Yesterday, Saturday, October 24th, I decided to spend some time on the car since Michigan wasn’t playing this week. To start with, I jacked up the rear end, put it on stands, then popped the wheel off to get at the speedo. The first test was to see if the speedo sensor was actually working. I tested it by spinning the wheel by hand and confirming the speedo LED blinks as each tooth in the gear passes the sensor; it did and appears to be working fine. Second test was to use a multimeter to check the electrical connection; also looked fine. The third check was to verify the plug and wiring I added as part of the first fix was ok, which also looked fine and nothing loose. My last remaining idea was to undo the new ground I added to the chassis and used a flat bladed screwdriver to chip the powder coating away from the connection. I did that and now there’s nothing between the ground and the chassis at all, it should be a perfect ground.

After that I took a look at the fuel gauge. I opened up the boot floor and validated no wires were loose or plugs undone; everything looked fine there. Next, I undid the electrical ground from under the dash and chipped the powder coating away from it as well. A few folks on Blatchat said that’d helped to fix some of their issues too. Next, I filled the tank with a can of gasoline to the brim to verify it indeed was half empty. It took about 3.5 US gallons of gas which means the tank was just slightly over half full and indeed the gauge is reading wrong. I also checked the signal from the fuel sender with a multimeter and was getting close to 12volts as expected. The ground seemed to be working just fine as well. At this point, no idea what the hell is wrong with it.

The third item on the punch list was to try and figure out the idle issue. During last Sunday’s outing it seemed the car ran better when it was cold out and it ran less reliably as it warmed up. With that in mind, I started the car up in the garage on jack stands and used a small hex wrench to adjust the idle screw until it was idling perfect at 1500 RPM with no funny business. I then revved the engine with the throttle body by hand to get it up to temperature. The car immediately started acting loopy and couldn’t seem to find a good idle to save its life. It stalled out once. Keeping my hand on the throttle just enough to set the RPMs at 2,000 kept it from stalling or bouncing.

I then cut the engine off and climbed underneath the car to look for any bad grounds or issues that might be present. While I was down there I happened to notice an odd gold color on the oil pan.

Uh oh.

I climbed back out from under the car and fetched the flashlight. Sure enough, there was a sheen of oil all over the oil pan and near the bellhousing.

The string of four letter words I’m sure was heard in the neighboring county.

After calming myself down, I got some brake cleaner and cleaned the pan off. I then put some RTV under the bolt heads which appeared to be leaking as shown in the following pic.

That’s all fine and great though, and a total waste of time, because oil is still leaking from between the oil pan and the bellhousing which means the seal between the block and the pan inside the bellhousing isn’t intact.

That means the pan has to come back off, and to do that means pulling the motor this time. I don’t think you can get a good seal without taking the timing cover off, and that probably means taking the motor out or at least lifting it partially, which probably means doing a bunch of more shit. Sigh.

After that I calmly put my tools away, turned off the light, and called it a day. As I trudged up the stairs I realized I didn’t even feel defeated or frustrated, just completely numb from acknowledging the reality I’m wasting my time going further with fixing everything. If it can’t hold oil, well, that’s kind of a prerequisite.

That presents the next question – how do I get this thing to even run properly?  For starters, I need to get the car to a race shop where they can resolve the oil issue. Either the race shop or I need to get Caterham to help identify what the hell is wrong with the idle, speedo, and the fuel gauge while the oil issue gets resolved.  In the UK, Caterham has a post-build check to resolve these kinds of issues, but nothing like that exists here in the States. You’re pretty much on your own so perhaps a ‘health check’ of sorts makes sense.

After that… who knows. When writing the first draft of this post I actually had written a fairly emotional rant here at the end. However, after reading it back a few times, I decided to remove it because it’s clear I have a lot of conflicted emotions. Rather, I’ll just simply say I’ve hit what I believe is the end of my patience with this experience. It’s probably up for debate if that’s due to Caterham’s poor product quality or my inexperienced mechanical skills, but the fact remains that my view of this experience, and the car itself, is so negative at this stage that I think it folly to continue investing my time or energy on it in at least the near term.

