Caterham SLR

Caterham Build Diary

It’s here! The photo above shows Malcolm, Caterham’s friendly delivery driver reversing his flash truck up the drive! Unfortunately he had to stop pretty much where you see him because of the gutters – so we ended up carrying it to the garage. “Superlight, eh?”

(Yikes – that’s a lot of boxes!)

The finally delivery day was Wednesday 12 June 2002 at 1.00pm. Superlight R Number 127 of 127 built is here! (the car has now been renamed the R400 but mine has all the R400 options anyway – apart from I have mag rims but no roller barrels!)

I’ll develop this page as the car comes together over the next few weeks and add a few ideas in for anyone else building their car!

The photos below are always the first you see on any 7 build site! The suspension is easy to assemble, but is made even more enjoyable with a friend to assist in holding the components while you tap/slide the appropriate fastners in. In this case, Chris Stairmand – ex aircraft engineer – stepped into the breach and we carefully unpacked all those boxes!

You’ll notice on the inside of the beautifully painted alloy body that everything is powder coated black. This is standard on the engine bay on SLR but I had to pay extra on the interior for the coating. Good move because it looks fantastic.

There were a couple of fastners missing on the front end but Caterham had them with me the next day no probs.

Total assembly time for front suspension and steering was 4 hours both sides.

You’ll notice the R500 starter button, carbon fibre dash and very sexy Stack instrument display I’m sure. You’ll probably not notice the very latest type of carbon aeroscreen, which now comes fitted to the same holes as the normal screen. This means I can add a screen if I plan to drive for a weekend foreign jaunt or whatever. In addition, you can see the eight switches – 4 of which (heated screen / washers / wipers / heater) won’t be used unless I add the screen. Nice touch to get them though because they’ve even fitted the looms for the gear and little things like the wiper bracket and washer jet. The scuttle is also neatly pre drilled for wipers and grommeted out.

The second shot above shows the screen in more detail.

Back suspension assembly is more complex and difficult than the front. The Dedion tube is fitted, below, and I Waxoyled inside it to prevent corrosion.

Below shows the rear suspension in build. The funny looking forward and trailing arms are called the Watts Link and are an upgrade that the SLR has as standard to improve handling. The assembly of the rear suspension is quite time consuming partly because of the disjointed nature of the manual and partly because you are obviously consciously working to a careful standard. Notice the damper’s close proximity to the inner alloy skin.

In actual fact, the damper is touching – and marking the inner skin. You can’t tell on the photo’s but it is quite odd, and although it probably wouldn’t have caused a problem I was keen to sort it out..

Having considered quite a few extreme measures like drilling out the rivets in the rear skin, or cutting holes to clear the intrusion (!) I wondered just how hard it’d be to lever the alloy away from the coilover a bit. Dam all that thinking! The job took 5 seconds with a flatblade screwdriver and gave me 4 mm of clearance. The little gap at the top was then filled with a little silicone – although since the rollbar covers it this was probably unnecessary!

The next issue was the Anti Roll Bar. The following pictures show the blocks being cut down to allow diff clearance (not mentioned in the manual and takes ages, especially because in the interests of a nice job you have to re-linish the underside after hacksawing them!)

You can see the amount I chopped off and the next photo shows the result of the finished job – about ¼ inch of clearance under the diff...

You’ll get a better idea of where the blocks go in the next shot….

Peter Carmichael of the Lotus 7 Club made me wince a bit after doing all this work to get my ARB clearance – he said “Why didn’t you just bend the bar down a bit?” Um. Yes – that’d only have saved 2 hours Peter !!

Having also carefully filed the bushes in the chassis and repainted them black I assembled the lot with lots of copperslip to prevent any deterioration. The above shot also shows my wiring loom modifications. I’ve wrapped the standard loom in impregnated cloth tape and snipped all the clips off, before routing the cables OVER the ARB. This gives me chance now to P clip the cable to the top of the ARB block thus avoiding the horrible radius’ that Caterham had crimped the cables into at the corner of the chassis. This is an easy mod as you build but a nightmare later I bet!

