Caterham 170 experience

TL;DR : Sub-optimal job from the factory With the car up on the lift at House of Speed the other day, it was apparent that the seats rails nuts and washers had seen better days. They were rusty more than scratched from contact with the road, but I couldn't leave them like that. While stainless steel replacement would look like the obvious choice, titanium is even a better option. CAUTION : Do not replace critical load bearing steel hardware with stainless steel or titanium and always stick the the prescribed alloy grade.  I reckon it's OK for the seats. Worst case they would become loose on the floor pan (or break) and you would still be attached to the car anyway... All we need are 4 (of each)  M8x20mm bolts, M8 nylstop nuts and M8x30mm plain washers per seat. Before placing my order, I had gotten the passenger seat out of the car for inspection, as I wanted to make sure I wouldn't need grinding down the titanium bolts flush with the nuts after fitting. Assuming they w...

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.

TL;DR Pimpin' ain't easy Read part I   and part II for the full PIAA story. Even I think that a third post about those additional lights is a bit much. Yet again, the time spent 'researching' and fiddling with the adjustment make it worth my time writing it down. This whole blog could have been a collection of Post-It notes in Google Keep, all bullet points, sketches and figures. Anywho, as pleased as I was to transform my Seven into a light ball, it was too much and a plain nuisance to others if we're honest. Flooding the scenery up to the roof of houses with pissy yellow light wouldn't bring anything useful in actual fog either. The fact that the white drive beams were aiming too high was not as problematic, but the goal was for them to fill the black void left when the low beams turn off as the high beams are activated. I got a first check on the wall of the parking lot at work at the end of the day, with evidence recorded by the dashcam for later analy...

TL;DR The easy way, stealthy enough This is a follow-up from the previous post about adding PIAA LPW530 lights to my Caterham. Alignment is described at length here . With the car on hand, it took a whole 10 seconds and a wooden skewer to understand that the PIAAs wouldn't fit between the grille and the radiator. The space there is about 1 or 2 cm short. Change of plan then. I considered fitting a bracket down from the large nut where the headlight bowls and indicator pods are attached. It looked like a real chore of a project, and I didn't want to mess up with the headlights alignment. After much reflection, weighing various pros and cons, I went the easy way with a standard bracket made for that very purpose : a motorcycle clamp for 22-28mm tubes, made of cast aluminium. I was worried about adding unsuspended weight (~500g on each side) and about vibrations. I reckon that being about 1/3rd of the way out, it should be like 150g extra, which is close to what I've saved wi...

TL;DR Adding weight and complexity See them installed and in action here : part II    and finally part III about the alignment To quote Ben Jabituya in Short Circuit : "You know what many people are liking at night ? Headlights." Confession time. I'm one of those people he was talking about. Since the Vosges trip in August and the driving-mountain-roads-at-night-under-the-rain that came with it, I've been on the lookout for additional front lights for the 170. The issue comes from the void created near field when the main beams are switched on. With the original halogen headlights, you can hold the flasher button down to force both beams to illuminate at the same time. Replacement LED H4 bulbs didn't allow for that, but the illumination remained satisfactory. The proper LED headlights on the other hand alternate between two sharply defined beams that don't really crossover. The only Caterham with additional lights I know about is from Gilles in France. He l...

TL;DR : not the best afternoon Really happy with the MFD15 installed in October , it didn't take long to imagine a next step where the fuel gauge would also be replaced by a CAN one, and a final step that would see a custom base for my mobile phone holder take the space occupied by the coolant temperature dial. Since the last failure of the oxygen sensor, I came to like having the lambda value displayed at all times. That also helped justify getting a second MFD15. With all the discounts the end of year was likely to bring, I didn't rush the purchase. But as nothing came by mid-December, I placed an order from Sandtler24 before any hypothetical price increase in January. First things first, I prepared an image for the boot screen. This time with the House of Speed and Quaife logos. The new device was powered from its USB port, the boot image loaded, the firmware upgraded to the latest version, the TRI file (CAN messages definitions) uploaded as well as a backup of ...

TL;DR  stealth on a shelf My Ultralite wheels were actually configured with another car in mind. More precisely, they were supposed to be chef's kiss 👌 on a carbon fiber-clad Caterham 170R with a Nardo grey body. A real thing of beauty; a bit radical. The black perimeter bolts (20 per wheel) worked really well with that livery. On Firecracker yellow with black stripes, I did intent on having silver assembly hardware. It's a bit more subdued on a car that is already attracting a lot of attention. That to say those black bolts are bit much on my 170S. A good thing with split rims is that the fasteners can be replaced at will. A better thing yet is that the bolts aren't screwed in the wheels centers themselves, but rather on nuts behind the rim sections. Those allow for a visual inspection and can be re-torqued if needed. This is also way safer than threading straight in aluminium : failing threads can lead to wheels that split while driving or even explode when mo...

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 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...