Daniel

On the way to Caffeine and Exotics I was shocked at how cold it was in the car. It was about 40 degrees F, and at 40 mph, it was damn cold! I’d worn a good wind proof jacket over my long sleeved shirt and my torso was reasonably warm, as was my head and ears from the skull cap I’d donned, but my face was freezing as were my hands. Next time I’ll need to wear gloves. My legs, of course, were sweating from the heat in the transmission tunnel.

The event was fun. I largely sat and talked with two Lotus guys I’d not met before and Mick. I also chatted with the odd passerby who commented on the car or asked questions. Met one bloke from the UK who’d owned one previously so we bullshitted about what crap the manual is and a few other things. I was feeling pretty upbeat about the whole experience after talking to folks; the oil leak is fixed, speedo issue fixed, brake issue fixed, car seems to be running well finally with no idle issues, and quite honestly it’s a blast to drive.

After the event we headed over to Waffle House for a late breakfast. It was packed so we opted to try another one down the street. The second Waffle House was equally as packed and I ended up finding a spot in the parking lot down a ways and in front of a yoga studio. After walking back to the Waffle House and being informed it was a 30 minute wait we opted to try a 3rd option, a small Irish bar down the street with a brunch menu. Mick and Jason, the two Lotus guys who decided to partake in breakfast with me, hopped in their cars and off they went while I climbed into the Caterham, finagled the 4-point belts into place, put on my skull cap, put on my goggles, and got myself situated.

While doing that, of course, the handful of girls going in and out of the yoga studio started asking questions as they passed by. It was the usual questions – “What kind of car is that?”, “Where’s it from?”, “Wait, you built that?”, “How long did it take?” – and I kind of chuckled to myself as I tried to extradite myself from the ladies and go to breakfast.

Eventually I made it over to the The Old Blind Dog Pub to find Mick and Jason waiting on me with a front row spot. The Seven looks so small compared to the two Lotus!

After breakfast each of us split up to head for home. By then it’d warmed up to a nice 55-60 degrees F and was really, really enjoyable to drive. And just as I’m feeling all king-of-the-world like, I look down to notice the speedo is reading zero. Which is odd, because I knew I was doing at least 45mph keeping up with traffic around me. I then happened to glance at the fuel gauge and it was reading full which was also odd considering I had a half tank not 5 minutes ago when I left breakfast. At the next light I started checking all the gauges and everything seemed to be ok, except the fuel and speedo. I also noticed the speedo hadn’t registered any miles since breakfast either, it still read 118. I sighed inwardly; the car seemed to sense that and immediately started doing its +/- 500 RPM pulsing idle bullshit again.

Sensing the car was unhappy I did a quick pull off into a parking lot right before the engine stalled out. I then fired it back up without a problem and let it sit for a minute. It seemed to pulse a tiny bit then settle into a steady idle. Knowing I had to get it and me home, with no alternative, I eased back into traffic and started the 10 mile trip home. On the way I hit a few stop lights and used my foot on the throttle to keep the car idling in the 2,000 RPM range as I was stopped. That seemed to keep the car alive although any time I took my foot off it’d start to go into its wheezing death rattle again.

After another 15 minutes or so I arrived home with a very short temper and sense of overwhelming frustration.

Daniel

First off, the instructions from Caterham are not correct for a US car as the lights here use a two filament bulb whereas they are single filament in the UK. That means we end up with a red (hot) and brown (hot) wire while the UK gets a red (hot) and black (ground). You can see the problem here – no ground and both wires are hot in the US.

The correct method for US cars is to:

1. Extend the red wire from the indicator to the 6-pin automotive connector in engine bay.
2. Attach the brown wire to the small bulb in the headlight.
3. Add a 3rd wire (black) as your ground from the turn indicator to the headlight bowl and secure with a terminal ring.
4. The indicator on the front cycle wings then attaches into the automotive connector.

