Dad was back down today and was a real trooper in the engine bay. Firstly, tidying up all the wiring loom and cable tying things where they logically went. He then also fitted the radiator and fan. By the time I’d finished work and got to the garage, we only had to work out where all the hoses went… I say ‘only’! It took some thought, some guesswork, a handy email from a fellow academist and some scraped knuckles but we eventually worked it through.

You have to read the manual as a kind of suggestive tool to spark solutions from! With no heater and a new style radiator, things were never going to be up to date! However, if you read through the manual, you can deduce where pipes would head into the heater and then back out again and join the hoses to just miss out the intermediate step of the heater.

The new radiator doesn’t have the bleed nozzle on it any more so there is no more ‘small T piece’. You just route the pipe around the engine.

Hopefully some of the pictures I’ve taken today will help out others building their car soon. I know to my cost that even though I thought I was taking pictures of the engine bay at the spring/races I attended, I wasn’t concentrating on the important bits!

In addition to the cooling system going on, I also trial fit the roll cage so I could check the boot cover fit. Was good to see the cheesemobile with it’s hat on! I punched holes in the boot lit and fit the harness shoulder and lap straps. Unfortunately, the crutch straps were missing their aluminium spacers needed on the lowered floor model so I was unable to fit them.

Still, seemed like good progress in general. Tomorrow, I might look to the lighting on the front end and getting the boot cover fitting complete. I would have done the seats also, but the drivers side can’t be done until the crutch straps are down.

So, I was all alone in the garage today and I have to say that it showed! I dotted around the manual and around a number of different tasks – not really focussing properly and going along until I hit a point that I didn’t understand fully or had to commit to something (like the attachment of the fuel line – which is one time fit….)

So, in the end, I attached the cable to the solenoid and the battery terminals, including the attachment to the starter motor.

I attached the clutch cable to the master cylinder and bell housing. I scoped out the possibility of bleeding the clutch ahead of moving on with the wiring and cooling but I decided this would be easier as a 2 man job, so I’ll await another body in the garage.

I turned the battery to it’s correct orientation! It was 180 degrees the wrong way!

I did a loose attachment of the exhaust primary pipes so I could install the steering column.

I installed the steering column. I stupidly managed to knock the plastic insert out of the column bush and then wasn’t able to take the bush back out and retrieve it. I didn’t know how to solve this so I am adding that one to a list of things I want Caterham to resolve for me… my dashboard tube also didn’t contain a bush at the far end (which I think it is supposed to, although I’m not certain). I could see another white plastic insert which rather looks like someone had at least tried to put the bush in before.

I took the opportunity to also fit the steering wheel. I was missing one of the screws that attaches the wheel to the quick release boss but it felt good to see it in place and check that the steering action was smooth.

And that was about it! I’ve not got a plan of action at the moment – I want to leave some bit bits for the weekend when I’ve got friends coming over to help. That probably means leaving the exhaust and rear axle work till then. That leaves the cockpit trim – which really needs to start with the boot cover to allow the harness’ to be fit.

Phew. Got tired today! And threw a hissy fit off at dad – which wasn’t the best thing to do! Sorry about that! Still, another good day of progress. Today the engine went in. Not a lot else happened but that was still a good achievement.

Lowering the engine into the bay wasn’t too bad. It’s tight, but does just about fit. Getting the engine to sit onto the spline in the bell-housing was a bit of a pain but it eventually went home after a lot of jiggling and a slight adjustment to the angle of the gearbox.

The bolts listed in the manual for the engine mounts (the bolts that link to the engine block itself) appear to be wrong. However there are bolts in the same pack that are a good fit.

The bolt that goes into the starter motors are an absolute pig. There are 3 bolts. One went in and was torqued without too much problem. The topmost bolt was a fiddle and we got it in tight – but couldn’t torque. The inner most bolt was just impossible. We were able to get the bolt into the hole and turn it by fingertip perhaps 3 threads in before it got too stiff and we couldn’t then move it backwards or forwards. We tried all sorts of ways of getting to the bolt to tighten it, but it just wasn’t possible. Because this is now sitting half in, half out of the hole, I will have to let Caterham know and get them to tighten it in post build.

The other bolt that caused problems was the left hand engine mount bold that goes into the rubber bush that the engine sits on. The tool that we found yesterday at Halfords that fitted, was too large to get to the bolt once it was in position due to a chassis bracket being in the way. Might have to be an Amazon order for this one.

Other odd jobs done – we aligned and bolted the gearbox in; we attached the gear lever and reverse switch into the tunnel; we made a quick start on identifying and attaching the wiring looms between engine to car. This didn’t get very far as lots of the wires were not the same colour as described in the manual.

