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Showing posts from March, 2026

Screws of Shame, part two point five : Side Poppers

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TL;DR : adhesive tape is all it takes As a follow-up to the new screws I did fit to the poppers that are on top of the boot cover, the ones on the sides needed replacing too. The concern with those poppers is that they have an orientation, with a slight bulge on the bottom that keeps the full hood secured once popped in place. Not wanting to mess that up, I took some time and finally found a silly solution to keep it all well aligned. Tape, it's just adhesive tape. So one at a time, I did lock the poppers with tape and replaced the rusty screws with stainless steel ones. Two per side : one behind the door, and the front-most one under the boot cover (the others are riveted) . I've spotted that the screws from the poppers in the cabin where the sidescreens latch have white oxidation; I'm ok with that.

Trackday & drift Mettet 28/03/2026

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TL;DR Wet wet wet   All pictures courtesy of GT Production  and Racing Pictures & Reports Although I had planned on going to the Belgians On Track event of April 3rd, I finally chose to go to the "Trackday & drift" week-end organized by Pierre Malderez / Malderez Racing instead. Same circuit, same week, same weather. The fact that I wouldn't need taking a day off was the decisive element. I had the car serviced and the thermostat replaced just in time for that week-end, and did replace the safety-wire on the differential that was leaking a bit again. I assume I didn't do it right after the Quaife had been fitted. Anyway, as I had my car raised at HoS to do the work, I was told not to use the NS2 tyres I had shred the threads off during the previous trackday in October. It would be too dangerous. So I got the Uniroyal RainExpert back on the rear, on the original Juno wheels. As they have no "rotation" to respect and only an "outside"/"...

Lazy Thermostat

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TL;DR yet another saga, for some reason Super boring long story short, the reference you're looking for is 17670-81AB1. Good luck finding one. With no reply to the enquiry I sent Caterham through their online form, I had to find the Suzuki part number for a Suzuki Every DA17 on eBay. As far as I known, my dealer was not able to get any information from official channels either. We got the thermostat out of the car at House of Speed and were able to confirm that what we saw did match the pictures from the listings : the offset piston, the looks of the mechanism and even all the markings on the flange were identical. On the Caterham 170, the thermostat is not located in the housing that's on the cylinder head  (we checked, it's empty) , but in a remote housing near the oil filter, where the bottom hose of the radiator is attached  (gotcha) . 17670-81AB1-000 is a 82°C  thermostat with a 48mm diameter that, in Europe, is also used on the Suzuki V-Strom 800 mo...