I didn’t do that – I just went with the UK way of wiring things up. What I ended up doing, and it works just fine, is to terminate the brown wire to the headlight bowl with a terminal ring and then extend the red wire to the 6-pin connector in the engine bay.

Why? Well, to start with I didn’t use the side indicators on the front cycle wings since I liked the look better without them. Jon (Caterham USA) told me many folks don’t use them and opt to leave them off so I wasn’t alone in this feeling. Second, the use of the indicator as a side light doesn’t measurably help in any way so why bother? Third, I’d already wired the car up according to the manual because months ago I didn’t know the manual was wrong, surprise surprise right?

After 30 minutes or so to open the headlight bowls, plug in the connectors, and check the lights – viola! Working lights and blinkers.

I then adjusted them as best I was able in the garage using the instructions in the manual and called it a night.

Daniel

First up was to re-route the handbrake cable. Prior, I’d zip tied it to the fuel line as depicted in the Caterham build manual. After reading a bit on Blatchat and USA7s it was determined that’s a bad idea; it puts strain on the fuel line and causes premature wear. The better approach is to run a zip tie, or two, off the rear support bar of the diff carrier and then suspend it over the axle. I got the idea from Daniel French’s blog and one of the pictures he had posted during his build.

To change it, I just popped off the wooden boot floor, ran two zip ties, then cut the other one off the fuel line. Relatively straight forward and easy to fix. It’s also got much better clearance from the DeDion tube as well than the way it’s shown in the manual. Note, the angle of the picture makes it look like the cable is against the fuel tank, it’s really not.

Next up was investigating the brakes since I had the car on jack stands, the wheel off, and the boot floor out. To start with I poked around to see if any bolts were loose and found none that looked obviously loose or missing. I then re-enacted the wheel movement by spinning the hub with my hands slowly to watch for any movement or play. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get quite enough speed going so put one wheel back on and spun that which worked much better. As I was spinning the wheel I happened to notice a double clunk coming from under the car. Maybe the issue wasn’t the brakes after all but something else?

I then climbed under the car and tried to repeat the same processes, but couldn’t quite get the wheel spinning with me under the car and trying to watch everything at the same time. So I started hollering for Kim from the garage- she came rushing down, no doubt expecting me to be pinned under the car slowly being crushed to death – only to find me too lazy to climb out from under the car. I explained I needed her to spin the wheel while I watched everything and we set off doing it.

Within 5 seconds I saw what was happening. The wheels would spin then when stopped the differential would clunk from the play in the gears. That’s completely normal for a small bit of play. The second clunk, however, was not. That was the brake caliper moving about 3-4mm from the torque applied against the brake disc suddenly shifting. Inspecting closer I found the culprit – the bolts holding the brake caliper to the DeDion ears were finger tight but would only appear that way when there was no load on the wheel or brakes.

I then grabbed the socket and torque wrench, tightened them up to spec, marked with the paint pen, and tried it again. No more double clunk, just the expected slop in the differential. Problem solved.

Daniel

1. Take off the oil pan.
2. Clean all the previous gasket pieces from the oil pan and the engine block with some gasket remover, soap and water, then finally with some brake cleaner to make sure all the residue is off.
3. Re-attach the pan with new RTV being very careful to align and attach it without smearing the RTV.
4. Attach the blue drain plug with some teflon tape to secure the oil leaking between the threads.

With that in mind, I set aside some time this week to start getting the pan off and cleaned. That was fairly easy; jacked up the front of the car, put it on stands, then undid all the bolts securing the oil pan, the timing cover to pan, and the bellhousing to pan. Once loose, pry off the pan with a pry bar being very careful not to gouge the pan or block – there’s two little indents at the rear of the pan for this purpose. Getting the pan off the engine is a bit of a pain – it will only come out at a certain angle and takes a little gentle persuasion with the rubber mallet (GENTLE!).

I scrubbed and scrapped it all clean once loose. Picture of the clean block and pan below.