Really happy with progress so far. I now have a complete drive train in the car, so lots of the really heavy stuff is in place. Now begins the really fiddly, time-consuming parts of the build.

My dad and brother-in-law were down today and really helped me speed along with the build. We had some big items on the agenda, and, for the most part, got everything ticked off the list.

We fitted:

• the handbrake and cable,
• differential,
• propshaft,
• gearbox
• bellhousing
• washer bottle and washer jet (and piping)
• horns

We also managed to prep the engine bay for engine fitment tomorrow. All in all, a very productive day and things are moving along at quite a good rate – especially considering the thing was only delivered 3 days ago!

Hopefully tomorrow will see the engine in place and as much of the rear axel done before the roll cage needs to go in (the roll cage needs to be fitted before the rear damper unit can go in – the seatbelts and seats need to go in before the rollcage goes on – the trimming and panneling in the cockpit needs doing before the seats can go in – the steering column needs to be fitted before the trim can be done… so it looks like there’s still a bit to go after all!

Notes on the build:

Differential
Yes, it’s a pig. It’s big and heavy and the alignment isn’t good. However, the method in the latest build manual appears to be the best one and it worked for me. Use a jack to position the diff up into the car. Once you’ve got the top bolt holes roughly in alignment, you need a long, fairly strong, but thin bar to go through the whole length of the diff and through the chassis mounts. This will ‘hang’ the diff in place. You need to pivot the diff to line up the lower holes and temporarily fit the bolts, using shim washers to centralise the diff in the chassis. Measure carefully to avoid heartache! We found a nice straight edge on the rear anti-roll bar mounts and a tape measure to the same spot on the carrier each side gave accurate results.

Once its right, tighten the lower bolts (but not all the way to torque). Check the measurement again to confirm this tightening hasn’t moved anything drastically. You can then use the jack to take the weight of the diff and ‘pivot’ the carrier slightly up. Visually get the alignment through the top bolt as close to perfect as the tolerances will allow… it won’t be perfect – just go for as much as you can get. Get shim washers together that match the gaps in the between the diff and the chassis mounts, stick them together with copper grease. Then, use the diff bolt (coated in plenty of copper grease) to push out the pin bar you used to temporarily hold the top of the diff. As you reach the gap between chassis and carrier, wedge in the shim washers, use the pin to bully them into alignement and then ready the 5lb lump hammer to begin persuading the diff bolt that it does want to go into the  hole. Use as much force as necessary but make sure you’re not stuck on washers etc.

Once at the final chassis mount, it’s likely that this is nowhere near in alignment. You may need to tweak the jack a little but you can also help things along by using something to lever the bush in the chassis mount to ‘point’ towards the end the bolt. Once the bolt chamfer gets a sniff of what it needs to do, it then slides home with more persuasion from the hammer. Tighten and measure again to confirm this hasn’t put anything massively out of alignement.

Gearbox
The manual mentions several blanking plugs that need to be fitted to the gearbox – my gearbox didn’t have these holes to plug. There is one hole at the rear end of the gearbox that doesn’t initially get mentioned in the manual. This is the hole for the reverse light sensor and it is mentioned later in the manual once the gearbox is fitted (you can get to the attachment point through an access pannel in the tunnel.)

Don’t tip the gearbox up onto it’s rear end as it will gush out oil!

My gearbox had a old square filler plug socket, which means the allen key method the manual goes on about is completely redundant. It also means that my gearbox is likely impossible to fill up when installed in the car… I really hope it doesn’t spring a leak.

Prop shaft
It’s hard to try and torque up the bolts on this because it has a tendency to rotate! I guess that’s the idea of a prop shaft! I decided I’d wait until the handbrake is attached before attempting to get to required torque setting.

Engine mounts
Hellishly, these use an imperial size, which I don’t have the required allen key size or socket allen key for. Meant a trip to Halfords – and they didn’t have any either. However a chance glance at the filler plug tools section and one of them seemed to sit very nicely in the bolt head. Still, bloody annoying!

Method
I’m straying from the manual method in the transmission fitment. In my case, I don’t have too much of a choice in the matter because of the square socket filler plug. But I am installing the gearbox and bell housing in to the tunnel and then lowering the engine down horizontally to meet it. The gearbox has therefore gone in full of oil. Whether this makes the engine an absolute pig to fit correctly will be seen tomorrow! I have spoken to book-a-track mechanics and they swear by this method. I’ve also read in blogs that it helps because you don’t have the fiddle of trying to fill the gearbox in situe and you don’t have to faff about getting the angle of the car perfect.