Above you can see the result of me and Chris sweating for about an hour! We made sure that the brake pipe routes were perfect, carefully eye-ing up the required bends before removing the pipe, executing and refitting. Not difficult but again, took quite a while. The top of the dedion tube has 1/8” holes in it – the manual suggests the use of ty wraps to secure the pipes but we think this is very gash. Instead we are going to rivet the pipes to the tube using some nice p clips. I have heard that this is the method used by the factory if you get them to do it so no idea why it doesn’t mention it in the manual.

My next task was to fit the boot cover. Not a difficult job but does take a long time to do nicely. I added some nice flat washers under the harness bolts to spread the load and stop the boot cover from twisting and distorting. You can see this in the second shot. The roll bar is best fitted with two people and a lot of masking tape protecting the paint! It needs compressing a bit to get it to slot in and mistakes would be expensive!

I found that a pair of large grips were best for fitting the “poppers” to the boot – I have no idea if this is the official method because there was no instructions.

The engine, bellhousing and gearbox were built up at this time and the shot below shows the finished mill!

It is pretty hefty once all completed and it was much easier to fit the bellhousing bolts with some assistance in manhandling the engine while I engaged the threads. As a note, if you have a Stack dashboard you don’t need the gearbox mounted speed sensor. Instead you have a little probe that fastens on a bracket across the RHS front brake calliper. This isn’t referred to in the manual. The quality of the machining on the gearbox, bellhousing and ancillaries is beautiful. As a note, the VHPD dry sumped engine does not come with a clutch gaiter. You will look for it because the bellhousing has the holes to accept it – but it doesn’t need one (?) apparently!

What is not beautiful is the wiring in the engine bay. I don’t know if you can make any of it out in earlier shots but basically the looms, brake pipes and fuel lines are tywrapped together around the frame in an alarmingly haphazard way. Also, the looms are not gathered very neatly and would, in my opinion, suffer from abrasion damage over an extended period of use. I spent a full afternoon nearly separating the cables and pipes, fitting p clips and cable tie bases where needed and using appropriate tapes, adhesives and protective foams on sharp edges. The result is well worth the effort and some shots are below. As you will see a little later, once the engine was fitted it became apparent that a slightly more drastic course of action would be needed with these looms…..

With 45 hours down so far, it was time to fit the engine. Chris was unavailable so my pal Rich Fell was drafted in at short notice to skin his knuckles on the 200bhp K series! My Dad, Stewart was also roped in. It was a good job we had 3 of us because the engine is a tight fit and you don’t want to scratch that powdercoat!

We carefully lowered the engine and box in and bolted it down. The shot below is taken from under the car and the clearances really are as tight as they look!

We had applied masking tape to the inside of the tunnel to stop it marking but it was damn hard to remove!

Here, quite a lot of plumbing has gone on and the rad is fitted. Above you can see Rich fiddling about with the expansion bottle to make it fit a bit better!

Following advice from my chum Martin Plant, I decided to protect the starter from heat. A thermo-tec insulating kit bought ages ago for another car was pressed into service. The shots below show the actual insulation, and then the reflective outer wrap. Locwire was used to make sure it stays put.

If you choose to do this mod yourself a word of warning. You must add a plastic cap for insulation to the starter +12v feed bolt – you can see this in the first 2 shots. This will stop any shorting issues if the wrap ever wears through to the silvering.

With this job complete I hit my next snag. The steering column hit the dry sump pump. Now the engine don’t move a lot but you will need some clearance. The column can be rotated but not much in my case because the steering grommets at the footbox have already been riveted in place as per the manual – moving the column spoils the sealing action of the grommet and the steering UJ will work nicer and wear less in a straight line. So – I carefully Dremeled the bracket on the drysump to give 4mm of clearance. The shot below shows the problem – the shot is taken with the job in progress so you can’t see the final result.