Now for the hard part. As I mentioned before, the pan only comes off at a certain angle. That means it only goes back on at a certain angle too and you can’t slide it around. So practice, practice, practice before you apply the RTV.

After a few test fittings I applied the “Right Stuff” black RTV. It’s got a 5 minute drying time which should have been enough time to put down the goop, take a picture, then get the pan into place. I recruited Kim to help life things into place under the car since I knew I’d need another set of hands. We opted to life the pan with the floor jack and it worked great – I could rest it on there and slowly lift it into place and align it before final mating.

RTV goop applied using the Haynes manual diagram…

And then we proceeded to life the pan back into place. There is a secret however – get the lip of the oil pan (in the clean oil pan pic, the far left little outcropping) into the bellhousing first, then slide upward. Once you get close tap the front with the mallet GENTLY and push up. The front edge of the pan will slide up into the timing cover and from there you can get a couple bolts in. Note, you don’t fully seat the pan against the block, but rather work your way around in a star pattern using three torque ranges. From memory it’s 10 ft-lb, then 15 ft-lb, then 18 ft-lb for the final torque.

Pan back on and torqued. I’m sure it’s not the most pretty gasket work, but as long as it doesn’t leak I don’t care at all.

[Edit: Still leaking oil. I failed.]

Daniel

After a quick 10 mile drive I’m happy to report it’s fixed.

[Edit: Nope, not fixed.]

Daniel

Sunday morning Kim and I hopped in and off we went. No major issues with the car, the idle was doing its odd thing, but able to be driven fine. As we were approaching the intersection of West Paces and Habersham I got in the left lane to turn and knowing the blinkers weren’t hooked up yet didn’t bother turning them on. It just so happens a police car then pulled up through the light and slowed down next to us as we waited to turn. Kim looked at me and said “He’s going to give you a ticket for no turn indicators.” I didn’t say anything, just thought to myself “shit.”

So the cop pulls up, rolls down his window, looks at us, and says… “Man, that’s a sweeettttt ride.” I look at him, look at Kim, look back at him and say “Thanks!”. There was a sudden break in traffic so before he can think twice about pulling us over I just hit the gas and made the left! Kim and I just started laughing after that.

The event was fun, tons of people asking about the car, and it was great to get it out for a bit. I took a couple quick pictures to commemorate it.

Daniel

The first challenge with mounting the mirrors is the aeroscreen curves in 3 dimensions to scoop air up and also to roll air to the sides of the car. It works wonders while driving – there’s very little buffeting or wind noise in the car – but makes it challenging to get the mirrors attached because the mirror base never sits flat on the aeroscreen at any point. Why they don’t curve the base ever so slightly I don’t know as I think it would produce a better fit.

The other challenge is lining up the mirrors from one side of the car to the other. Getting one mirror positioned is straightforward, you just lay down some blue painters tape and then position and mark for drilling, but to get the second one to line up is a bit more difficult. What I found that worked was to count 60 “threads” in the carbon fiber from the bottom edge where it mounts to the car in the carbon then make the first mark. Next, put the mirror base down and measure 5mm from the closest point (it’s a diamond shape) from the mirror base edge to the curve of the aeroscreen. Then measure the bottom of the base to the edge of the scuttle where it meets the body panel (holding the tape measure vertically) and you should be roughly 243mm from that seam. The real tip came from Kim – you can check your measurements by counting the threads in the carbon fiber from the center of the aeroscreen and from the edge of the aeroscreen where it bolts to the car and position the mirrors using the same count on each side. You can see how far I was off with relying on eyesight in the pic below vs Kim’s idea of counting the carbon fiber thread.

I started with a 1/8″ drill bit then progressed upward from there to a 11/64″ drill bit (I think, measure your bolts to be sure), using each drill bit size one step at a time. The holes came out flawless.

