A Caterham Christmas

Completely sozzled, and after a lovely dinner... A number of my relatives (most of them) have either gone for a walk or retired for a snooze... Using this 'spare' time I decided to spruce up the Caterham and share some of the Caterham and build related gifts I received.

Firstly after seeing a similar picture in the latest copy of The Low Flying magazine, I decided to give the car a bit of Christmas bling (if you could call it that!)

The Xmas R500 Duratec - the Mrs thinks it's cool, but I'm not so sure...

And then onto the good stuff... The pressies :-)

My new blat hat, with embroidered Caterham

My new blatting fleece, also with embroidered Caterham

I also received this awesome builders gift from my mate Andy Morgan, who has an R300 Duratec.  He felt my pain when I didn't end up managing to start my car in my garage during the build, so he got me this Build Your Own Internal Combustion engine... I can feel a time lapse video coming up :-)

Build Your Own Internal Combustion Engine made by Haynes

And the best present of all was this scroll...   Or should I say what was contained within the Scroll...

What is in this christmas scroll?

And in the scroll was....

A Caterham Drift Experience!!!!  Cool or what?!?

So an absolutely top day for a Caterham nut... Superb... And what a great day for a blat... Wish I didn't get so drunk!  

Merry Christmas to everyone.

Handmade Caterham Christmas Cards

A couple of weeks ago I was checking out the new Lotus Seven club site, and found a post on there about some handmade Caterham cards... With Christmas fast approaching I thought they would be a great unique card to give to friends and family alike.

..So... I got in contact with Liz Hawkins (her email address is s6crafting@gmail.com) and made my enquiry... I asked for the cards to be made similar to a picture on my blog, with the car in light blue with orange stripe, aero screen, carbon front cycle wings, and the xmas background.

They arrived this morning and wow - they look superb.  The attention to detail is very good, the quality is absolutely superb and I'm really glad I ordered them.

Handmade Caterham R500 Christmas Card.

Some information for those of you who may be interested in purchasing your own handmade Caterham cards from Liz...

Liz has been hand making cards for over ten years now, and the inspiration for the Caterham cards came when they bought their first Seven.  She wanted a way to be able to put her car on a card and decided die cut pieces looked (and worked) best, at which point she realised she could customise the cars in (pretty much) endless ways matching to customers' requirements.  There are a number of backgrounds plus car options like clamshell wings, full cages, multiple primaries and various countryside options to choose from.

1. Cost per card is £5, but members of the L7C (Lotus Seven Club) are entitled to a 20% discount with all orders being subject to P&P (which is calculated fairly based on weight and shipping location)
2. The average lead time from order is around seven days which means Liz is still taking orders up to and including the 10th December, which will allow her time to make the cards, dispatch them and give you enough time to send them by the last pre Christmas posting date this year.
3. All cards are made from high quality card stock, some colours are bought ready coloured (particularly for pearlescent or aluminium finish Caterhams), other card colours are produced by sampling customer supplied photos and printing custom coloured card stock for working with.  All cards are delivered in cello bags with white envelopes.
4. Cards can be posted anywhere, and so far have ventured to all areas of the British isles and subsequently much further afield.
5. Liz is always looking to add other occasions that the cards can be used for, and is currently looking to add a get well soon version (for the owner or perhaps a sick Caterham) and one to impress the ladies (or potential wife) a wedding card!

A number of image variants are below... But best bet is to email Liz at s6crafting@gmail.com telling her what you are after (they're bespoke after all) and from my experience she'll be able to make it.

Happy Birthday Caterham card with full cage and wall background.

Happy Birthday Caterham card with aluminium look body panels and countryside background.

Caterham Card with multiple primaries, cat and exhaust cover and track background.

Low Flying Magazine - October Front Cover

Where on earth have I been?  I'm sure everyone is desperate to know!?! (joke)..

Anyway... To explain the lack of blogging... work, work, more work, then a bit more work after that - had a real hectic time implementing a new CRM for our business - and once that was done I needed a holiday, so went to Sharm El Sheikh diving... Totally off topic, but my Scuba pictures are on my flickr account (for those of you that like that sort of thing).

Came back about two weeks ago, and to be honest the weather hasn't been 'Caterham' weather - well not for me anyway... So I don't really have much content to write about.

I did notice that the November Low Flying magazine came through the post this morning, and made me remember I took the from cover picture for the October issue - and didn't even write about it!

So here's a scan of the front cover:-

Front Cover of October 2014 Low Flying magazine.

The picture was taken on a Sony RX100MII camera in RAW and edited in Photoshop CS6.  The picture was taken at the Western end of the Elan Valley, B4574, near Cwmystyth and the cars are, mine in the foreground, then Alex's white R500D, Andy's blue R300D and Steve's black 1600 Superlight K Series - from our Mega One Day Wales and back blat back in August - seems a distant memory right now whilst I sit here looking out the window at the wind and rain.

So I may be able to get to the North Herts meet tomorrow, so there's some potential content there - and sadly after that it'll probably be the 'putting her to bed' post for a few months... Oh yeah and I must fit those Carbon Headlights I was in such a hurry to get completed! :o)

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.

Domain Bonnet Decals

This could be scraping the bottom of the barrel for content, but thought I'd post it anyway...  

I'd not had any decals fitted to the side of the bonnet as the Superlight R500 decals I'd been supplied were black, and subsequently didn't really seem to go with the overall colour scheme...  So I had a version of the latest Caterham typeface and the 'R500' added together to make the domain of the blog.

I asked a local printing company to source the MacTac MACal 9807-07 Pro SL luminous orange media (URL to MacTac pdf here), and then cut it using the vector files I'd been supplied.  I decided to get a square version and a more domain type (landscape) version cut, in a number of sizes which were finished off today.

MacTac MACal 9807-07 Pro SL luminous orange decals cut in various sizes and formats. 

Having had a number of different sizes and orientations cut, I decided to go for the longest landscape option, so measured up the bonnet height, centralised the decal and held it in place with a bit of masking tape.

www.caterhamr500.co.uk decal lined up, ready for fitting.

Once I'd checked it was 100% straight and in the right place, it was time to peel off the adhesive backing, press the decal in place and carefully peel off the mounting paper.

Adhesive backing removed, ready for sticking to the bonnet and final mounting paper removal.

And the end result - my domain on my car, and I think it looks like it should've always been there.

Domain decal stuck to bonnet on both sides. 

Very easy to fit, was a five minute job and I'm very happy with the result.  I always wanted to get the domain on the car somewhere, and this was the authentic look I was aiming to achieve.