Caterham & Boterham Tour #1 - Winter Meetup with the Lotus7

This was retroactively christened "Caterham & Boterham Tour #1". Boterham is dutch for sandwich.

With winter soon over, we thought it would be great to meet with the usual bunch of the Caterham owners that usually attend the Static Rally in Wavre.

After a month of back-and-forth, Christophe was the one to take the initiative of preparing a roadbook and propose a burger joint for lunch. Decided on Friday morning for Sunday noon, that was an efficient shot-notice event !

We managed to get 7 Caterham at 11:00 at the agreed meeting point, and moved on for a short blat in the countryside of Brabant Wallon (BW). It was very agricultural to say the least, with B-roads all along. Not the fastest nor the cleanest, but more enjoyable than the pointless straight and flat main roads of the area.

Knowing that we would go near the place where I did my weight check in August, we thought it would be a fun activity. What better idea than a weighbridge for a "Light is Right" stop ? - It was sadly not powered on this time.

We stopped for 20 minutes there anyway, and shared mint tea we had prepared for the whole gang. With only 2°C and some hefty wind, it was quite comforting. Most were driving without any roof. Christophe and I retained the half-hood; Jean-Marc had the full weather kit on, quite a smart choice.

We continued our way and reached Snack Factory for lunch. We spent an hour there and had great burgers.

A second one-hour circuit was going South, cruising mostly on concrete pavement between the fields. I let the misses drive that part, and have a feel of the limited slip differential, on top the of the engine upgrades.

The final stop was a coffee from 3 to 4 PM, graciously offered by our organizer of the day :)

We left in order to get back to the kids at a reasonable time. And clean the car, obviously.

Inadequate new spark plugs changed to mood of the afternoon. Just after filling the tank at the nearest petrol station by excess of caution, the car immediately felt laggy and one cylinder stopped firing after less than one kilometer. The car was towed less than half an hour later to be delivered to House of Speed on Tuesday morning. We came back home (100km) with a taxi; an actual VIP experience. Take this last paragraph with the caveat that I cannot totally rule out an early effect of a mis-behaved new wideband oxygen sensor that had to be replaced mid-April, 4000km later.

The towing company hauled the car to Liège on Monday despite the 3 times there were told the garage was closed and had to get back to base after I confirmed that no, it's not in my power to have the dealer open on his day off.

On Thursday afternoon it was confirmed that the 3 spark plugs were fouled with gasoline, and the old ones were put back in the engine for the time being. We really need Caterham to provide us with something more adequate than what local suppliers could find.