Next up was to mount the center mirror. To do that I had to take off the aeroscreen as I didn’t feel comfortable drilling directly down into the carbon fiber with the metal scuttle right underneath. The center mirror uses a triangular base and the mirror stalk is oval and designed to be facing in a certain direction – I didn’t realize that at first but caught it before drilling started. The other thing to decide is which way to put the triangle – do you do two holes towards the front of the car and one rear or put the triangle facing forward and the base of the triangle towards the rear with the tip pointing into the wind? It’s behind the aeroscreen and doesn’t matter; it’s purely an asthetic choice. I opted for doing the tip pointing towards the front of the car and putting two holes between the popper bases on the aeroscreen. The popper bases were pre-attached on my build since I’d ordered the car from the factory with the screen.

To mount the center mirror rivets are used per Derek at Caterham – I didn’t have any with the mirror but had a bunch left over from the build so just re-used what I thought would fit. I believe they are the same 1/8″ rivets from the body panels and transmission cover. The aeroscreen curve makes it difficult to drill from the top of the aeroscreen base downward so drilled from the bottom up – just be careful on the forward hole that you don’t drill too far or you’ll drill into the carbon fiber aeroscreen curve! Ask me how I know – luckily I realized it in time and didn’t go all the way through, just a little nick. To mark the holes I used the same process – count the threads in the carbon fiber, mask with blue tape, mark the holes, then drill. I’d highly suggest marking the rear holes first, then riveting those, then drilling the last one. I drilled all three at once and the third hole was slightly off. Rather than re-drill I attached the rivet which lead to a little crack forming laterally across the aeroscreen base. You can’t see it and the structure of the carbon fiber is fine, just this hairline little crack that appeared. Not ideal, but I can live with it (Kim didn’t even notice it until I pointed it out to her, it’s really that small, but I kind of want things to be perfect ya know?). When riveting you need to rivet from the bottom upwards so the thin flat part of the rivet is on the bottom of the aeroscreen – otherwise there won’t be enough clearance between the scuttle and aeroscreen since the base of the rivet is too large for the gap.

As Daniel French mentioned, the bolts are a little long and I’ll replace those eventually. They’re 16mm long now and you need something about 10mm long. Also, don’t over tighten them or you’ll crack the aeroscreen. When you see the aeroscreen curve start to deform a tiny bit stop there. Look closely and you can see what I mean about the curve bending from the flat base from the picture below. You’ll also want to tighten each of the bolts at the same time, doing each one a bit then swapping back to the other so the mirror lays flat. Another note – I didn’t drill the third hole for the adjustment as Daniel did on his – I was actually lucky and got them lined up without any fuss the first go around.

Daniel

1. Idle speed is too low; engine gets very loopy at idle – like an asthmatic after a marathon – and feels like it is going to stall. Punching the gas seems to keep it alive and running.
2. A small bit of oil is still seeping out of the blue plug in the oil pan. Will need to remove and add teflon tape to it or some kind of goop.
3. The radiator fan is coming on faster than I think it should; might still be air in the coolant system that needs to be bled.
4. When turning I hear an odd metal-on-metal scraping noise and some clunking from (what I think is) the rear of the car; I’ve got the BMW diff with LSD and may be normal.

I started with the easy task of adjusting the throttle body. To adjust the throttle body all you need to do is move the screw in the throttle body assembly that the spring sits on but the screw is blocked with epoxy. Dave Fernlahone has some great pictures on his site here. I removed the throttle body expecting to have to drill it out as Dave did, but the temporary nut I had on top of the adjuster screw was cross threaded and it pulled the whole adjuster screw out instead. This seemed oddly advantageous so I inserted a bolt back in through the throttle body hole from the top and torqued it down to push the epoxy out – no mess and worked perfectly. Then I backed out my epoxy-pushing-bolt and put the adjustment screw back in. I used a 2.5mm hex key to hold steady then put the small nut back on to hold it in place, once adjusted, as a lock nut. What I found when adjusting the idle is a quarter turn will take the RPM up about 500-750 RPM so only small adjustments are needed. It seems my engine likes to be a little high, in the 1500-2000 RPM range at idle. It’s still acting a little loopy though and swings pretty freely in that +/- 500 RPM range.

