Caterham R500 with Carbon Fibre Headlights

Rather than taking a number of different camera angles I decided to make a quick video, so you can see how they look on the car.

My main aim for the upgrade was to finish off the look of the front of the car.  It seemed that the old matte black finished headlights just didn't do all the carbon on the front of the car justice.  But now with the addition of the carbon headlights it really sets the front of the car off.

Even though they were a pain and frustrating at times to fit, I'm very happy with the upgrade.  They were quite expensive at about £600 delivered, then another £100 for the lacquering the total cost was £700 which works out to a pretty hefty £1.36 per gramme saved!  However, with the new lightweight battery I also fitted this weekend I've shaved off nearly 3.3kg of weight off the car.

Odyssey Extreme PC680 Battery with Carbon Cage and Fitting Guide

A couple of months ago a friend said that he'd recently ordered and fitted a new lightweight battery to his R500.  Lightweight - that's right up my street, so I had to buy one.  I purchased the battery on next day delivery and it has sat in the garage since the day it was delivered.  

There is a reason for the lengthy fitment time though.  I ordered the Odyssey Extreme PC680 Battery from Powervamp racing and this included an alloy cage to  fit the battery to the scuttle.  Having spoken to one of the chaps at Powervamp at the time of placing my order, I enquired if they had a carbon version of the mounting bracket, and he suggested they were having one made, but it wasn't available just yet.

That got me thinking... and researching - I as I now had some NEED for that carbon battery holder.  I called some carbon manufacturers to see if they could make me one, and it turned out after a few calls that I stumbled upon the guy who had made the mould already - perfect what a result.  Anyway, he was reluctant to make it for me as it was quite a long job for a small part.  The carbon cage arrived earlier this week, and so this weekend was the first opportunity to fit everything.

Onto the Battery Swap and Fitting Guide:-

This fitting guide is the easiest solution I could come up with as I have a heater, a 12V master switch (which means less slack on the +/-ve leads) and I didn't want to drill holes into my scuttle.  I'm not saying this is the way everyone should do it, but it seemed the most logical for my requirements.

The first step was to ensure the track day master switch was off, remove the negative, then the positive lead and the top of the cage holding the battery in place.

OEM Banner battery in Caterham R500D engine bay.

With the battery removed - now remove the four cap head bolts holding the lower half of the battery tray in place.

Standard Battery Tray in Caterham R500.

I thought it would be a good idea to see how much lightness I was adding with this new battery, so weighed the cage - which weight nearly half a kilo - 464g to be exact.

Battery Cage removed and weighed in at 464g

I had to use our suitcase scales to weigh the banner battery, and the readings varied from 8.2kg to 9.2kg, so I took a picture of the lowest weight.

Banner Battery weighing in at 9.2kg

I then figured out that the cage to hold the battery was really suited for mounting the battery on horizontally on the scuttle (which I didn't want to do) so I measured up and figured out that if I made a bracket to attach the cage to, I could get the battery into the standard location without drilling any extra holes, so for the lightest solution I decided to make a carbon bracket.

Manufacturing the carbon bracket:-

Firstly, I purchased an all in one carbon fibre laminating starter kit from easy composites link here for around £40.

I then needed a mould to lay my carbon fibre onto, so measured up a rough template and got Nigel from Specialist Sheet Metal in Stevenage link here to make me one.

Carbon Fibre bracket template

The kit arrived, and there was a link to download the instructions from their site in the box, but the link didn't work which was annoying.  As I've never made anything out of Carbon Fibre before I was kinda stuck without the instructions and it was late on Friday night, so I couldn't call their helpdesk to ask the questions I needed answering.

Carbon Fibre Laminating Starter Kit from Easy Composites

Nevertheless, a search on youtube found the video below from their sister company Carbon Mods (who sell pre-made Caterham Carbon Fibre part).  So I watched the video a couple of times to familiarise myself with the process and began work.

First thing is to cover your mould with their supplied release agent with a thin, but even coat, then alloy it to dry for around 20 minutes.

Release agent

Then it was time to cover your mould with the first coat of export, mixed 100g resin to 30g hardener (and this has to be accurately measured otherwise it won't harden properly).  It was also suggested on the video to really spend a lot of time mixing the resin and hardener too.

Epoxy Resin and Hardener being weighed

Once the mixture had been properly stirred, it was then onto the mould in a thin but even layer.  This must then be allowed to harden for around three hours otherwise the carbon sheet wouldn't stick properly to the mould.

