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  : If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is After the slight over-heating issues at the track day, I did eliminate the idea that it could come from the faulty oxygen sensor. Those were (are) totally independent problems. With the oxygen sensor replaced once again, I came to understand and suspect that my car does not like cold weather. So I took the opportunity of a nice Spring weather to do various tests early in the morning or late in the evening with a cold weather (~5°C), and compare what happens in the afternoon when it's over 15°C. On the first cold night, I got the coolant up to 110°C when briefly pushing hard. And got no issue in the next afternon. On the next morning, we went back to the Fagnes  with a mask covering the front grille. That somewhat improved things but the solution was not perfect either. It confirmed that the thermostat is "shocked" close as soon as it opens. The rest of the drive it must have remained closed as the cabin heate...

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 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...

TL;DR I'm really pissed this time Excuse my use of Greek letters, but What the Fυϲκ ! I just gave the car a quick power-wash after our Saturday blat to the Nürburging, and came back home to grazing sunlight that releaved strange brownish shadows behind the left-hand headlight. Looking closer, the bucket is rusty; all fυϲκed up with the paint cracked and lifting everywhere. With a car that's just 3 years old, "for the price" , this is just unacceptable. Options range from a £60 replacement that would most likely end up in the same state in a few years; to the 1000€ carbon fiber alternative from Wesmo. Or there's the obvious solution of spending hours cleaning, protecting and painting them to get them future-proof. My " perceived quality" (a strong focus at the top management at Caterham) has been never lower.   

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  Sisyphus's Caterham Staring at the cover picture for the Lamba sensor blog post from the other day, I was surprised to discover that my turbo is missing a bolt that's supposed to keep it strongly attached to the cylinder head. Browsing my photo gallery, I could confirm it was in place and partially visible with the turbo fresh from its upgrade in January. I could also spot a closeup of the turbo from the blue factory demonstrator that showed there's a bolt where mine seems to be missing  (see below) .  Videos of of the R06A teardown mentioned here show that the Alto Works uses 2 bolts and 2 studs. I really lost one bolt then. The good thing is that I have no exhaust leak, no noise or traces of soot. Overall it's not a big deal : I'd rather lose a bolt than risk ripping the thread in the aluminium cylinder head. Looking for a spare, I mostly found M8 and M10 studs and nuts kits. I confirmed the size with an M8 nut I have in my drawer. As it threaded fine on ...

TL;DR Yet another consumable With the engine upgrade also came the upgrade to a wideband oxygen sensor. What's the difference you may ask. In simple terms, a narrowband sensor is only able to tell if the combustion is rich or lean, not really measuring how rich or lean it is. Its output will oscillate between two extreme voltage values close to 0 and 1 volt or so. With maybe a narrow band (hence the name) around 0.5 volt where it's able to work out a value when it's close to stoichiometric. A wide band one, on the other hand, is able to provide a reliable signal from 0.65 (lambda; rich) to over 10 (super lean). This allows for a finer tuning of the combustion by the ECU; that might aim at say 0.90 rather than 1.00 for high rpm and boost pressure. That strategy in itself limits the risk of knock and keeps the engine cool(er-ish). The first installed wideband sensor failed after maybe 2 or 3 weeks, leaving us stranded 100km from home . An extra month of erratic engine cut-of...

TL;DR Some like it hot I think I didn't cover the week-end in the Vosges and Black Forest at all but might have explained the cooling issue already.  Anyway, I got the car back on a Friday, and it was overheating a bit and dripping coolant from under the nose cone on the next day. What happened is that the cooling fan fuse had blown with the crash and was duly replaced and tested before I got the car back. That new fuse died rather quickly, which led the engine getting up to 105°C in some queues due to roadworks at the highest point of the Black Forest. Weather was not even great or remotely warm. The blown fuse resulted in some pressure buildup in the cooling system. Which should have been released by the 1.1 bar valve in the expansion tank cap. But is wasn't.  Instead, it was released from the hose connected to the top of the radiator, due to a faulty hose clamp. So here I was with a pair of commercial jetliner mechanics, a classic Mini specialist and a hot and ...