Didn’t make it to deal with the oil seeping out of the blue plug. Will tackle that another day.

Next up was to bleed the coolant system. I put it up on ramps since the driveway was blocked with Kim’s car and I don’t have the keys – not ideal, but should suffice. Since the engine was a little warm from adjusting the idle speed I started it up and let it run while slowly loosening the top radiator plug with a 17mm socket. After opening it a tiny bit some fluid seeped out, wiped it with a rag, and then let the car idle for about 5-10 minutes. During the idle I turned the heater on and off every few minutes to get the coolant to flow as much as possible throughout the block and coolant lines. The fluid level in the expansion tank dropped a tiny bit, so know some air got out, but not significantly which was as expected after the first BIG burp when Adam and I took it out a few weeks ago. I open and closed the top radiator bolt a few times while it ran and fluid came out each time so think all the air is out of the system now.

After the radiator was done, I moved onto the back of the car to see if I could figure out what the issue was with the metal-on-metal noise. I found no obvious culprits but did notice that the universal joints on the drive shaft had flung grease all over the inside of the transmission tunnel. No idea if that’s normal or not? Will post to Blatchat or USA7’s and see what folks have to say. Pic below with the greenish goop all over the sides of the tunnel.

After that I called it a night. Total mileage on the car is 16 miles.

Daniel

First up was putting on the correct shift knob that Caterham sent. I had been sent a silver 5-speed knob with the car but had a 6-speed transmission. Derek was kind enough to send on my choice of color for the 6-speed knob; the black looks great and better than the silver in my opinion!

Next up was dealing with the oil leak from the first drives. After wiping down the motor and getting it clean, I gave the engine a start and let it run for a bit while watching the left side of the motor. What I found is the oil isn’t coming from the side of the block, but through the oil pressure sender which I’ll admit, I did not wrap in teflon tape. So out with the box end wrench, removed pressure sender, wrapped in teflon, then re-attached. A tiny bit of oil dribbled out but wasn’t enough to really worry about. Cleaned that up, retested, and no oil leak.

The other fix was to re-attach the upper steering bushing; you can see below how far it had worked itself out because the rubber knobs weren’t properly located into the dash during the build. I removed the steering wheel using a 3-prong puller then followed another build blog’s advice of using a small piece of 3/4″ PVC pipe slid over the steering column to tap the bushing into the dash. Home Depot had a 2′ section of 3/4″ pipe for $3 which worked perfect along with liberal use of silicone lubricant and a rubber mallet.

Another add was to coat the underside of the rear and front fiberglass wings with truck bed liner. The process went fine, but two notes – 1) that stuff STINKS so make sure you do it where there is ventilation and 2) that stuff gets EVERYWHERE. DO NOT TOUCH THE CAR WHILE WORKING ON THE WINGS. I was diligent and thankfully didn’t have an issue but did get some smudges on wings themselves. Water and a rag will get them off while the paint is wet, once dry though, it’s never coming off.

After driving the car a tad more I realized I was going to need to adjust the clutch pedal for a longer throw. I remembered reading a bit about this on Dave Fernlahone’s blog and his instructions were perfect. Getting your hands down into the footwell with a couple wrenches through the top access panel is a pain in the ass though, plan on taking a couple hours for such a simple job. Pics below of the footwell and the locknuts to adjust. The handwritten diagram on Dave’s site explains things really well.

Lastly, I’m having problems with hitting the gas when I mean to hit the brake. The brake and the gas are so close together I almost have to drive barefoot (I did, it’s much easier without shoes). To that end I bought a new pair of driving shoes; Piloti Prototipo. However, even with those the pedals are still too close for my feet and they aren’t that big – US size 9. As a result, I also ordered a pair of Nike Davinho’s which are very narrow indoor soccer shoes with a thin rubber sole. Will see how they work next time I go out.

Daniel