2 weeks in now! A lot’s happened in those 2 weeks as well. I’ll get to putting the second video diary together to show the bits and pieces since week 1 but in the mean time, we made some good progress last night before coming to a grinding halt again!

The Fedex mad arrived, just as Jennifer at Caterham said it would, and all the bits I’d asked for were there – ready to move the car on a few stages. I now had the cap head bolts needed for the rear dampers and radius arms.

And that’s where the evening started. Firstly attaching the top damper bolt (making sure the aluminium spacer was inserted in the bush prior to fitting). With a little jiggling, these went in far easier than I thought they would. The bottom bolts were a little more tricky as I had all the hub and drive shafts fitted. It was definitely a 2 man job, with one person holding and manoeuvring  the hub assembly, while the other pushed and rotated the bolt into place. Just as I was tightening the second of these long bolts, a had a sinking feeling that I’d forgotten a washer and a check of the manual confirmed this. It actually turned out to be a pretty simple step to insert these and get the bolt back in.

Whilst under the car, I connected up the rear brake hose from the de-dion to the car.

On to radius arms. Again, with a little jiggling and encouraging, these went in without too many dramas. And, other than the brake callipers, that was the rear suspension in place. You can’t finally tighten some of the bolts until the weight of the car is taken by the axle. You do this a little later in the build.

With everything having gone so well, we moved confidently onto the seats! It wasn’t long before we realised that this was going to be an adventure all of itself. They are tight to get into place, especially with the roll cage on and then you have to feed all the harness straps through as you lower. We started with the passenger seat and with a lot of jiggling and pushing, luck and just a small amount of grinding, we got that attached.

UPDATE: Don’t be tempted to tighten a bolt if it isn’t aligned correctly with the hole. If you accidentally cross thread the bolt, the riv-nuts that you are putting the bolt into are not very strong. If you apply too much torque to the bolt, the riv-nut will break and start spinning in the rail. At that point, you’re looking at a new seat rail to get it fixed.

Then onto the drivers seat… this put up a hell of a fight and it defeated us (well me really as I ran out of patience). Trying the method in the manual, we got the front bolts loosely in place. We then ran the seat as far forward as we could get it and went to put in the rear bolts – only to find that the seat wouldn’t go far enough forward to allow access to put the rear bolt in place.

Out came the seat and we pre-inserted the rear bolts into the rail. We put the seat back in and got the front bolts in and tight (that makes it sound simple but it actually was virtually impossible to get the allen key onto the bolt head to allow tightening and my hand is very bruised this morning because of it!)

When we went to the rear bolts, they weren’t magically in line (of course they weren’t!) and the pre-inserted bolts appeared to stop the seat from sliding properly to allow finger access to wiggle and jiggle.

At that stage, it felt like an impossible task and when you hit the ‘impossible’ stage, I’ve found it’s best to stop and come back to it with a fresh head another day. So that’s what we did!

UPDATE: Although I never got the drivers seat in place, I know that Steve Grubb simply substituted the cap head bolts that Caterham supply for the job with hex-head bolts that wedge themselves in the rail. That way, you don’t need to get an alen key on the bolt to be able to tighten everything. If I were having my time again, this is the route I would take with them. I also believe it is the method the factory use if you get them to do it for you. You could also be brave and bent the adjustment bar to allow greater movement of the seat forwards. As the seat moves forwards, you can’t pull up the bar as it gets trapped by the chassis rail. If the bar was given a ‘v’ shaped kink downwards, this might solve the problem. I wasn’t confident enough to give this a go but it might be worth keeping in mind – especially if you are not tall as putting the seat in all the way forward, will mean the seat can’t be adjusted backwards any more.