Mould covered with one coat of the adhesive solution

After the adhesive solution was allowed to dry, it was then time to cut the supplied carbon sheet (Supplied in 100cm x 30cm roll) into 30cm x 30cm squares and then to lay the first sheet.  You had to get the weave lined up as the first layer will be the one that's visible, so it was worth trying to lay this out as best as I could. It was quite tricky as the adhesive was very tacky and it was my first time ever making something like this.  Then another batch of the adhesive solution was mixed up and blobbed on top of the first sheet of carbon fibre in stippling action so as not to move the weave.

First sheet of carbon laid onto mould, with another coat of adhesive solution

Then straight after that the second sheet of carbon was laid on top of the first sheet and another coat of the adhesive solution applied.

Second coat of carbon fibre sheet laid with another coat of adhesive solution

Then it was time to lay the third and final sheet of carbon and apply another smaller amount of adhesive solution, as a lot of the solution would soak through the sheets.  On the vertical section in the picture below I used the remaining 10cm of sheet and built up a small profile so that the outer cage would fit snugly.

Third and final sheet of carbon fibre laid

Now it was time to kick back and do something else on the car (fit the carbon headlights!) whilst the carbon fibre part hardened.  It was pretty hard after the suggested eight hours, but I left it overnight before attempting to remove the part from the template.

With the part completely hardened, I could out the cardboard I'd used to protect my flooring (as the adhesive went everywhere this was a good idea!) and then gently prised the part I'd made away from the template using a wall paper scraper.

My first carbon fibre part ready for removing from it's mould

Next it was a case of placing the battery into the (professionally made) carbon cage and lining it up against the (home made) carbon bracket and marking out where to trim.  I marked this using a blue paint marker, but it may have been better using a black permanent marker, as it was near impossible to get the paint marker off!

Battery, cage and bracket in place and marked ready for cutting

With the bracket roughly cut, I decided to weigh the holder which came in at 282g - 182g lighter than the standard alloy cage.

Carbon battery cage and bracket weighed in at just 282g

Then it was a case of screwing the cage and the bracket together and fitting the holder to the existing battery holes in the scuttle.  I also took the opportunity to fit the CTEK charging lead.

Odyssey Extreme Battery with Bespoke Cage and Housing in Caterham R500

I'm pleased with the end result - it was very time consuming to make the part, and the total cost including the battery for this upgrade was around £200 - I did also weigh the new battery, but I can't seem to find the picture?  Anyway... It was 5.7kg which combined with cage weight saving is a total of 2.7kg of 'lightness added' and at 13p per gram saved that's pretty good value.

New Rear Tyres

The other day when I was trying to get the ZZR's fitted, I also took the opportunity to get my new CR500's fitted too.  I'm looking forward to shredding them this year!

Fresh CR500's for the 2015's blatting. 

Plenty of tread on the the new CR500's ready for shredding!

Orange Wheel Rims and Woes

So following on from my last wheel post where I'd had the wheels repainted by mint alloys, taken them to Daytona Coachworx and supplied Dave (at Daytona Coachworx) the RAL 2004 colour to paint the wheel rims... Well they're finished and they look ace...

Here is the painstaking process he had to go through in detail to achieve a painted rim... 
Dave started by meticulously flattening the wheels, barrel and spokes with 1500 grit superfine wet and dry which took around half an hour per wheel.

8 spoke wheel after flattening with 1500 grit superfine wet and dry

He then masked the inside of barrel and the spokes were masked with a fine masking tape which took around two hours per wheel!

Inside of the wheel barrel masked

Masking around where the spokes meet the rim was apparently fiddly

Once where the spokes meet the rim were masked the entire spokes were masked.

Spokes being masked

All spokes and wheel centre masked

And the final part in the masking process was to mask the outside of the wheel barrel to avoid any orange overspray - which is sort of attention to detail I really like.  This also totted up the  total 'masking time' of each wheel to nearly three hours!

Wheel barrel masked to avoid orange overspray

The rim was de-greased in the spray booth with a panel-wipe degreaser and sprayed with three coats of the orange RAL 2004 colour I specified.

Wheel rim sprayed with RAL 2004

Two wheels painted with orange rims

Once the orange coats were allowed to dry Dave had to be extremely careful in peeling each piece of masking off, to save damaging the paint which took around another half an hour per wheel...

The wheel was then completely degreased and the ridge between the orange rim and the black of the barrel was again flattened with 1500grit wet and dry to make it look as seamless as possible.

And finally a coat of clear coat was applied, left to flash off for half an hour or so, then another clear coat applied to give that high gloss finish.

Wheel finished off with a couple of clear coats

Masking removed and I think they look superb

Well, I think they look amazing.... All that's left to do now is get the ZZR's fitted to them - I even got 'excited' and test fitted a rim the other night.  As you can see from the picture below the colour match is perfect, and they're going to look superb once the ZZR's are fitted....

