Caterham 170 experience

TL;DR  only since 2007 and 2011 Parsing "The Magnificient 7" book, I was surprised to only spot the classics that are the yellow nosecone and the more discrete noseband, with or without the painted hood stripe for the vast majority of the history of the car. It's only in 2007 with the release of the Duratec-powered Superlight R400 and the famous Superlight R500 that the double stripes appear. Those were also used on the LEGO version, and the full-scale LE60-CAT made to match it. They're called "double stripes" on the car configurator, those are the ones on my 170S. They could probably be called " SLR stripes ".  In 2011 came the takeover of the company by Team Lotus / Lotus F1 Team (not related to Lotus Car..), and with that, the green F1 livery with 3 stripes : a large yellow one and a pair of narrower white ones, one on each side. Those were used for instance on the R600 project, and offered as an option for all Caterham for a few years. A mo...

TL;DR removing 540g with shorter wheel nuts  The nuts provided with the Image wheels are longer than the original ones, and didn't look quite right with that wheel dimensions. They are quite heavier too. So I got cheap but good-enough-looking ones in black. I went all with with open nuts(*), With a chance that the studs would end up proud of the fasteners. Specifications are : M12x1.5 nuts with a 60° taper.   OEM ones are 30.5mm long, with only 0.5mm for the thin round cap, that's 30mm thread in there.  The open nuts I got are 25mm long, they're made of unspecified stell - I've confirmed that they stick to magnets. Weight-wise, for the bag of 16 nuts, we have : OEM Caterham "Juno" ➡️ 800g Image Wheels M12x1.5 ➡️ 890g "Tracer" M12x1.5 SW19 ➡️ 350g In my case that's 540 grams saved on unsprung rotating mass. Compared to the original ones you would be at 450g. Totally worth the 13€ I paid for a pack of 20, even even if I had to skip a pair of duds...

  Fig.1 :   banana for scale TL;DR Trekking gear, caring about volume 🦌 After missing most of Summer driving opportunities, my intent is to make for it in September one way or another. The vision of a Seven at a campsite always tickled my fancy. Especially since our yearly holidays are nothing less than 3 weeks under a tent. Roughly speaking, I've probably slept for year in a tent since 2000. That began as a scout leader, followed by holidays with various groups of friends and nowadays as a family of four.  In those instances volume and weight are no concern, and even a classic Mini Cooper could store plenty for two people. 🏎️ Going camping with a Seven is really an other game, as 120 liters in the boot is all we have. There is virtually no space in the cabin at all. Assuming the car jack and lever would be relocated to the engine bay, the full boot area could be available for camping equipment. Clothes and luggage would go in the " Boot bag " I got from Soft Bi...

  TL;DR the Anti-Knight Rider Not all heroes wear capes. This one is a kid that sometimes wear goggles and happens to drive a freakin' yellow Caterham. In a world where robotaxi "AI" electric cars are the norm, select teams of licensed "gasoline" drivers are in charge of saving passengers victims of rogue or othewise runaway self-driving vehicles.  You would expect high-tech remote systems, but very little of that here : they stop cars by chasing and circling them, most of the time taking care of blocking sensors by projecting some kind of gloop. That future is sadly now. I hope Teslas would stop too if their cameras were blocked by a gloop-gun. Fool around and find out... I guess. Our boy Sōichi works with teammates Lorna who drives a Lotus Europa, and Lisa who drives a Lancia Stratos after crashing a Subary Impreza WRC in the first episode. Car details are excellent, and production went as far as recording actual engine sound for each  of them.  Harmless ente...

  TL;DR  As a wise man once said... "Everything's computer !" Yes, that's true. Everything is computer. Even on unsuspecting modern Caterhams, a computer is in charge of the engine management, but also the complete dashboard. See the post about the chassis harness on the ECU for far too much more .  Anyway, one obvious feature is the engine light on the dashboard, the one that tells you that something needs to be looked at, or that something out of the ordinary happened. For most people, this means getting an appointment and have the mechanic look into that. Most of the time with a Caterham, people live quite far away from their dealer. A convenient way to get a first clue of what's happening is a OBD-II  scanning tool (sometimes written as OBDII or OBD2 - OBD standing for On Board Diagnostics) I have personally been using a cheap ELM327 bluetooth dongle for probably a decade at this point, driving a MG and all that... It's compact and connects to the Torque P...

TL;DR Keeping the intercooler clean It will soon be 4 months that I'm Caterham-less, lovelorn with the car now in need of the aluminium bonnet be properly prepared and painted in the right colour as the paint shop messed up. Anyway, I had the opportunity to look at my original intercooler one afternoon at House of Speed, and found it rather oily and disgusting inside. I was told it was nothing unusual, and I know for a fact that my engine does not consume any measurable quantity of oil. Spending zero time driving around gives me some extra time to think and go deep into that kind of matter. So I did. What happens is that the PCV system (positive crankcase ventilation) is just an small hose that goes from the top of the camshaft cover to the air intake. Wikipedia says those systems were invented during WW2 to allow deep fording with tanks. I confirm there is a small hose between the oil dipstick tube and the air intake on my WW2 Jeep too. An effective solution for a closed-circuit...

TL;DR  at 20€, a must-have  on my list Last year my friend Gérald told me about that VARO air compressor he found for cheap, so I asked him to grab one for me too.  This is a review after one year of regular use . The unit is powered by an internal 2 000 mAh lithium-ion battery, and is charged through its USB-C connector. A cable is provided in the kit. It's fully digital : you set the target pressure and hit the ⏯️ "play/pause" button, it will inflate until the desired pressure is reached. It can also act as a LED flashlight, I can see how it must be useful at night. Accessories include adapters for typical bicycle valves, sports balls and inflatable toys. As they specify 8 Volts and it's also sold with a 2 500 mAh battery capacity, we can deduct it's based on a parallel/series setup of 8 "18650" cells. Basically your usual power bank, with a twist. It's a good combination of lightness and effectiveness : on a day with "regular" outside ...