Modifications

Changes made to V11UFO

Front lighting

As you may be aware, V11UFO had the Caterham 7” lamps on the front from the factory and I’d got my SVA with Fiat Seicento repeaters fitted into the sides of the black headlamp bowls. This meant no holes in the carbon front wings. Driving the car revealed that the big lamps created a bit of a visual block at some angles, and also it looked a bit odd with the little aeroscreen and huge lamps waving around in the breeze! I took the decision to swap to the smaller lights fitted to the Westfield and Caterham Blackbird.

James Whiting sells the lights, as do Westfield and Stafford Vehicle Components. Caterham supply them too, and that is where mine came from as a warranty exchange for my old ones which luckily were faulty anyway! Please check prices if you are going to swap because there is a MASSIVE variance in them all. They all appear to be identical, with the lens being marked “Saturn” or something, and the bowl coming in a “Wipac” box; inside the headlamp a “SVC” sticker is evident so maybe they all come from Stafford?

Anyway, I removed the indicators and lights from the car. The 5 ¾ lenses were modified to accept an ultrabright white LED to replace the sidelamp bulb in a slightly lower location within the lamp and the sidelamp holes were expanded to accept a pair of very trick 21W Phillips SilverTec indicator bulbs. The voltage was messed with on the LED’s to drop it to 6V. (My car is using series mounted LED’s to drop the voltage but I’ve worked on a better solution using resistors with an electronics engineer. This change will be implemented when I next strip the lamps.)

Here is a couple of shots;

You can see the new ”clean” look to the front of the car and also the amazing performance of the indicators now. This performance is still awesome even with the lights on at night, and the sidelamps, although not as bright as standard from all angles, still function excellently as position lights and are MOT man friendly! (Shown below at night)

This conversion, although not especially difficult, does involve some fiddly work and can easily damage the inside of your headlamps if not done carefully. Please don’t attempt it unless you know what you’re doing!

The weight saving of this conversion is approx 0.5kg

Steering Wheel (!)

The Momo wheel that came with the car is lovely but has 1 flaw; at my height (5ft9) the crash pad obscures the speed reading on the Stack display.

I removed the crashpad, peeled off all the leather and cleaned the adhesive off using some brake cleaner. The crashpad was modified using a bench grinder to take off about 6mm from the top and it was neatly radiused back in with sandpaper and a block. I used a hole cutter (53mm) to cut a 4mm deep ring in the middle of the pad, and dremeled out the middle of this ring so I had created a 53mm diameter, 4mm deep recess in the pad. The pad was then recovered in new leather and a “Caterham 7 16Valve” Nose badge was fitted into the recess. It looks brilliant and very “factory” with the recess; much neater than just sticking it on top!

Also, I can now see the speedo, which is nice! Compare the shots below (before, left, and after, right.)

(excuse the quality of the first image!)

Ignition barrel

The standard keyswitch on my 7 switched only 2 low current wires and was replaced by a flickswitch (car has an immobilser too). This means my left knee no longer bashes the confounded thing as I drive and the car is another 0.5 Kg lighter! Actually, if you look carefully at the shots above of the wheels, you can see the keys dangling down in the left shot and not the right one! This simple change has transformed the comfort in which I can drive the car!

Battery

The standard Banner battery is 230A, 30Ah and 9 Kilo’s. DMS/Hawker do lovely racing batteries, starting with the 300A, 8Ah, 2.7 Kilo “Redtop8”. I chickened out of using this because of concerns over starting in very cold weather (Remember that these figures only cover 20degrees temperature). Instead I selected the “shandyman’s” choice (!) which is still 300A, but gives 14Ah of capacity. It weighs in at 5kg, which is an impressive saving still.

Once fitted, the “Hawker15” dropped the current draw from the recorded 180A with the Banner to “just” 163A (Due to its increased cranking power presumably) and gives a much more convincing start. I do leave the battery on a conditioner permanently, however, as others who have used these note that they must be kept in top condition since you have much less “in reserve”. Below is a shot of the “MANBAT” conditioner that was just £30 from Dad. This is a top bit of kit because it is fully microprocessor controlled, and actually intelligently “floats” the tricklecharge based on logic derived from how the battery reacted to its “first stage” of charging. Clever thing.

Do bear in mind that the 7 is ridiculously “over–alternatored”, too and I cannot honestly forsee any issues with starting unless, like anything, you don’t look after it properly.

I can supply a “Hawker15” through my Dad’s shop for about £70 if you can’t find them elsewhere. Demon Tweeks sell them for sure, but I can’t remember their exact price.

Below you can see a couple of shots of the new installation. I drilled out the existing rivets holding the standard battery tray and fabricated the battery mount from thin sheet aluminium. I used the existing holes in the car to re-rivet the new clamps into place. This way, I can revert to standard if needed without the car resembling a sieve! The two unused holes in front of the new tray were filled using black rivets.

