Caterham Academy 2012 - Build (Day 6)

Day 6:

Having worried endlessly yesterday about the 2mm off-set on the gearbox and how I was going to get it perfectly aligned, one short call to Caterham put my mind at rest....."oh don't worry about it....they all do that". Brilliant. A final check of all the engine mounts and I could move on.

I spent the morning connecting the majority of wires and getting thoroughly confused by the starter motor wiring, which is completely different to that in the build manual as I have a master cut out switch for racing. Still, a couple of hours and a few calls to Caterham later I had the majority of it together and had managed to go back and do a couple of small jobs that I had missed the day before (washer jets, replacing one of the engine mounting bolts etc.). I am scrupulously making notes of everything that I am having to skip because of missing parts and trying to get the jobs finished no later than a couple days later, otherwise I worry that I will forget something and only find out come IVA day, which would be less than ideal!

In the afternoon I moved onto the exhaust primaries, which went in without an issue, but for the life of me I couldn't get enough compression on the springs holding the primaries to the cat, so need to have another look at them in the morning, before I can tighten the primaries up properly and get the rest of the exhaust on. I then spent an hour or so getting the steering column in and aligned properly, before tightening up the rack clamps and getting the steering hub on. In doing these jobs I found a couple of other bits missing, but Caterham have been very good at sending things through promptly, so I hope not to be held up too much.

Finally I moved onto the radiator and associated plumbing which all went together nice and logically. I decided to stop when I got to the expansion bottle and found that the mounting bracket had been welded together incorrectly, requiring another one to be sent through (hopefully here in a couple of days time), otherwise i would probably still be going at it now.......it was a good day in the garage yesterday. I am finding a momentum with the build that I am happy with and am starting to gain more confidence in what I am doing.

Tomorrow I am going to try and finish the wiring, plumbing and exhaust, which will be almost all of the front end of the car complete, before moving on to the prop, rear suspension and the dreaded diff!