The handbrake received attention next. Again we have issues with things touching! The two shots below show two alternatives we have to routing the cable. The problem is that on the drivers side if the cable is put neatly behind the bracket as shown in photo 2, the thing clouts the hydraulic brake hose!

So are we left having it resting on the arb bracket? Also it looks like it really wants to fall off the diff into the driveshafts! And – I hate the idea of a metal serrated tube eating away at my shiny powdercoat! After a bit of research it is now apparent that the best way to do it is to sleeve the cable in some nice rubber and then carefully fasten it away from things….. Sounds easy but took a while……

The next little tweak was to remove one horn and fit the remote oil pressure sender in its place. Notice the nice little p clip riveted into the lower frame to stop the pipes from touching any belts.

The wiring loom for the engine simply is not right for the car. The main connector loom is about 2 feet too long, the TPS loom is a foot too long and the exits for most of the spurs are the wrong way. Plastic conduit is used on the engine loom in the most daft places and generally makes the engine bay look miserable. I tried to put up with it but……

I couldn’t! These two photos show the std wiring harness stripped down and having the various spurs made to be the correct length. This is easier than it sounds because if you are careful you can “lose” any excess back into the main girth of the harness, before carefully looming it back up as below. You’ll notice the use of “proper” tapes and the fact that I’ve mated the engine loom and car loom into one. In the event of engine removal it would either be an hour to strip the looms out or a simple matter of disconnecting the engine harness from the actual motor.

These two above show (left) the joint between engine and body loom, which I affixed carefully to the RHS footbox front, having riveted a nice base to the panel first to allow the use of a tywrap. The (right) picture shows the rivnuts fitted to the chassis to take the ECU and the MFU now installed beneath it.

Above is the finished harness and ECU installation – a great deal nicer I’m sure you’ll agree.

After doing the looms and fitting the exhaust, complete with thermo-tec wrap, we decided to go for a start-up! We filled the diff with Castrol EP90 oil, the gearbox with Castrol TAF-X GL4 75W-90 fully synthetic oil and the coolant system with a water/antifreeze mix. The use of a garage style pump made the fluid filling much easier – especially the gearbox which would have been a total pain without it! Even so, the filler plug is difficult to fasten up, and necessitates the fabrication of a very odd looking allen key! We decided to use a basic synthetic engine oil even for running in so an A1 motor stores branded oil was added to the bellhousing.

We connected the battery – check.

Ignition on, Stack powered up – check.

We cranked for oil pressure – check.

Filled with fuel - check.

Disarm immobiliser – check.

Crank to start….

And…..

Still cranking…..

And…..

Still cranking……

Stop. What’s wrong? Dunno……

………..(zzzz)

AHA! The damn fuel cutoff switch was “out”. Bugger. Press that in and….

VRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!

This is one very noisy little car! The throttle response is evil – the idle absolutely lumpy and race-car hard. Above you see the smoke still piling off the exhaust wrap as it settles down!

Here you see my side repeaters, purchased for £10 from Fiat for the Seicento car and fitted to the headlamp bowls after checking with Caterham that this is okay for SVA. Subsequently I have found out that actually it might not be okay – and in actual fact I have faulty headlamp bowls anyway, because the little metal tags inside don’t retain the threads properly! Over to Caterham Midlands!

The rear wings were installed carefully, cutting the rubber piping to neatly gasket the carbon against the beautiful silver paint

Here you can see my car at John Noble Motorsport, waiting for its “Post Build Check”, a job which actually didn’t throw up any real problems, I’m glad to report. I did get wet getting there, however AND the car took about 4 hours to “mint” back to pristine condition! Doh!

The next issue was to get the car running right – the lambda probe proved to be a suspect item and there was a fault on the wiring loom where the Idle control valve was powered up constantly causing battery drain. Caterham explained to me how to solve this one and I duly untaped (again) the loom and made the relevant alterations!

Here are a couple of shots of the finshed, totally standard car.