ECU

An Emerald ECU was installed on a fabricated carbon mount. Note that you have to alter a feed on the car’s wiring harness, as the MEMS requires a constant 12V supply and the Emerald needs 2x switched feeds. Also replace the 20A ECU fuse with a 1A one. The Emerald improved the idle absolutely immeasurably and allowed the car to be properly mapped. The standard unit was dreadful, and despite being silly rich in the middle, went worryingly lean up top, which, along with the poor idle, was enough to earn it a place in my rapidly growing parts graveyard …….

Once mapped at Emerald the SLR was pumping an impressive 209bhp at 7600rpm and a peak of 155 lb/ft of torque. These figures don’t tell the story though. Notice that over 120 lb/ft of torque is available from 3000 rpm and that the power was still climbing at 8000 rpm ! The result is a transformed car; wild, wild top end power but wonderful flexibility. You can exit a corner in a gear too steep and thanks to the wall of torque the car still surges forwards with ridiculous thrust!

Vernier Wheels

As delivered, the motor had the cam timing pegged at an inappropriate setting – this was rectified using a pair of Piper adjustable verniers. These are lighter than standard, too!

Exhaust

The standard Caterham SLR system is a stainless steel silencer made by “Cheeseman” – weight is around 9kg and the unit has a 2 1/8” pipe diameter. The system is very loud, and apparently can be problematic at certain tracks where noise restrictions are in force.

I therefore purchased a Raceco titanium silencer, weight just 4kg (!) and looks fantastic. The system is a touch longer than the standard one, and is of a larger diameter, both in terms of can size and more interestingly, pipe diameter. The Raceco unit is 2.5” – which obviously necessitated the modification of the Caterham 4-2-1 collector piece. This was carried out by the manufacturer of Raceco silencer’s, Mike Riley. He is an expert fabricator and a Caterham enthusiast too! He fashioned a piece of 2 1/2” pipe to fit the “2” section of the collector, and having cut off the standard 2 1/8” outlet, TIG welded the new piece into place. The result can only be described as ”factory”.

I had a problem with the silencer packing after the rolling road session, but Raceco sorted it out quickly, efficiently and free of charge, no quibble. Great service, and the best bit is…….

With the Raceco exhaust, the engine is otherwise totally standard (VHPD) (but granted running corrected cam timing via vernier wheels and the Emerald ECU mapped by the vastly experienced Dave Walker) The 209 bhp is 19bhp over standard! In addition, the car is much quieter and more civilised, whilst still retaining a hard “edge” to the sound. Much better for noise conscious track days, next year, then!

Metal P Clips

The original P clips that held the brake pipes into place were poor, plastic affairs that twisted and distorted when any clamping force was applied. Demon Tweeks provided some nice stainless steel ones that have a rubber lining. They were only a quid each or so, and look much better as well as doing a really good job of isolating the brake pipes from vibration.

Mocal Catch Tank

The standard unipart washer bottle was a poor catch tank because oil vapour could escape from the top and used to pepper the bonnet and under bonnet areas with oil spots. These took some shifting from the paintwork; I had to resort to Autoglym paint restorer at one stage to remove the marks.

The alloy Mocal tank shown below is a massive improvement, with a sight guage and a fantastic vented top that only lets clean air out.

Cam cover

A a custom lightweight cam cover for V11UFO. A solid billet of 3/8” HE 30 Dural was machined down to give a lightweight (1300g) item that saves over a kilo in weight over the standard “monkey metal” item.

The new cover is also incredibly stiff and strong, with a far higher tensile strength than standard. It also looks fabulous!

Check out the section on the cover if you’d like one too.

Carbon fibre front splitter and numberplate mount

This part is made from carbon and has height adjustments at the front to allow different underfloor clearances to be run. It weighs 950g complete including the sticky plate and definitely helps turn in through very fast bends on circuit.

The bracket clamps to the chassis rail under the car, which allows the splitter to hinge easily. The front screws go into the numberplate securing holes on the nosecone and allow 4 different positions. My car will still go in its trailer with the splitter in normal 100mm clearance mode as here.

Carbon fibre boot floor

This is simply a thin sheet of c/f to replace the wooden/ali one. It saved circa 750g. Note that you should put some cloth tape on the underside edges of the sheet before you screw it down otherwise it resonates like a huge drum!

You can see the pipe coming through the floor – this is the diff breather and will ensure any slight efflux of diff oil ends up on the easily wipable surface of the boot floor rather than over all the suspension. You could make a catch tank but frankly this isn’t necessary because it hardly ever produces any spillage at all.

Here are a couple of pictures of V11UFO’s carbon fibre floors. They were fitted because the original black powdercoated Caterham ones scratched within a few hundred miles even though the mats were there. Also, and more importantly, the silly alloy underfloor “U” section started to sag because it is a pathetic bodge design. I re engineered the situation with a pair of custom machined alloy seat mounts which were powdercoated black before installation. This now means the load from me sat in the car is taken by the chassis rather than the 1mm thick floor (sounds common sense but there you go….) The result is a far stiffer mounted seat which makes no creaks or groans as I drive over bad surfaces. Also, the total saving was around 2kg for seat runners and floors.