Caterham Academy 2012 - Build (Day 13)

Day 13:

After the success and satisfaction of yesterday today had a lot to live up to and spectacularly succeeded in frustrating me. Again, it is the simple jobs that seem to take the time and today it was the seats.

I started the day by fitting the transmission tunnel cover and the gear knob, which were both satisfying and straightforward jobs to complete. I then set about the drivers seat and got thoroughly confused by the alignment of the holes in the floor, which didn't marry up with those of the seat runners on the drivers seat. After a couple of hours of putting the seat in, taking it out and putting it back in again I decided to phone the ever patient Sean at Caterham. It turns out the that holes in the floorpan for the seats had been drilled incorrectly in my car and that I needed to drill out new holes for the front mounting points of the runners. With this done I then spent another hour or so trying to locate and pass through the bolts that hold the seat runners to the floor. I can only liken it to trying to play a game of Jenga, blindfolded with your hand shoved through a letter box! I managed to get all of the bolts located and passed through, but so far have only managed to do the front two up. I can’t work out how I hold the rear two still whilst tightening the locknuts from below.

I then moved onto the passenger seat which put up a similar fight. I eventually worked out that the combination of lowered floors and tillet seats meant that the rear most mounting bracket for the harness was causing it to foul the seat and not allowing it to locate properly. With the harness moved to the front mounting point the seat went in without too many issues. At this point I should have called it quits, but a friend popped around with a brake bleed kit and decided that we should prime the brakes. It was at this point we discovered that there is an issue with the front brake unions where they leave the engine bay and head to the callipers. Basically the female union on both sides is bottoming out before it seals properly. I treble checked the instructions, but it looks as though the combination of washers and locknuts is too thick to allow the male and female unions to come together properly. Another call to Caterham tomorrow should hopefully provide the answers I need.

Tomorrow is going to be focused on getting the wings on and the rear lights attached. After that I am into final checks and hopefully start-up. The end is starting to feel near, which is both a great relief and quite sad. I just hope the last few days go OK and don't flag up too many issues!