TL;DR That's the third tail light on the left hand side Third time the charm, who knows... it all began after a whole 2 weeks and was replaced under manufacturer warranty .  And then again earlier this year , before the end of the one year purchase warranty. As we were placing a sizeable order to repair the front end after my close encounter of the wild kind , we made sure to add a replacement LED tail light to the list. I got the car back from my friends at House of Speed last Friday (Aug 29th) after rushing the body repair specialist a bit, and decided I would replace that tail light by myself. That's a very quick job once you've done it once or twice already. Anyway, as per my previous post on the subject used as a reference, the 5.5mm allen bit and a 8mm socket were used, this time with the micro-ratchet. No need to lift the car or remove the rear wheel. Nice and easy during a short break in business-casual outfit. In the meantime I had the opportunity to...

TL;DR Not much fun has been had   First task at hand was just a nice to have : a proper routing of the cable to the rear camera. When I did install the dashcam kit last year , it had been a hurried job one winter evening. Squeezing the cable going to the rear under the side of the tunnel cover was ok, but from there the only way to the boot area was going across the panel behind the passenger seat to reach the post where a seat belt would be attached. As most would happen under the car, I did lift the rear on the ramps, and the front with the hydraulic jack. It's snug but I just fit ok under there.  I'm lucky that the wiring to the rear camera ends with a connector I did attach to the back of the chassis right under the boot cover. The camera didn't need removing and the wiring attached to the roll-bar could remain as it was. So the rear unit was disconnected, the wire pulled back to the cockpit and pulled down from the right side of the tunnel, quick and easy. In the boot...

TL;DR Not by the book That's when checking if all was fine with the tail lights that we discovered that a side repeater was not working anymore. With a silicone blob dangling from under the wing just behind the LED unit, some wiring issue was the most likely culprit, rather than a faulty LED unit - which didn't show any trace of water ingress. That was confirmed by shaking the wiring a bit to get some intermittent contact. The car was jacked-up, the wheel removed, the hub and brake assembly covered with a plastic bag to protect from any crud, and also to limit the exposure to the copper grease applied to the lug studs. It didn't take much effort to cut the silicone adhesive open and spray the area clean with brake cleaner. In there, the wiring was really not what was expected from reading the assembly guide. The positive green lead is supposed to be a single length going from the side repeater to the connector under the hood; the ground just a short length of black wire ...

TL;DR moving a washer from one side to the other   It had been a few months that I knew the rear axle was not perfectly aligned, with the right wheel flush with the wing, and the left one a bit more on the inside. A quick look in the assembly guide confirmed that there are just a pair of bolts attaching the "A frame" to the chassis, with washers on each side to center the axle. Checking my car revealed that the same number of washers was placed either side of said 'A frame'. When I got the car back from fitting the Quaife differential, it was not improved : the right wheel was now protruding sligthly. It seemed that this was constrained by the alignment of the diff and propeller shaft in the chassis, with little wiggle room. On top of that, I discovered that when driving alone, I could hear rather hard impacts on the chassis. It didn't take long to see that the axle was "interfering" with the spaceframe (banging hard on it, actually). To adjust, all I ...

TL;DR who would have thought ? Exactly one year ago, on March 8th, I was just two weeks in when I discovered that my left tail light was filled with water. You can read about it here. By February 22nd 2025, the unit that had been replaced under manufacturer warranty was also filled with water. So I drilled it to let it drain naturally, with the idea that it would last longer dry than sealed. A pair of 2mm holes were drilled in the transparent red part at the bottom of each tail light, taking care not to reach anything inside. As I thought it was very likely that the water came from the back of the LED units rather than the sides or the front, I went on and ordered 32mm silicone rubber caps to plug the ginormous 32mm opening hidden behind each tail light. Sure, such large holes are required in order to get the rather large connectors go from the exterior of the wings to the inside. But leaving those openings just above the rear wheels is probably not a great piece of engineering. With...

  TL;DR how to replace a light bulb, part II - keep incandescent bulbs Not unlike the time the speedometer bulb died just after fiddling in the vicinity, the bulb of the windscreen washers switch failed right after routing the wires for the ECU drive mode too close to it. That was again just a happy coincidence, the power supply to the bulb connectors was all fine. The filament just burned out. Duckduckgo led me to this 12 years old post , after what the trail of the "BU15 LES lamp 14V" finally gave me the "E5" socket, and the fact that 14V 0.7 Watts was what I needed for those Rover-looking rocker switches. It looks like a good search prompt would be "E5 LES Miniature Bulb, 5mm 14V 0.7W". I placed an order for a seemingly suitable LED alternative in warm white, and was sent a 10-pack of miniature train bulbs - with 11 pieces in it. Opening the switch is fiddly but nothing too complicated. I found that slices of thin rigid card helped keeping the knubs ...