Caterham 170 experience

  TL;DR featuring in a book As usual, this is a long-ish term project. Gérard Taës (who I don't know personally) is a car enthusiast with a passion for editing automotive picture books that let proud owners show off their most cherished possessions. This is done under the EDITIONS LE LIVRE brand. His marketing seems to be based around very non-instrusive publications on car owners Facebook groups. Anyway, a first Caterham book has been published somewhere in 2022 - you can go through a digital version here - and a second edition is planned for 2025. Knowing that some mods were expected early this year, the plan was to have a dedicated photo shoot with my DSLR camera and provide good quality pictures for my submission. That plan was obviously under the threat of the close encounter of the wild kind. Luckily, we did take some good pictures just 45 minutes before the accident, they feature my new wheels and the late afternoon light is quite appropriate. They are located on the roof...

TL;DR applicable to all Caterham with electronic throttle This one is courtesy of Guillaume who shared that trick with us at the Vosges meetup last week-end - and on the Sevener forum as well  ; originally here -. Photographs are from his 165, but I confirm the mounting holes and original pedal layout are the same on my 170 ( cfr last picture here ). I find mind blowing that setting the fasteners in an ungodly manner will give us a straighter throttle pedal and a better overall even layout with an extra centimetre of spacing with the brake pedal. We all know we can use some of that. In short, the top fastener is moved to the other hole in the bracket while the bottom one is just loosened a a bit. Then re-tightened, obviously . Just like that. I'll do mine as soon as I get the car back. As I'm told it leaves about 5 mm of room before hitting the pedal box when applying gas fully, it's probably worth checking there is no interference when done.    

TL;DR MX5 adventures I'm basically writing this 10 months after the fact. My Google Maps timeline and the pictures help a lot providing with the exact timing. After putting a bit of pressure to have the oxygen sensor issue identified and solved in time for this anticipated week-end, I got the car back and cashed it on the same day. So that was that. There would be no week-end for me. But weather promised to be too good to stay put. While my friend Fab tried to get me a Caterham (one of his, or expensive rentals), I found a peer to peer vehicle rental platform, and got a Mazda MX5 for the week-end. An older model ( NB I think), with over 200 000 km on the clock. For not a lot of money (175€ for 4 days) and located right where we were planning to drive. Problem solved.  We left Liège around 11:00 on Thursday morning and got the rental MX5 at 15:00. The beer case we brought didn't fit in the MX5 trunk, so we had to spread the bottles in shopping bags. Anyway, our host...