Wheel with orange rim test fitted

Onto the ZZR fitting
To cut a long story short - it didn't happen.  Why?  The sidewall of the ZZR is so stiff that it was practically impossible for the fitters to get the tyres on without damaging the orange rim.  Nightmare! 

So after weighing up my options and speaking to Dave I'm going to find an alternate tyre fitter, and somehow try to get the tyre sidewalls slightly warmed before getting them fitted.  After asking some advice on blatchat, it seems most people don't experience a problem fitting ZZR's; but then aren't so 'precious' about damaging the rims. 

Anyway... Dave said get them fitted, see what damage (if any) is done, and then he'll sort them out and make them look perfect.  He's really done a spot on job and comes highly recommended - a link to his site is here http://www.daytonacoachworx.co.uk

I see now why no-one else has painted rims on a Caterham and it also makes sense why the new Apollo wheels on the 620R have diamond cut rims too.

3/4 Size Number Plate

I've always thought the number plate on the front of the car was a little 'large' so I decided to get a 3/4 sized number plate - for show purposes only of course!

A couple of friends have used and recommended www.fancyplates.com so I decided to give them a try for myself.  Although their website isn't that great they did deliver me the 3/4 plate I specified, the very next working day.  I only ordered the front plate as I'm happy with my rear plate, but I would've liked to have been able to specify the blue GB euro bit, but I'm happy with to finally have a smaller front plate.

In probably the quickest mod I've done to the car, I used some 15kg Velcro to fit and voila - the front end looks like it's had a decent 'upgrade' - before and after pictures below.

R500 WOT number plate 

R500 WOT 'show' number plate

8 Spoke Alloy Wheel Colour Change

Around a week after dropping my (new) 8 spoke R500 wheels into the guys at Mint Alloys, I got a call to say they were ready... I asked the guys there to take a few pictures of the process, so you could see what's involved in repainting alloy wheels to a factory standard.

So the process went like this...
I dropped the wheels off and chose a colour... Initially I thought the factory finished anthracite colour from Caterham would give me a good contrast with the orange rim, but once I had the full set I instantly knew they were too light.  So when at Mint alloys I chose a dark grey colour with a bit of a silver metallic flake in, called... well I'll get onto the colour name in a bit...
Here are the wheels with the colour swatch to show the difference in colour that would be achieved.

Caterham R500 8 spoke 13" wheels in factory finish anthracite grey.

Now onto the wheel refurbishment process
The wheel gets chemically stripped for roughly a couple of hours and ends up looking like this:-

Chemically stripped Caterham R500 8 spoke wheel.

After chemical stripping, the wheels are cleaned down and dried, then checked for any kerb damage (as mine were new wheels and weren't damaged this checking part was unnecessary)

Any light kerb damage would be removed using hand tools, but for the larger deeper damage in some instances a weld will be added proud of the wheel rim then the wheel would be re-profiled accordingly.

The wheel then goes into the blast cabinet for media blasting using an ally oxide for cleaning and keying to allow the powder coat to adhere properly.

Wheel after media blasting.

After the media blasting process is complete, the wheels are then blown down using an air line to remove any residual media used in the blasting process.

The wheels then go into the clean room where the guys at mint allows apply a coat of an anti corrosive product to the naked wheel to eliminate potential future corrosion problems.  The wheel is then placed in the oven and runs through a bake known as a de-gas cycle at a temperature of 200c for approximately 20-25 minutes.

My wheels with what looks like a set of 997 turbo wheels in the oven in the 'degassing cycle'

Once the wheels have been de-gassed and whilst they're still warm, a coat of powder coat primer is applied which in my case was black.

Wheels powder coated in black.

The wheel is then placed back in the oven for a green cure which assists with the cross adhesion of the paints later in the process.  Once the wheels have gone through the green cure process the wheels are pulled out of the oven and are allowed to cool slightly where the team at Mint Alloys then apply a wet coat of chosen colour, in my instance this is annoyingly called 'Skoda glitter black' as apposed to 'Jaguar glitter black' which is the same colour... Anyway I now have Skoda on my Caterham R500 which I guess will make the fastest Skoda wheel painted car around?

Wheel painted with Skoda glitter black

Once the wheels have been painted they are allowed to 'flash off' which means the paint is allowed to semi dry.  Once the wheels have cooled sufficiently the guys at Mint Alloys apply a powder lacquer coat (which appears white before baking) and then the wheels are put back in the oven for the final heat cycle for around 20 minutes.

