Caterham 170 experience

TL;DR "Everything is computer" Now that the dashboard minor gauges are fully calibrated , how about getting rid of them ? 🤡 The rationale is that my phone holder hides the coolant temperature gauge, and that space is better used with Waze that shows me what the road looks like ahead, rather than having the sad old needle telling me all is fine. When in doubt about any engine parameter, I use a mini ELM27 dongle to display real time data on the phone ( read all about that here ). With the current technology, nothing should prevent the build of a OBD display with a 52mm gauge form factor. I was obviously not the first to have that kind of idea. 👨‍💻  BTI gauges and  gaugeART products were identified as the most likely candidates. Both of those were not available in continental EU and required some PC software or phone app (which is even worse) of unknown lifetime and compatibility. Moreover, BTI didn't answer my e-mail about the durability in an open cockpit. Weeks lat...

TL;DR Mixed feelings Pictures courtesy of Deba Fotografie  After some minimal preparation, I reached Mettet around 8:20. Staff at the welcome table provided me with my car number and a ticket to get a driver wrist band after the briefing, they also guided me to the coffee corner with an assortment of breakfast pastries. I met a few friends and talked to a few other Seven enjoyers as well. House of Speed came up with trucks and trailers loaded with their pair of 420 race cars, a track-focused Lotus Elise and the raw carbon-fiber-finished Agile. When time came to go on track for the discovery laps, it appeared that my crash helmet was in way worse condition than I thought. Foam padding was turning into dust all around my face, jacket, in the car and in my eyes. Not a good start. Luckily, there's a motorcycle shop just at the entrance of the Mettet XP complex. I got there and got a new helmet. Not the cheapest I could get, but close to that. With my new gear, I finally reached the pi...

TL;DR  : Buckle up Yeah I know that I previously told that I wouldn't partake in any racing with my 170S, afraid of breaking the engine after the upgrades and all. We're 9000km later, and it proves to be as reliable as it has always been, with the engine temperature really kept under control and no sign of anything to worry about. So here we are. As I was hinting my friends at House of Speed yesterday that they didn't really have had a proper try with my car yet, they told me there would be a track day next week, and that it would be the best place to have a go. I knew there's usually one in October, but I hadn't seen or heard anything about that recently. The HoS newsletter was actually written already, and was sent soon after that talk . Twice a year, Belgians On Track  do schedule a track day at the Mettet circuit . It's not their only gig but the other one is in France, thus a bit further away. I've met one of the organizers a bunch of times already, an...

  TL;DR No corrosion allowed This story is some kind of follow-up to this one from last year.  In summary, I will always aim at getting rid of any sign of rust on my car. It has to look like it's fresh out of the factory. On the menu today : tail lights washers under the wheel arches : a pair of crusty flat washers and spring washer on each side.  I got myself a set of 260 stainless steel washers from China for 5€ or so. poppers screws on the boot cover : a strip of 4 rusty screws in plain sight. I got a bag of 50 screws for 2€. I've also replaced the stainless steel M5 allen bolts of the SPA mirrors with black ones, also in stainless steel. I should definitely share my 3D models for the custom base. As I got 52mm rubber o-rings in the same parcel as all those screws, I did fit one to the oil catch can , that showed signs of oil at the junction between the body and tank. At some point that week I also did replace the b lack nylon nut on the left sidescreen by a ge...

TL;DR Some like it hot I think I didn't cover the week-end in the Vosges and Black Forest at all but might have explained the cooling issue already.  Anyway, I got the car back on a Friday, and it was overheating a bit and dripping coolant from under the nose cone on the next day. What happened is that the cooling fan fuse had blown with the crash and was duly replaced and tested before I got the car back. That new fuse died rather quickly, which led the engine getting up to 105°C in some queues due to roadworks at the highest point of the Black Forest. Weather was not even great or remotely warm. The blown fuse resulted in some pressure buildup in the cooling system. Which should have been released by the 1.1 bar valve in the expansion tank cap. But is wasn't.  Instead, it was released from the hose connected to the top of the radiator, due to a faulty hose clamp. So here I was with a pair of commercial jetliner mechanics, a classic Mini specialist and a hot and ...

As described in whatever previous post, an issue with the paint job led to some further delay in the repairs. This was not helped by the yearly holidays of every party involved, including me.  At some point in July the car was nearing completion, but the result in broad daylight was quite not up to expectations. The bonnet was clearly an other shade of yellow than the rest. We thought UV aging might have played a role in this, so we removed a black stripe from the original bonnet to confirm. It didn't. There was no difference at all.  The issue was honestly harder to spot with the artificial lightning of the House of Speed workshop. Long story short both bonnets were sent back to the paint shop which in turn sent the dented one to PPG for analysis. It came back to the car body shop with a written note that said "That's going to cost a lot". I have been shown the bill in their lab area : they had to prepare a batch of at least 800 ml of my colour, which is ...

TL;DR "High impact nylon", they sure can take a beating You already know them as they are the de-facto standard upgrade for the Caterham. From factory, KLY mirrors are fitted to the sidescreens (in EU that is), or modified and attached to the windscreen stanchions for IVA compliance in the UK. Those are just alright, not the best looking, but they do the job and keep their setting once tightened enough. A common gripe people have with those is the blurry vision they provide because of vibrations. My experience was no different. So I let the hype get the best of me and got a pair of "SPA" mirrors like everyone else. My provider of choice for that kind of motorsport-y stuff is Demon Tweeks . A pair of convex mirrors in black nylon did cost me 106 €. You can also get them in white, and the cheapest option have a flat mirror. There is also a very unreasonably-priced carbon fiber version (300€+ a piece), that I have seen in person on a car, and they age very poorly. The...

TL;DR Getting back to 100%  ❗ Disclaimer : this is nerd-supreme level of nerditude and most of that nonsense was part of my training in electronics and information technologies. Do not try this at home.  All of that happened one step at a time between September 5th and October 4th.  When the ECU was replaced by a SCS Delta 700S, a standard SCS configuration for a Caterham 160 of unknown vintage was used as a base. All was fine and nice as far as the actual engine management was concerned, this is really why you choose that kind of product in the first place. Integration to the chassis harness was less straightforward, and we were lacking the car electric diagram to tackle everything with confidence. I have since obtained the schematics for both the Caterham 170 and 160, that are actually quite similar. Areas for improvement were the calibration of the minor dashboard gauges (all of them), as well as the control of the fuel pump, temporarily fed a "10 times the RPM" puls...

TL;DR : adding performance and lightness   📜 Inspired by the mod seen last Summer on a Seven Sprint, a first aluminium air guide was built for my car when the engine was tuned. Over the two months I've been driving with it, OBDII data clearly showed an air intake temperature kept in check, very close to ambient. That first item did dissipate a fair share of the energy from the crash . It's bent but can be repaired, the plan is to send it to a friend that will use it on his Caterham 165. 🌡️ We have already driven over 2000km without an air guide in just the two weekends since I got the car back. Data showed intake temperatures in excess of 50°C, that's not ideal. That small experiment confirmed the added value of building a new one. With the usual goal of keeping things as light as technically possible, I decided to use carbon fiber and placed an order for three 1mm thick 200x400mm twill sheets. I copied the original build and got a pair of 500mm 20x20x...