Wheels with Powder Lacquer coat before final baking.

And after the final bake the wheels are is finished. The final picture of the alloys is below, and I am very happy with them.  They are a superb dark grey colour with a small bit of metallic flake in them to bling them up a little.  The only real problem is the 'Skoda' part of the colour name!  I guess from now on I'll refer to the colour as 'Jaguar glitter black'

Having used Mint Alloys a number of times in the past, I was once again left very happy with the end result.  They really do a good job, and with all the equipment they have, they make your wheels like new again.  A link to their site is here http://www.mintalloys.com and it's best to speak with Andy (who loves Caterhams and used to race in the Academy in 2002!) or his business partner Keith.

On the way back from Mint Alloys I dropped the wheels off to Dave at Daytona Coachworx who will be painting the wheel rim over the next three or four weeks.  We discussed where the rim should be masked to and how large the orange rim will be.  After looking at some pictures online we decided to go right around the curved section of the rim and a sample mask was laid onto the wheel.

New wheels with a sample mask laid onto rim.

And the final piece of the puzzle was the get a RAL colour to match the decals on the car.  I didn't have a RAL chart so ordered one off eBay.  It arrived this morning and I offered up the RAL chart to the decals on the bonnet and it looks like RAL 2004 is the colour the rims will be painted in.

Mactac Semi Flourescent orange decals on Caterham R500 match RAL 2004 colour code.

So the next stage will be to let Dave do his work and then collect the wheels from him in three to four weeks.  Then get the AVON ZZR's fitted, paint the tyre wall and this project will be finished.

More tyre and new wheel updates

Following on from my previous post I seem to have accumulated a reasonable collection of rubber... 


My growing stack of fresh rubber - Avon ZZr's and CR500's

A brand new set of Avon ZZR's that I'm dying to try out, and some new rear CR500's as having covered around 2,600 miles my existing rears are very much on their last few microns of tread... I'm not too sure having this many tyres laying around is a normal behaviour, but I'm guessing it is with Caterham ownership... and with any luck by the end of the year a large proportion of this rubber (if not all of it) will be heavily embedded in some tarmac either in the UK, France or maybe even further afield!

The poll results (as they stand right now)
The results to the poll for what colour wheel option I should go for are as follows:-


Current Poll Results.

Gloss orange is the winner with 49 votes, Matte Black with Orange rim came in second with 45 votes and the standard anthracite was the least favourite option with 27 votes.

Having considered the results (and thanks for all your votes by the way) I've also taken into account the fact that a couple of my mates have pumped in some fictitious votes to get the gloss orange to win... I'm declaring my original favourite the Matte Black with Orange rim the overall winner.

Organising the wheel repainting
So onto getting the wheels painted up.  I ended up ordering a set of front wheels from Demon Tweeks a couple of days ago, as the second hand set I was going to get from Steff (on Blatchat) may not have been up to standard and Caterham didn't have any stock.  Nevertheless, the front wheels arrived yesterday.

I used a local company (Mint Alloys) to refurbish some diamond cut alloys I owned many years ago and they done a really good job... So I decided to contact them to see if they could repaint these new wheels and paint the orange rim.  They said they weren't geared up for getting a good finish on the rim, but would be happy to assist with the new colour I was looking to achieve.  I'm not entirely sure the Matte black will be as good as I initially hoped, so have decided on a very dark grey instead... I daren't mention the name of the colour code of the grey (for reasons I'll make clear in the future).. but decided to make a final mock up last night of what I'm trying to achieve to ensure 100% before I committed - so here is what it 'should' look like:-


My Caterham R500 with photoshopped wheel and tyre mock-up

I can't quite get the right orange on the photoshop image, but it'll be the same as the orange in the stripe on the bodywork.  I've also whitened the AVON wording on the tyrewalls too.

Knowing that mint alloys won't be painting the rims, I contacted Dave at Daytona Coachworx - the chap that finished off the carbon headlights (that I've still to fit) and he said he'd happily paint the wheel rims for me provided I gave him the colour code that I wanted.

So earlier today I dropped the wheels off at mint alloys and they said they should be finished in a couple of days.  Below is a picture of the wheels with the new colour swatch offered up against the old (which are new) 'factory anthracite' coloured wheels - it doesn't look much of a difference in the picture, but they'll be much darker - close to black once they're finished.


Anthracite Caterham R500 8 spoke alloy wheels with new colour swatch offered up against them.

And when finished they should look something like this:-

New colour for the wheels

I'm already looking forward to getting them back, seeing what they look like, then getting them straight over to Dave at Daytona Coachworx so he can get busy painting the rims.